Transparency of Loans

Most people think that an appraisal; any type of appraisal, is some kind of value for your home. In a perfect world it is, but there are many factors here. For those not use to or understanding of the finance market. look at it this way, you go to a bank, the banker is working for.......... himself. the more he closes the more he makes. The banker wants to get you into a loan like a car salesmen wants to get you into a car. once you drive off the lot they do not give an iota if you make the payments or not. The bankers hire appraisers to value your home, the more they value the home for vs the loan amount the easier it is to push through a loan.

Now the appraiser if he/she keeps pushing values that are low, the banker does not hire this so called independent person. The appraiser knows where his bread is buttered and since everyone wants to make money the appraisers gives the banker what they want.

Now in a hot market you may get a good appraisal, but in the current market you get an appraisal that doesn't even match your mortgage cost no less matching the value the banker's appraisers gave you.

What one needs to do to get a true appraisal prior to agreeing to any loan amount, is to hire their own not linked to a loan department appraiser. Then bankers will do what is called an 80/20 loan, the standard 80% loan and then tack on a 20% home equity loan to have a 100% loan on a home. This is just one of the areas that are putting people in the foreclosure line.

Another one of the problems is that in the early 2000's the bank rate was extremely low, which caused bankers to become very generous with their guidelines, which sold lots of homes. As the industry grew, mortgage bankers were hired by the tens of thousands and there training was to fill out a mortgage application and nothing more.

When prices were rising 5-10 percent a year, the 0 down loans, ARM/home equity financing, etc... real estate became a growth industry. Some of those in the game early were able to buy a home and then get a bigger home within a few years. However, most did not have any equity built up and were buying with 95-100% financing. Today we are paying for that practice.

Let's say one has an $125,000 mortgage and a $90,000 house, then they are upside down in equity. Their choices are not good, foreclosure will give one a bad credit score for several years, a "Short Sale"; where the bank agrees to let you sell for less than the mortgage price, is an option and the last is to call you lender and try to get them to renegotiated the rate. Sometimes they are willing to compromise because the last thing a bank wants to do is own another home.

Sadly quite a few borrowers didn't know that they had the power to determine how high they wanted their loan amounts to be, whether they took a fixed or adjustable interest rate. I highly doubt 3 different appraisers would today come up with the same value for the same property. Remember in 2005-2006, AVM (automated valuation model) was done which is not really a realistic appraisal, and loan amounts bankers wanted closed on were based on AVM's. Remember the higher the appraisal the better chance the banker can get the loan closed on and the more money the banker pockets.

This was just one way home costs were inflated, which also is contributing to the economically crisis. Another way homes' values were inflated were large assignment fees paid to third parties. In 2007, FBI started investigations of dozens of Pinellas County homes sold at inflated prices for just the reasons, and then you always have speculation.

If you are looking at who to place blame on, there isn't just one culprit, it starts all the way from the top of government (pushing for first time home owners)to the banks and ending at home owners. This isn't just black and white, there is much gray area is the why's and who's of the housing crisis. Although we need to know the reasons how this happen to take measures to make sure it doesn't happen again, we now need to focus on a solution and I believe transparency of loans is part of a solution.

Just my thoughts.

Dreama

FHA Mortgage Guide

FBI Investigations

Bye Bye W

I know many if not all how heard the goodbye Bush song put with the tune of the song Bye Bye Love, which is funny. But this is the best goodbye song I have heard. The tune, lyrics are written by this youtube user (jmayland) He also sings the song and the video it funny as can be.

If you only see one video this year it has to be this one.

Get ready America for on January, 20, 2009 we celebrate, The nightmare is almost over, didn't I tell you we would survive him ;o)

Now I bring you
BYE BYE W
by youtuber jmayland

for those that want to fave it at your youtube accounts click here

US Largest Embassy to Date

“My agent promised me a job in Dubai as a caterer,” said Mohammad Ashraful, 36. “But he seized my passport from a Dubai hotel and forced me to go to Iraq,” he told Reuters.

January 5, 2009 the US opened it's American Embassy in Iraq, not only is this the largest US Embassy; about ten times larger than any other US embassy, this is also one of the most expensive embassy in US history. The cost of the completed construction of the US Embassy was a wee bit over 700 billion dollars and it's estimated yearly cost of 1 to 2 million to operate with 1000 to 3000 employees. One US official said the cost of running the new complex is expected to be so exorbitant that the US will be forced to rent out part of the space. Times Online UK

A fortress-like compound, the Iraqi-US Embassy is located in the 'heart of the green zone' and is what some in the US government refer to as the most noticeable, visual sign to 'a new chapter in US and Iraq relationship'. One would think this is the story, but there is another story buried deep beneath the construction of the Embassy which involves US, Kuwait and Bangladesh, not a tale most know of nor one that mass media is likely to cover in any depth. A dirty little smear on the newly built Embassy, and not the fact that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki did not attend the opening ceremony of the embassy due to his travels to Iran even though Ambassador Ryan Crocker said that since 2003 invasion, "perhaps no single week has been more important than this past week."

