Ken Horst's (khorst) Blog

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Mortgage and Lending - MLS Maps, Agentopolis, Tweet Me Homes
RECENT BLOG POSTS
While I'm on the topic of links, here is another good one that is free, easy to use and has good school information for most public schools and many private schools all over the country.http://nces.ed.gov/globallocator/ This is a government site so there is no advertising or useless distractions....
04/12/2008
Frequently I find myself on city or county web sites digging up community information for clients or looking for property records or tax appraised values on county web sites.  I have saved most of the county and city sites that I use in my favorites but it occurred to me that if I am constantly h...
04/12/2008
Washington Mutual announced yesterday that it was shutting down it's wholesale lending division.  I personally didn't do a lot of business with WaMu so it doesn't really affect me but I know many loan officers who had solid working relationships with Washington Mutual and they will have to invest...
04/08/2008
Washington MutualI personally didn't do a lot of business with WaMu so it doesn't really affect me but I know many loan officers who had solid working relationships with Washington Mutual and they will have to invest a lot of time to build a working relationship with another lender.The way the mo...
04/08/2008
As of April 1st Countrywide will no longer be offering 100% financing.    The maximum LTV (loan-to-value) has been reduced from 100% to 97% and the minimum qualifying credit score has been increased from 660 to 680 points. This change affects all conforming Programs including Flex 100, House Amer...
03/27/2008
You've got to be kidding me!  Here we have one of the biggest legal gambling institutions in the world, Bear Stearns,  on the ropes because they got greedy and made some bad bets, and our government is going to bail them out?  That is sick!Call me crazy but aren't these some of the same guys that...
03/14/2008
More and more consumers are discovering that the best way to find a home in their area is to find an agent site that provides free access to the local MLS listings.  The fastest growing trend in broker reciprocity MLS sites, as indicated by our Google analytics report, is people looking for map b...
03/09/2008
Removing mortgage insurance is something that can happen when the loan-to-value of your home mortgage reaches 80% or less. This happens as a result of two things, paying down principle and your house appreciating. If you get to the point where you think your mortgage balance is less than 80% of t...
02/25/2008
Recently I had a loan for a purchase pre-approved by Fannie Mae for 100% financing.  I called my lender rep and asked about "declining markets" and whether the county and city where my borrowers home was located was in a declining market.  He said to the best of his knowledge. it was not.  When w...
02/25/2008
Recently http://www.mlsmaps.com/ hooked up links to MLS IDX sites in the top 230 cities and metro areas in the U.S.  It took over 100 hours to find qualifying IDX sites in each of the 230 markets.  We were looking for easy, unencumbered access to local MLS listings, primarily with map based searc...
12/21/2007
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Ken Horst

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