After coming across an article like Is Getting a Home Loan Becoming Too Easy it becomes painfully clear that the greatest problem facing real estate market observers today is in attempting to determine who the dumbest participants are the mortgage borrowers the mortgage lenders or the headline writers In this look into low documentation and no documentation loans Wall Street Journal Staff Reporters James R Hagerty and Ruth Simon do a respectable job of assembling comments from the minimum number of interview subjects required to submit a story to their editor apparently eight but in the end the experience is spoiled as readers refer back to the headline after every fifty words wondering when the satire will begin The answer to the question posed in the title is exceedingly obvious to anyone paying any attention to what is going on in the nation s housing market today Is Getting A Home Loan Becoming Too Easy How can a story with a headline like this be anything other than satire After expecting the now worn phrase anyone who can fog a mirror to pop up with each new paragraph the reader ultimately reaches the end of the article unamused and unsatisfied Surely there were some clues along the way for whoever it was that adorned this work with the headline that it now bears It begins Obtaining a mortgage loan used to be an ordeal that involved retrieving reams of tax returns pay stubs and bank statements Now some critics contend it is becoming a bit too easy putting everyone from homeowners to certain bond investors at risk Mortgage lenders competing for customers who are lazy pressed for time or reluctant to reveal their financial secrets have grown much less demanding about the amount of proof borrowers must provide about their earnings and assets The result is a sharp rise in loans known in the trade as low doc or no doc These loans which typically carry slightly higher interest rates allow borrowers to skip some or all of the traditional requirements for verifying income and assets The danger is that these loans may allow some borrowers to exaggerate their financial strength and buy houses they really can t afford So the part about lazy busy or secretive customers and less demanding lenders combining to cause a sharp rise in low and no documentation loans during the peak of the largest real estate boom in history where prices have escalated beyond anyone s wildest imaginations while income and rental prices have been flat This should have been an indication that maybe getting a home loan is becoming too easy and that the headline wasn t suitable this should have been clue 1 Bank regulators however are starting to raise questions about low doc loans My premise is How hard is it to come up with a couple of copies of pay stubs and copies of W 2 tax forms says Barbara Grunkemeyer deputy comptroller for credit risk at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency which regulates national banks I think there s a good reason why no doc and low doc loans are called liars mortgages She adds that there are some circumstances in which low doc loans are acceptable such as refinancings that don t involve extracting cash from home equity My premise is Where have you been Barbara and why has it taken you so long to find out about liars mortgages Actually they re called liar loans which rolls off the tongue much better and as such this alliteration earns the coveted spot as clue 2 But Michael D Youngblood an economist at Friedman Billings Ramsey Co in Arlington Va recently studied low doc loans made to borrowers with less than pristine credit records and concluded that lenders are being prudent in granting them The only person that doesn t see a problem is the economist clue 3 Among loans used to back mortgage securities created by Wall Street and other firms that aren t affiliated with the government the percentage of mortgage loans that are fully documented dropped to 54 in this year s first eight months from 72 in all of 2000 according to LoanPerformance a unit of First American Corp While many are anxiously awaiting the recently announced negative documentation loans to be made widely available almost half of all new loans being low doc or no doc qualifies as clue 4 Countrywide Financial Corp the nation s biggest mortgage lender has what it calls a Fast Easy loan program that eliminates much of the paperwork normally required Buying a home should not be like renewing your driver s license clue 5 Daniel Rub n Odio P ez owner of DROdio Real Estate Inc a brokerage firm in the Washington area recently took out a low doc loan from Countrywide to buy a house in Chantilly Va He says he couldn t document his income because he hadn t yet filed his 2004 tax return The 522 000 loan carries a 6 interest rate If he had provided full documentation his loan officer says Mr Odio could have received a rate of 5 625 That would have lowered his monthly payment by about 313 Owning a real estate company Daniel is understandably much too busy to file tax returns or care about an extra 313 a month this is likely to change in the years ahead and therefore could possibly qualify as a clue sometime in the future but does not qualify as a clue today sorry