Step Right Up…Carnival of Real Estate, Consumer Edition: Ben Franklin, 50-Year Mortgages, And How To Earn One Zimbabwe Dollar

July 26, 2007

Deluged by a flood of business and personal obligations, I alas had to delay judging of the Carnival of Real Estate, Consumer Edition, until today. Apologies…

Many of the entrants this week had mortgage-related topics.

The clear, unapologetic winner this week is from … Phoenix (who would have thunk it?) It’s Jay Thompson waxing loquacious about the problems that can arise with people who try to be both loan agents and real estate agents. While there are some “Renaissance” types who manage to pull it off — think Benjamin Franklin as a Realtor/mortgage broker — for the most part, there’s simply too much that you have to know in either field for the average person to be good at both.

Coming in second was Dan Melson at Searchlight Crusade in an article explaining the dirty little tricks mortgage brokers play to avoid competing on the one thing that really matters for most consumers: price.  By doing sleights-of-hand around pre-payment penalties, claiming ignorance about prices up front, avoiding discussions of negative amortization, lenders can make a loan look more attractive — in some cases much more attractive — than if they were transparent.  Caveat emptor.

Grad Money Matters comes in third with a post dispelling some myths about mortgages and home ownership. Among the myths talked about: getting a 40 or 50-year mortgage instead of a 30-year will definitely save you money; the only way to get the benefits of the old twice-a-month mortgage payment trick is to sign up in the bank’s (not free) program.

Honorable mention goes to Digerati Life with a discussion about handling eyesore properties in your neighborhood. The writer found something pretty rare to start off the article: a run-down, possibly abandoned property in Atherton, one of America’s toniest towns.

Without naming names, there were, unfortunately, some entries that were sadly lacking. One of them looked like a runner-up in a fourth-grade 10-minute speed-writing contest, and in fact the only reason I could see for the article was the chance to annoy me with ads liberally sprinkled throughout the article, including some of the links themselves. Well, I probably enriched the author’s bank account to the tune of about one Zimbabwe dollar — at the black market rate, not the official bank rate — simply by reading it.

The next carnival takes place on August 7th, with judging to be done by that wacky blogging Realtor in the town-of-two-states: Delaware, Ohio: Toby Boyce.

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Written by Kevin · Filed Under Atherton, Carnival of real estate, Consumer, Industry 

Comments

5 Responses to “Step Right Up…Carnival of Real Estate, Consumer Edition: Ben Franklin, 50-Year Mortgages, And How To Earn One Zimbabwe Dollar”

  1. Jay Thompson on July 26th, 2007 7:26 pm

    Well thanks Kevin! I appreciate the nod.

  2. ispf on July 26th, 2007 8:32 pm

    Thanks for including my post!

  3. The Digerati Life on July 27th, 2007 6:07 am

    Thanks for having my post as part of your carnival! I will link to you shortly! :)

  4. Consumer Edition of the Carnival of Real Estate at The Phoenix Real Estate Guy on July 27th, 2007 10:05 am

    [...] Kevin Boer of 3 Oceans Real Estate fame has posted the results of the latest edition of the Consumer Edition of the Carnival of Real Estate. [...]

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