Are you considering buying a new home or refinancing your present one? With the range of mortgage products available today, many people feel as though they need a crystal ball in order to make the right choice. It certainly would be handy to see into the future, but there are more prudent and more logical ways to navigate your way through the available options.
There are many mortgage types — pick-a-payment, hybrid adjustable, fixed-rate interest only, reverse, negative amortization, 2/28, 3/27, FHA, CHFA, VA, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, wrap-around, balloon at term, or adjustable rate mortgages for 1-, 3-, 5-, 7-, or 10-year terms. All these mortgages are referred to as MPs (mortgage products) or MOs (mortgage options).
When you start looking for a mortgage, try to keep an open mind. Be prepared to listen carefully so you can hear about all the mortgage products available to you. What might have been right for your parents, or what might be right for a friend, might not be right for you.
Here are some questions you should ask yourself before you meet with a mortgage professional:
· How long do you plan to stay in the house? You can use a range of years — for example, 2 to 5 years, 6 to 10 years, 12 to 20 years.
· Are you anticipating large expenditures in the near future? For example, you might need a new car, or you may be saving for a child’s college education.
· Is your family getting larger or smaller? Are you planning to have more children, are your children going off to school, or are your children grown and married?
· Is your income remaining steady, increasing, or subject to large variations? Is your spouse working, or is your spouse planning to stop working? Do you anticipate cutbacks in overtime or a slowdown in business?
· Is this your dream house or an interim house? Do you expect to improve it over time?
· Will the monthly payment curtail other activities, such as vacations or hobbies? If so, are you prepared to give those up for a while?
· Will the money from a refinancing improve the property’s value? Will it improve your cash flow, or will it improve your financial condition in some way?
Your mortgage professional will help you evaluate your answers to these questions, and he or she will help you find the right mortgage product for you. A good mortgage professional is like a good physician — both probe for information to help guide them toward making a recommendation that will be best for you.
Here are a few good websites to help you learn more about mortgages:
· http://www.ired.com/news/mort/990801.htm
· www.freddiemac.com
· www.fanniemae.com
· www.home123.com
When you are ready to buy or refinance, be sure to get a referral from someone you trust an attorney, accountant, financial planner, or good friend or relative who has gone through the experience. Remember, the more you know, the better off you are. Perhaps then you won’t need that crystal ball!

Home123leads effective January 1st will be offering exclusive mortgage leads. These leads will be sold on a limited basis based on our website traffic but they will ONLY be sold to one entity. We have been looking at to best serve the needs of our brokers and from the feedback we have received our lenders/brokers would rather pay more for an exclusive lead than compete with 4 other companies for the same lead. For our current clients you can certainly keep the same pricing structure you have and NOT change over to exclusive. This is simply an option we are extending based on the feedback we have received. Call 1-877-564-2726 if you are interested in learning how you can be sure they are exclusive and how you can test for yourself.

As rates increase the pool of refinance inquiries will dry up forcing many of the lead companies to increase their sales rate. What are you doing in 2011 to ensure a steady stream of leads?

How To Work Internet Mortgage Leads
No matter how these leads are obtained, time is of the essence. A person making an inquiry usually does business with the first person to contact them. This ratio varies according to industry; it can be as high as 78% of the time. Successful sales people using automatic sales leads, purchased sales leads and mailing lists need a program to respond immediately. Internet mortgage leads are received directly from a web page or through a seller of sales leads. Each will be handled a little differently. Internet clients are looking for instant answers to their questions or solutions to their problems. Before investing in a strategy, businesses need to determine how to utilize the process efficiently and benefit from this endless supply of ready, willing and able borrowers.
Each business needs to determine if a salesperson will contact a potential client or if they will hire people to follow up on these leads and qualify the clients. Many businesses use their experienced salespeople to close the deal with borrowers ready to move to the next step. Statistics indicate companies using people to qualify leads have an 8% higher closing average.
A company's web page should have an auto responder acknowledging e-mails or sending the offered information. The searchers' information should be forwarded to the office for a personal response.
Purchasing mortgage leads from an Internet company selling these leads and mailing lists creates time pressure. These leads are expensive and may be sold to four or five different businesses at a time. It becomes a race to beat the competitor to a serious client needing a new loan. Salespeople or businesses buying sales leads this way can control the time this information is received. The data should be supplied when it can be used. Data received at 7 PM, two hours after the staff have gone home, is already 13 hours old by the next morning. By changing the time to match working hours, the information is fresh and can be acted on immediately.
Of all the industries in the world, the Internet is growing and thriving. People using this valuable tool for mortgage leads get motivated and informed customers. These customers searching for mortgage information are very interested in mortgages and may need one today.
Don Drapers is a human researching machine and being part of the internet by writing useful articles about mortgage leads is just one of many "must read before you buy" articles he has written in the sales lead industry. Mortgage Leads provider so they'll WANT to give you the very best leads they have. Alternatively, say these wrong things to any lead provider and you are highly likely to get burned. Visit iMarketingData.com and quickly learn how to be in control of your lead providers. Knowledge is power. How smart are you?
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Don_Drapers