Daniel Other people choose low doc loans because they are straining to qualify for a mortgage Charles S Davis who operates APRCompare com a mortgage brokerage in Huntington Beach Calif says some borrowers in expensive markets need to pay as much as 50 of their income to meet mortgage payments insurance and property taxes That would disqualify them for most conventional loans In this case he says I would use a low doc loan to help them into the property they want Mr Davis adds that he wouldn t offer such a loan if he believed the house was truly unaffordable for the borrower Well as long as it s not truly unaffordable clue 6 One of Mr Davis s customers Jennifer Abate a financial adviser in Santa Ana Calif says she chose a low doc loan because it was easier and she didn t want to take the risk that she wouldn t meet an income requirement for the home she wanted But as the housing market cools many low doc loans will go bad predicts Michael Menatian president of Sanborn Corp a mortgage bank in West Hartford Conn It s going to be ugly he says Unsound risk aversion and ugly easily earn clue 7 and 8 Just who came up with such a headline that is so inconsistent with this story Has there been a recent exodus of Money Magazine editors now employed at the Wall Street Journal who left their previous employer in a dispute about how the real estate market should be presented to their loyal readers Just doing a Yahoo search for no doc loans and examining what shows up in the Sponsored Links section of the page should demonstrate what is going on in this market think of the guy in the big red Hummer H2 with HOME LOANS and his phone number in fourteen inch bold white letters on his side and rear windows By the way on a related topic four very interesting comments showed up on the Bryo piece that appeared here a couple months ago does anyone believe that a 62 year old lady has really visited this blog and left these comments When facism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross Sinclair Lewis Wow That quote appears at the beginning of a video on the brush up between candidates Ron Paul and Rudy Guiliani at the debates I ve never seen that quote before and I may have to re design the blog in order to prominantly feature those words Here s the video Labels GOP scum When facism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross Sinclair Lewis Wow That quote appears at the beginning of a video on the brush up between candidates Ron Paul and Rudy Guiliani at the debates I ve never seen that quote before and I may have to re design the blog in order to prominantly feature those words Here s the video Labels GOP scum What is Xeriscaping It is the process of matching your landscaping to your natural climate in order to conserve energy and water The word itself is from Greek origin xero scape meaning dry scene Xeriscaping is becoming very popular Why should you invest in the idea of Xeriscaping For one it is fiscally responsible For two it is environmentally responsible Not only will you be saving money on watering and fertilizing You will not need to worry about pest control and expensive chemicals that may not be the best thing for your environment There is also less maintenance involved What is involved in Xeriscaping The first thing involved is planting You will want to use many native species that are good at conserving energy Your local nursery should be able to help you out with this You will also want to plant in groupings so that if you do have to water you can water in one area The second thing involved is water conservation Drip irrigation systems as opposed to traditional watering use less water There is less water wasted and not as much evaporates to the atmosphere Mulching also allows the soil to conserve the water it holds The conclusion is this Why fight nature when you can work with it to have a beautifully landscaped yard without all the hassle I was part of a group show this may at The MarkJames Gallery in Brooklyn with Dylan Eastgaard Ryan Foerster Lukas Geronimas and Chris Parker We were there just over a week the majority of the time painting the piece on the gallery wall pretty rugged work The piece itself was 20 X10 give or take a few inches it s called The Gauntlet I did the right side lukas the left All the pieces in the show were great it was probably the most cohesive group show I ve been a part of plus the opening was fun as hell When facism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross Sinclair Lewis Wow That quote appears at the beginning of a video on the brush up between candidates Ron Paul and Rudy Guiliani at the debates I ve never seen that quote before and I may have to re design the blog in order to prominantly feature those words Here s the video Labels GOP scum After coming across an article like Is Getting a Home Loan Becoming Too Easy it becomes painfully clear that the greatest problem facing real estate market observers today is in attempting to determine who the dumbest participants are the mortgage borrowers the mortgage lenders or the headline writers In this look into low documentation and no documentation loans Wall Street Journal Staff Reporters James R Hagerty and Ruth Simon do