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