Here is an interesting excerpt i found on "broker lead guides".

Having an exclusive mortgage broker lead is one of the most important types of leads for anyone to have. As a company in the mortgage industry, it is essential you have leads you can rely on, which is why these leads in particular are some of the best to have. They provide you with top quality and the most likely source of return on your investment. Each company has a different viewpoint on what exclusive mortgage broker lead purchases mean, which is why you should invest some time in comparing companies prior to making a decision.

Find out where the leads come from first. You will want to ensure that you are getting leads coming right from the company’s mechanisms, not third party providers that may have sold the lead to other companies as well. You may also want to find out if the leads are pre-screened. This means that the leads have gone through a process of ensuring they are authentic and in some cases that they are viable. This can greatly increase your chances of closing a deal on them.

Another way to look for the illusive exclusive mortgage broker lead is through a program that allows someone to sign up for the lead on the lead generator’s website or programs and that lead comes directly to you, in near real time. This way, there is no chance of someone else also getting that lead.

Of course, the most important aspect of any lead you obtain is how well they will respond to your services. Take the time to consider an exclusive mortgage broker lead rather than looking towards simple lead generation programs unable to provide you with the quality you need. You may pay more for such a service, but if you are the only one selling your services to the lead, your chances of getting results are higher.

NOW....Here is my view on Exclusive leads Unless you as a broker or mortgage company are marketing and driving traffic to your site; it is difficult to be 100% sure your leads are exclusive to you. There are some ways to get to the truth. Any mortgage lead generation company needs to pay; in most cases upfront for online marketing dollars. In terms of banner ad contracts, warm transfers and performance based costs. The first question i would have for a broker purchasing exclusive leads is "How much are you willing to pay"? If your answer is $65-75.00 then yes I could certainly get you exclusive leads. But if you are paying $15 or $25 for exclusive leads chances are they are not. Here is why it costs on average $25.00 to produce a $150K loan amount lvt under 85% with excellent or good credit. Now how can any business turnaround and sell that to you for anything under $25.00 and still make a profit? Get in writing the sites that these exclusive leads will be generated on test them periodically by competing applications and track what occurs with those leads; not just now but over the course of 30 days to be sure that they are not resold. In their contract be sure it states clearly that YOU are the only person who will ever get these leads and that information will never be redistributed or resold

Thanks to everyone for your e-mails. Keep them coming! It's obvious from the questions I have been getting that the refinance lead inventory is certainly drying up. Lead companies selling leads as much as 7 times at this point. I did want to write about one topic that came up from one particular company I had the pleasure of speaking with. I promised I would not mention his company name but thanks Alex for the suggestion.

It seems that a big problem still out there is the inability to track the actual quality of the leads. And at what point is it the lead company doing something wrong vs. the lead buyer not doing something right. I am wondering if it's the fact that we don't have tracking systems in place or if it's the fact that we are just not taking the time to really "get into" the reports and analyze the data. Yes knowing how many leads were bad is one metric but we are really missing the boat if that is all we are reviewing at the end of the month. A few of the folks I spoke with have 3rd party platforms to track performance and yet when I asked a few questions they did not know the answers off the top of their head. There are a few key metrics that we should readily have answers to. It is important for the success of your platform and also to share that information with your lead company so they can modify their program accordingly.

1. Which lead company is costing you more in terms of a cost per funded deal
2. What is the spoilage rate for each of your lead providers
3. Which loan officer works a lead source better than the other loan officers
4. Where in the process is your lead vendor falling off the radar? Prior to ap; after credit is pulled?

What information can you give your lead provider that will allow them to modify their advertising to get you better quality leads? I really look at this process as relationship building. As the lead buyer you need to know everything about that customer when that lead comes in. You should know the type of ad the person clicked on to get to the lead form. You want to know the sites/sites that hosted the banner ad. Your lead vendor should be willing to share that information with you. You also want to know how other lead buyers are doing with their leads that come from the same source as yours. So here is my little sales pitch. Home123leads provides you with all the information on that customer including the marketing around what caused that person to complete the lead form. As always feel free to give me a call about any topic here or if you have a particular question about mortgage leads. We are here to help!