a respectable job of assembling comments from the minimum number of interview subjects required to submit a story to their editor apparently eight but in the end the experience is spoiled as readers refer back to the headline after every fifty words wondering when the satire will begin The answer to the question posed in the title is exceedingly obvious to anyone paying any attention to what is going on in the nation s housing market today Is Getting A Home Loan Becoming Too Easy How can a story with a headline like this be anything other than satire After expecting the now worn phrase anyone who can fog a mirror to pop up with each new paragraph the reader ultimately reaches the end of the article unamused and unsatisfied Surely there were some clues along the way for whoever it was that adorned this work with the headline that it now bears It begins Obtaining a mortgage loan used to be an ordeal that involved retrieving reams of tax returns pay stubs and bank statements Now some critics contend it is becoming a bit too easy putting everyone from homeowners to certain bond investors at risk Mortgage lenders competing for customers who are lazy pressed for time or reluctant to reveal their financial secrets have grown much less demanding about the amount of proof borrowers must provide about their earnings and assets The result is a sharp rise in loans known in the trade as low doc or no doc These loans which typically carry slightly higher interest rates allow borrowers to skip some or all of the traditional requirements for verifying income and assets The danger is that these loans may allow some borrowers to exaggerate their financial strength and buy houses they really can t afford So the part about lazy busy or secretive customers and less demanding lenders combining to cause a sharp rise in low and no documentation loans during the peak of the largest real estate boom in history where prices have escalated beyond anyone s wildest imaginations while income and rental prices have been flat This should have been an indication that maybe getting a home loan is becoming too easy and that the headline wasn t suitable this should have been clue 1 Bank regulators however are starting to raise questions about low doc loans My premise is How hard is it to come up with a couple of copies of pay stubs and copies of W 2 tax forms says Barbara Grunkemeyer deputy comptroller for credit risk at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency which regulates national banks I think there s a good reason why no doc and low doc loans are called liars mortgages She adds that there are some circumstances in which low doc loans are acceptable such as refinancings that don t involve extracting cash from home equity My premise is Where have you been Barbara and why has it taken you so long to find out about liars mortgages Actually they re called liar loans which rolls off the tongue much better and as such this alliteration earns the coveted spot as clue 2 But Michael D Youngblood an economist at Friedman Billings Ramsey Co in Arlington Va recently studied low doc loans made to borrowers with less than pristine credit records and concluded that lenders are being prudent in granting them The only person that doesn t see a problem is the economist clue 3 Among loans used to back mortgage securities created by Wall Street and other firms that aren t affiliated with the government the percentage of mortgage loans that are fully documented dropped to 54 in this year s first eight months from 72 in all of 2000 according to LoanPerformance a unit of First American Corp While many are anxiously awaiting the recently announced negative documentation loans to be made widely available almost half of all new loans being low doc or no doc qualifies as clue 4 Countrywide Financial Corp the nation s biggest mortgage lender has what it calls a Fast Easy loan program that eliminates much of the paperwork normally required Buying a home should not be like renewing your driver s license clue 5 Daniel Rub n Odio P ez owner of DROdio Real Estate Inc a brokerage firm in the Washington area recently took out a low doc loan from Countrywide to buy a house in Chantilly Va He says he couldn t document his income because he hadn t yet filed his 2004 tax return The 522 000 loan carries a 6 interest rate If he had provided full documentation his loan officer says Mr Odio could have received a rate of 5 625 That would have lowered his monthly payment by about 313 Owning a real estate company Daniel is understandably much too busy to file tax returns or care about an extra 313 a month this is likely to change in the years ahead and therefore could possibly qualify as a clue sometime in the future but does not qualify as a clue today sorry Daniel Other people choose low doc loans because they are straining to qualify for a mortgage Charles S Davis who operates APRCompare com a mortgage brokerage in Huntington Beach Calif says some borrowers in expensive markets need to pay as much as 50 of their income to meet mortgage payments insurance and property taxes That would disqualify them for most conventional loans In this case he says I would use a low doc loan to help them