133 banks have already failed this year, and there’s no evidence to suggest the 134th is far away. The FDIC keeps a tight lip on the health of the nation’s 8,300 banks. So a website run by MSNBC and American University helps to check the status of your your bank. BankTracker for banks or credit unions offers a large US map, making them easy to find. Or just type the name in their search bar and look at the troubled-asset ratio. The BankTracker site says:

While it is not an official FDIC statistic, nor is it intended as a definitive predictor of the likelihood of bank failure, the troubled asset ratio apparently is a strong indicator of severe stress inside a bank because it shows the bank’s ability to withstand loan losses. Of the 92 banks that have failed so far this year, 84 had troubled asset ratios of 100 percent or greater in the final quarter they reported data before they closed.

Look at these recently failed Minnesota banks and notice how the asset ratio is well above 100%

MSNBC has also compiled a list of banks with the highest levels of troubled loans. If your bank or credit union’s troubled-asset ratio number is near 100, there’s no need to immediately withdraw your money unless you have over $250,000 in your account.

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The second appraisal requirement will remain when a property is re-sold between 91 and 180 days following acquisition by the seller if the resale price is 100% higher (or more) than the price paid by the seller when the property was acquired.

“We haven’t noticed any benefit and it really slowed down the process,” FHA Commissioner David Stevens told Mortgage Wire at the (NAR) convention in San Diego

I can’t recall the last time I saw an FHA borrower come close to the $417,000 limit, but it’s probably more common in New York, California, Florida, etc. Even though it took 1.5 years, it’s good to see that HUD realizes the second appraisal requirement didn’t help the process.

Many properties can exhibit some form of obsolescence – either functional, external or both. Don’t know what that it means? You’re not alone. Real estate classes often dart past these terms because real life situations that occur nationwide are difficult to cite. Yet as an appraiser I encounter homes with one or more of the following examples every week.

External Obsolescence

Easier to explain and observe, external obsolescence refers to an undesirable factor outside the property and is generally not curable. This can include:

• Highways: Unless you’re a NASCAR fan, having traffic buzz past your front yard at 55 mph isn’t the most desirable situation.
• Power Lines: Not the small feed directly to a home, but rather the high voltage towers that supply an entire town. Even if you don’t believe scientific studies they’re still unsightly.
• Commercial Buildings: Gas stations, shopping malls, 24 hour pharmacies – generally any business with non-neighborhood traffic.
• Railroad: Similar to highway traffic but without the NASCAR effect.

Functional Obsolescence

This occurs when the interior of a property suffers from reduced usefulness. It can be cured as long as the cost is less than the added value.

• Odd Floorplan: I inspected a single family home recently that had no bedrooms and only a half bath above grade. There was a room with a bed but it lacked a closet. That room was only accessible through another den, which in itself was only accessible through the half bathroom. Can you say ‘remodel gone horribly wrong?’ Plus the only shower in the home was in the lower level laundry room, which had a sink but no toilet so it wasn’t considered a bathroom.
• One Bedroom: A condo in a building where many units have one bedroom doesn’t apply. But a one bedroom single family home in an area where others have 3 or 4 is not typical.
• One Bathroom: Again, this might be ok for a property with only two bedrooms. However, just imagine the joy of getting ready in the morning when you share the 1 bathroom with 10 people.
• Poor Design: Many 100+ year old homes have character but often lack amenities of newer construction. Small closets, only 4 kitchen cabinets, the kitchen sink not actually IN the kitchen but around the corner in the laundry room. Unfortunately not only did I see this house – I purchased and lived in it for three years.

While functional obsolescence is a real thing, it can be easily overlooked by someone who doesn’t live in the home. It’s also more difficult to find a similar comparable for an appraisal or market analysis.

Can you think of another example of external or functional obsolescence?

Nerd alert

This post contains technical information on how to setup Google Apps for your domain. The process isn’t extremely complicated – fairly similar to setting up a website.

Another Google product? Not exactly. Google Apps combines several business related tools that you may already use (Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs & Google Sites) for use on your website. If you own http://www.coolest-real-estate-agent-ever.net (because of course .com was already taken) it puts the power of these Google services behind it. For the rest of this post I’ll concentrate on Gmail since it’s the most common application.

The benefits

• Portability: Rather than having Outlook download emails to your computer, use Gmail so all messages are available on any computer (or phone) with internet access.
• Safety: Data is hosted on Google’s reliable data centers instead of your clunky hard drive. Sure Gmail has experienced a few hiccups over the last few years. But it’s better than having your PC crash and loosing all those important messages.
• Usability: Outlook and other email clients are easier to learn than Quickbooks. But like all their products Google really simplifies the Gmail interface.
• Innovation: Gmail labs is a set of experimental features to enhance email performance. Preview Youtube videos, Yelp reviews or Google Voice messages from within your account.
• Storage: 7GB for the Standard Edition or 25GB for the Premier Edition. To put that into perspective, the largest purchase agreement I have in PDF format is almost 1,000KB. At that rate I’d need over 7,000 more to fill my quota.
• Trust: Let’s face it, having a free account doesn’t look very professional as a real estate agent. So ditch Yahoo and have your email look professional too.