What is a BAD Lead? It seems like an easy question to answer, but many of us find it difficult to hold ourselves accountable to the definition. Let me explain.

Over 80 percent of those we spoke with told us a bad lead is a bad phone number, a disconnected phone number or someone who said they did not apply. What we in fact discovered is that, at times, a good percentage of us are looking for credit for customers we cannot get in touch with or even some who want credit for leads that did not go to application. If the lead company provides a lead from an interested party and the contact information is valid, then they did their job. After that the onus is on us and our trained loan officers to close the deal.

There needs to be a healthy give-and-take in the relationship between the lead vendor and the mortgage company. Just like a dating relationship, we try to be on our best behavior, and somewhere down the line, our true colors are shown. Each of us needs to have a healthy appreciation of the other’s business; if we have that, we can put our best foot forward in maintaining a strong business partnership.

We all know changes occur in our operations, e.g., new loan officers start, programs change, new competition etc. Contrary to a few beliefs out there, not every lead you receive will fund. It is the lead provider’s responsibility to prevent you from getting “bad” leads and in fact credit those where the customer obviously was not interested. That being said, it’s the mortgage company’s responsibility to not take advantage of the situation.

In my travels to industry tradeshows and seminars, I am still amazed by the type of questions I get from lead buyers: “Greg, do you know what companies ‘guarantee’ their leads?” or “Can your company ‘guarantee’ a funding rate of 5% or higher? Do you give credit for ‘ineligible’ customers?” When I ask them their definitions of “guarantee” or “ineligible,” I get a variety of answers.

The simple truth is that their questions are a direct response to the frustration that has built up over the past couple of years. A healthy initial dialogue on the part of the lead buyer and seller is needed before marketing dollars are spent and contracts are signed. There are some specific questions to ask the lead provider in determining the overall value and lead quality they bring to your company.

2011 FHA Loan Limits. Has anyone see the new limits released by Mortgagedaily yesterday? For one-unit residential properties, the "floor" limit is $271,050, while duplex loans are limited to $347,000 and triplex financing cannot exceed $419,400. On a four-unit property, the limit is $521,250.

In high-cost areas, as required in the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008, the one-unit limit is $729,750, and the two-unit limit is $934,200. Three-unit high-cost loans are limited to $1,129,250, while the fourplex maximum is $1,403,400.

"Many areas are eligible for loan limits between the national FHA floor and ceiling based on area median home prices," the letter stated. "In such areas, the limits shall be at the higher of the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008 calculated loan limits for 2008 and the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 calculated loan limits for the effective period stated herein."

For Alaska, Guam, Hawaii and the Virgin Islands -- the one-unit cap is $1,094,625, while it jumps to $1,401,300 on two-unit buildings and $1,693,875 on triplexes. The fourplex limit in these "special exception areas" is $2,105,100.

Because of Continuing Resolution provisions, the limit on home-equity conversion mortgages will stay at $625,500. The HECM limit is 150 percent of the conforming limit.

The loan limits are in effect from Jan. 1, 2011, to Sept. 30, 2011.

Well, things certainly have changed for us who are survivors in the mortgage industry. We had some real peaks in refinancing levels throughout this year thanks to the rates. There were lots of exciting things happening here for us at Home123 as well. As you may know we re-launched the multimillion dollar brand; HOME123.com in early 2010. Just this past week we launched our new lead division home123leads.com. We now have 8 verticals for our consumers and in addition will be launching a platform for REALTORS® called MobileListingTag. As well as a consumer smartphone application HomeCompare.

For those of you who are currently clients at home123leads.com or who knew me when I ran LowerMyPayment you know the quality of the mortgage leads you received. Reputation as you know is 100% everything in this business. We will never be nor do we want to be the huge lead company; however, we are able to customize our lead programs to your specific needs. We listen and we take the time to understand your platform. And unlike many of the surviving lead companies out there we share with you how we generate our leads and provide the secret sauce so you can apply it in your branch operations. Give us a try the next time your lead volume needs a little boost. I invite you to visit home123leads.com or give me a call at 1-877-564-2726. Be sure to visit as I will be posting ways in which you can generate your own leads and reduce your overall marketing budget for your operation.