into the property they want Mr Davis adds that he wouldn t offer such a loan if he believed the house was truly unaffordable for the borrower Well as long as it s not truly unaffordable clue 6 One of Mr Davis s customers Jennifer Abate a financial adviser in Santa Ana Calif says she chose a low doc loan because it was easier and she didn t want to take the risk that she wouldn t meet an income requirement for the home she wanted But as the housing market cools many low doc loans will go bad predicts Michael Menatian president of Sanborn Corp a mortgage bank in West Hartford Conn It s going to be ugly he says Unsound risk aversion and ugly easily earn clue 7 and 8 Just who came up with such a headline that is so inconsistent with this story Has there been a recent exodus of Money Magazine editors now employed at the Wall Street Journal who left their previous employer in a dispute about how the real estate market should be presented to their loyal readers Just doing a Yahoo search for no doc loans and examining what shows up in the Sponsored Links section of the page should demonstrate what is going on in this market think of the guy in the big red Hummer H2 with HOME LOANS and his phone number in fourteen inch bold white letters on his side and rear windows By the way on a related topic four very interesting comments showed up on the Bryo piece that appeared here a couple months ago does anyone believe that a 62 year old lady has really visited this blog and left these comments I was part of a group show this may at The MarkJames Gallery in Brooklyn with Dylan Eastgaard Ryan Foerster Lukas Geronimas and Chris Parker We were there just over a week the majority of the time painting the piece on the gallery wall pretty rugged work The piece itself was 20 X10 give or take a few inches it s called The Gauntlet I did the right side lukas the left All the pieces in the show were great it was probably the most cohesive group show I ve been a part of plus the opening was fun as hell After coming across an article like Is Getting a Home Loan Becoming Too Easy it becomes painfully clear that the greatest problem facing real estate market observers today is in attempting to determine who the dumbest participants are the mortgage borrowers the mortgage lenders or the headline writers In this look into low documentation and no documentation loans Wall Street Journal Staff Reporters James R Hagerty and Ruth Simon do a respectable job of assembling comments from the minimum number of interview subjects required to submit a story to their editor apparently eight but in the end the experience is spoiled as readers refer back to the headline after every fifty words wondering when the satire will begin The answer to the question posed in the title is exceedingly obvious to anyone paying any attention to what is going on in the nation s housing market today Is Getting A Home Loan Becoming Too Easy How can a story with a headline like this be anything other than satire After expecting the now worn phrase anyone who can fog a mirror to pop up with each new paragraph the reader ultimately reaches the end of the article unamused and unsatisfied Surely there were some clues along the way for whoever it was that adorned this work with the headline that it now bears It begins Obtaining a mortgage loan used to be an ordeal that involved retrieving reams of tax returns pay stubs and bank statements Now some critics contend it is becoming a bit too easy putting everyone from homeowners to certain bond investors at risk Mortgage lenders competing for customers who are lazy pressed for time or reluctant to reveal their financial secrets have grown much less demanding about the amount of proof borrowers must provide about their earnings and assets The result is a sharp rise in loans known in the trade as low doc or no doc These loans which typically carry slightly higher interest rates allow borrowers to skip some or all of the traditional requirements for verifying income and assets The danger is that these loans may allow some borrowers to exaggerate their financial strength and buy houses they really can t afford So the part about lazy busy or secretive customers and less demanding lenders combining to cause a sharp rise in low and no documentation loans during the peak of the largest real estate boom in history where prices have escalated beyond anyone s wildest imaginations while income and rental prices have been flat This should have been an indication that maybe getting a home loan is becoming too easy and that the headline wasn t suitable this should have been clue 1 Bank regulators however are starting to raise questions about low doc loans My premise is How hard is it to come up with a couple of copies of pay stubs and copies of W 2 tax forms says Barbara Grunkemeyer deputy comptroller for credit risk at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency which regulates national banks I think there s a good reason why no doc and low doc loans are called liars mortgages She adds that there are some circumstances in which low doc loans are acceptable such as refinancings that don t involve extracting cash from home equity My premise is Where have