This little secret is about the sweat of Bangladesh (South Asia) and Filipino workers 'tricked' into working on the Embassy, a story that once again proves fact is stranger than fiction.

Of course everyone that has been following the construction of the Embassy in Iraq already knows that the US did in fact outsourced the construction of the embassy and it was outsourced to a Kuwaiti company, First Kuwaiti General Trading & Contracting. The private construction company in 2008 declined repeatedly to provide safety inspectors with reports on fire protection systems at the embassy and according to a past Guardian article, the Bush administration blocked inquiries into the construction of the world’s largest US embassy in Baghdad, citing that the embassy suffers from basic flaws in its water, kitchen and fire alarm systems. Yet there is still more to be learnt about First Kuwaiti General Trading & Contracting and their ethics, such as forced labor and mistreatment of 'employees'.

There have been rumors of forced labor in Iraq by the company First Kuwaiti General Trading and Contracting for several years, but U.S. government officials in the past had discounted such allegations by workers from Nepal and the Philippines in the past, even as the company continued to rack up contracts now totaling several billion dollars from the Pentagon and U.S. State Department. Late in 2006 several U.S. citizens also said they boarded separate chartered jets in Kuwait loaded with work crews from the Philippines, India, Pakistan and Africa holding boarding passes to Dubai, but the planes then flew directly to Baghdad.

In 2007 an U.S. citizen told IPS that he was told by workers from Ghana on the embassy site that they thought they would have jobs in Dubai but were then taken to work in Iraq, of course First Kuwaiti's general manager, Wadih al Absi, flatly dismissed the accusations as unfounded and false. Since getting the US Embassy in Iraq First Kuwaiti has won additional contracts worth roughly 200 million dollars more for embassy projects in Africa, India and Indonesia, even while the company has been under some; if slack, investigation of forced labor.

Workers from Bangladesh and Filipino; who in some cases paid an agent to find them jobs, were told they were going to work on a project in Dubia. When the worker got to Dubia their passports were taken and since the Bangladesh closed its embassy in Iraq in 2003, the undocumented Bangladesh workers were left with little choice than to work and hope for a return home after the job was completed.

A well known story conspiring this is about a medic named Rory Mayberry, who was contracted by First Kuwaiti to work on the embassy project, his story broke in 2007 and was reported by NBC in summer of 2007. The State Department Inspector General, Howard J. Krongard, says he did a "limited investigation" after Mayberry's complaint and found no wrongdoing. But then added that the company had three months notice that he was coming. Had Krongard visited earlier and unannounced, he may have witnessed something very different then what his memorandum related. "Most of the allegations (from the U.S. citizens) were true before he arrived," claims Juvencio Lopez, who says he was a high-level project manager under the U.S. State Department over the course of two years.

Barbara Slavin of USA Today writes that the U.S. Senate wanted more Iraqis to be hired for the construction of the embassy, if the Kuwaiti lead contractor, First Kuwaiti Trading & Contracting, could get them “properly screened.” There was bad blood between Iraqis and Kuwaitis even before Desert Storm.

Yet, Mayberry was not the first whistleblower, in 2005 Trina Flowers, an American actively working for those expatriates whose basic human rights are routinely violated by the Kuwaitis was arrested by the Kuwaiti authorities for threatening to expose First Kuwait and the PM of Kuwait in 2005 for claiming that First Kuwaiti was violating the rights of foreign workers from India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Indonesia, Philippines, China, Thailand, Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, and many other poor countries. (Trina was hired by the University of Kuwait to teach English and when her contract was up she was hired by another technical institute.)

There are many sited accusations that First Kuwaiti is still continuing their abusive ways to foreign workers and one can't help but wonder is this truly the way to start a fresh and new relationship between Iraq and the US. Can the US embassy in Iraq be a place of healing when it's smeared with doubts and cheap, forced labor?

Even though Iraqi President Jala Talabani stated at the dedication ceremony, as reported by Fox News, “The building of this site would not be possible without the courageous decision by President Bush to liberate Iraq. This building is not only a compound for the embassy but a symbol of the deep friendship between the two peoples of Iraq and America.” The citizenry of Iraq may disagree and maybe they are right.

First Kuwaiti's KBR (Halliburton Subsidiary) subcontracts

First Kuwaiti's US Army contracts

First Kuwaiti's website

NBC's report

Nightly News report on the Embassy with Brian Williams

The Australian Report

Trina Flowers

Reuters