I’m convinced – how do I start?

Head over to the Google Apps website and follow the instructions to setup your account. After a few easy steps you’ll reach the dashboard with a greeting box at the top that directs you to the setup guide. This will walk you through the process of creating users, accessing your accounts, migrating old data and more.

The guide also shows you how to setup your email with a variety of hosting companies. You can even change how your accounts are accessed. Now I can just go to mail.metrowidemn.com and I’ll be automatically redirected to domain’s Gmail account.

These is just the start of what you can accomplish with Google Apps. For more ideas check out Lifehacker’s Google Apps Tricks.

Of course with any guarantee you have to read the fine print. A lender simply has to stick to the following rules:

• Minimum volume: 50+ full conventional and/or FHA products per month
• Established and typical state, regional or national lending footprint
• Adherence to StreetLinks, HVCC and FHA appraiser independence process
• Utilization of StreetLinks “IntelAssign” appraiser selection process
• Volume, footprint & reporting equality must be established to derive a fair comparison if the performance guarantee is constructed around a competing AMC or lender “in-house” process

Why waste their money starting a million dollar fund? Just throw $500 into a separate bank account, call it a performance guarantee and make it nearly impossible to meet the criteria – because that’s really what they’ve done here. It’s a failed attempt to differentiate themselves from the typical appraisal management companies.
The late Chris Farley said it best in the movie Tommy Boy:

…they know all they sold ya was a guaranteed piece of s***. That’s all it is, isn’t it? Hey, if you want me to take a dump in a box and mark it guaranteed, I will. I’ve got spare time. But for now, for your customer’s sake, for your daughter’s sake, ya might wanna think about buying a quality product from me.

In a somewhat related story, I remember seeing a Businessweek article that talks about NovaStar Financial, a large subprime lender during the housing boom.

NovaStar was disciplined by three states—Massachusetts, Nevada, and Washington—for such infractions as employing unlicensed brokers and charging unlawful fees. Without admitting wrongdoing, the company paid $5.1 million in 2007 to settle similar allegations in a class action brought on behalf of borrowers. After its mortgage business collapsed, NovaStar morphed into an AMC last year by acquiring another company and renaming it StreetLinks National Appraisal Services.

Steve Haslam, NovaStar’s former chief of retail lending, is now CEO of StreetLinks.

Fast Email Search

The dual-purpose search box finds people and email messages. Start typing the contact’s name or part of a message you’re looking for and Xobni will return results 50 times faster than Outlook’s built-in search. When searching for a specific person, their name will appear in the results box along with their contact information and every conversation you’ve had.

Contact Information

Phone numbers, email addresses, profile pictures and other relevant information are saved in an “automatic address book.” Xobni creates profiles for everyone you’ve communicated with so you don’t have to remember to update your Outlook contacts. It also sifts through your messages and extracts phone numbers. If you’re missing someone’s number, use the “request phone number” feature, which will send a message to the contact and automatically add it to their profile when they respond.

Find Connections

Xobni searches Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and more for information about your contacts. If you see a profile picture it’s most likely been automatically pulled from one of these sources. Click the corresponding social network logo to see their LinkedIn profile, Facebook status updates or tweets.

Threaded Conversations

All messages between you and a contact are displayed as a list of conversations. Xobni also shows which messages include an attachment with a paper clip logo. Also see if any of your contacts are connected together. Two people might know each other because they were on emails together but this information never surfaced before.

See Attachments

Finding an attachment in a message wasn’t easy before Xobni. Now you can quickly find any document without leaving the email you’re working on. Once the attachment is found it can be opened with a click, right-click to save it or open the email with the attachment. You can also drag and drop the attachment from the Xobni sidebar into a new message.

So what’s it cost?

Download Xobni for the low price of $0. Yes you read that right, it’s absolutely free! There’s a ‘Plus’ version with additional features that will set you back $29.95 on the 1st computer and $9.95 for each additional PC. But I’ve found the standard version to be sufficient at making Outlook much easier to use.

The amount of FHA loans has skyrocketed in the last few months, primarily because they require lower down payments than conventional loans. I’ve mentioned that this increase is possibly due to the fact that lenders can bypass the HVCC, thus still influencing directly contacting the appraiser.

HUD now has a list of FHA lenders with high default rates in every state. Just head over to the early warning system website and start by choosing your state

Then narrow down the options even further or just simply click ’submit’ to see the results.

The highlighted ‘compare ratio’ field shows the largest discrepancies between the lender’s default and claim percentage and the default and claim percentage for the state.

I like to keep track of my clients. Did any lenders you work with make the list?

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