you been Barbara and why has it taken you so long to find out about liars mortgages Actually they re called liar loans which rolls off the tongue much better and as such this alliteration earns the coveted spot as clue 2 But Michael D Youngblood an economist at Friedman Billings Ramsey Co in Arlington Va recently studied low doc loans made to borrowers with less than pristine credit records and concluded that lenders are being prudent in granting them The only person that doesn t see a problem is the economist clue 3 Among loans used to back mortgage securities created by Wall Street and other firms that aren t affiliated with the government the percentage of mortgage loans that are fully documented dropped to 54 in this year s first eight months from 72 in all of 2000 according to LoanPerformance a unit of First American Corp While many are anxiously awaiting the recently announced negative documentation loans to be made widely available almost half of all new loans being low doc or no doc qualifies as clue 4 Countrywide Financial Corp the nation s biggest mortgage lender has what it calls a Fast Easy loan program that eliminates much of the paperwork normally required Buying a home should not be like renewing your driver s license clue 5 Daniel Rub n Odio P ez owner of DROdio Real Estate Inc a brokerage firm in the Washington area recently took out a low doc loan from Countrywide to buy a house in Chantilly Va He says he couldn t document his income because he hadn t yet filed his 2004 tax return The 522 000 loan carries a 6 interest rate If he had provided full documentation his loan officer says Mr Odio could have received a rate of 5 625 That would have lowered his monthly payment by about 313 Owning a real estate company Daniel is understandably much too busy to file tax returns or care about an extra 313 a month this is likely to change in the years ahead and therefore could possibly qualify as a clue sometime in the future but does not qualify as a clue today sorry Daniel Other people choose low doc loans because they are straining to qualify for a mortgage Charles S Davis who operates APRCompare com a mortgage brokerage in Huntington Beach Calif says some borrowers in expensive markets need to pay as much as 50 of their income to meet mortgage payments insurance and property taxes That would disqualify them for most conventional loans In this case he says I would use a low doc loan to help them into the property they want Mr Davis adds that he wouldn t offer such a loan if he believed the house was truly unaffordable for the borrower Well as long as it s not truly unaffordable clue 6 One of Mr Davis s customers Jennifer Abate a financial adviser in Santa Ana Calif says she chose a low doc loan because it was easier and she didn t want to take the risk that she wouldn t meet an income requirement for the home she wanted But as the housing market cools many low doc loans will go bad predicts Michael Menatian president of Sanborn Corp a mortgage bank in West Hartford Conn It s going to be ugly he says Unsound risk aversion and ugly easily earn clue 7 and 8 Just who came up with such a headline that is so inconsistent with this story Has there been a recent exodus of Money Magazine editors now employed at the Wall Street Journal who left their previous employer in a dispute about how the real estate market should be presented to their loyal readers Just doing a Yahoo search for no doc loans and examining what shows up in the Sponsored Links section of the page should demonstrate what is going on in this market think of the guy in the big red Hummer H2 with HOME LOANS and his phone number in fourteen inch bold white letters on his side and rear windows By the way on a related topic four very interesting comments showed up on the Bryo piece that appeared here a couple months ago does anyone believe that a 62 year old lady has really visited this blog and left these comments Click Here

What is Xeriscaping It is the process of matching your landscaping to your natural climate in order to conserve energy and water The word itself is from Greek origin xero scape meaning dry scene Xeriscaping is becoming very popular Why should you invest in the idea of Xeriscaping For one it is fiscally responsible For two it is environmentally responsible Not only will you be saving money on watering and fertilizing You will not need to worry about pest control and expensive chemicals that may not be the best thing for your environment There is also less maintenance involved What is involved in Xeriscaping The first thing involved is planting You will want to use many native species that are good at conserving energy Your local nursery should be able to help you out with this You will also want to plant in groupings so that if you do have to water you can water in one area The second thing involved is water conservation Drip irrigation systems as opposed to traditional watering use less water There is less water wasted and not as much evaporates to the atmosphere Mulching also allows the soil to conserve the water it holds The conclusion is this Why fight nature when you can work with it to have a beautifully landscaped yard without all the hassle