To our Clients, Colleagues and Friends,
- We mentioned last issue that you traditionally got up to 10 points when you sold an SBA loan. If this were a mortgage, the loan officer would want at least half of those 10 points. In the world of SBA loans, it’s very typical to only pay a half point. That means there’d be 9-1/2 points left over for the company. Sweet!
- Baseball fanatics know the first inductees into the Baseball Hall of Fame, but how many of you know the first inductees into the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame? They were Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Fats Domino, James Brown, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, and The Everly Brothers. Fats Domino and The Everly Brothers sold lots of records, but they didn’t seem all that pioneering.
- When mandatory pricing was only 25-30 basis points better than best efforts, it might not have made sense to switch from best efforts. As we’ve been saying for awhile, with the pick-up at about 75 bps, it doesn’t make sense to stay with best efforts. Let us know if you’d like the names of Hedging Advisory Services we know and trust.
- Guaranty Bank in Texas has issued a statement saying that they will probably not be able to continue in business. Their net worth has gone negative, and they already agreed to let the FDIC become their conservator or receiver. We knew the people in their Warehouse Lending group, and all were great people and class acts.
- We think it would be a good and obvious deal for Comerica to buy the Guaranty deposits. That would give them over 90 new branches in Texas , and they’d presumably get loss-sharing guarantees from the FDIC on any assets they acquired. We think that could be the perfect deal for them.
- Remember when Prince became The artist formerly known as Prince? How about Comerica, the bank formerly based in Detroit . It has a certain ring to it, doesn’t it?
- We have a friend who once came up with a funny slogan for a mortgage company: ABC Mortgage…. Where service is more than just a slogan. It’s also our motto!
- Today is the 95th anniversary of the start of World War I, the world’s stupidest war, the war that should have been avoidable. A minor Austro-Hungarian official was assassinated in Bosnia by a Serbian fanatic on July 23, 1914, and when Austria declared war on Serbia 5 days later, all sorts of mutual defense treaties kicked in, and within days, dozens of countries were at war with each other. We were walking through the streets of Sarajevo in Bosnia a few years ago and saw a small plaque on a corner, signifying that this was where the assassination took place. The plaque and the corner seemed insignificant compared to what happened as a result.
- What exactly is FOCIS-plus that we’ve been talking about lately? It’s a full FOCIS Risk Audit, the kind your warehouse lender might order, but on top of that, we overlay our basic Profitability Review. We do the FOCIS Audit, but along with analyzing your areas of risk, we make concrete suggestions throughout the Report on ways to increase revenues, better control costs, and manage your risk. We’re in dozens and dozens of shops, we see what works and what doesn’t, and we point out to you ways the top-performers generate superior returns. We show you the same techniques, and it really does help your risk-profile and your profitability.
- Speaking of East Europe , many cities there are devoid of statues. All their statues while they were captive nations were of Communist heroes (actually, thugs) such as Lenin and Stalin. When the Soviet Union fell, all those statues came down. We were once walking in Vilnius ( Lithuania ) and saw a statue down the street. When we got closer, it turned out to be a big statue of Frank Zappa, of the Mothers of Invention! We never did find out what it was doing there.
- And if Jackie Kennedy were alive today, she’d be celebrating her 80th birthday. Did you know that she was only 31 when she became First Lady? What were you doing when you were 31?
- Some more original names:
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Elton John (Reginald Dwight) |
Jack Palance (Vladimir Palaniuk) |
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Dear Abby (Pauline Ester Friedman) |
Bill Wyman ( William Perks) |
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Albert Brooks (Albert Einstein) |
Bob Dylan (Robert Zimmerman) |
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Andre the Giant (Andre Roussimoff) |
Bridgette Bardot (Camille Javal) |
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Anna Nicole Smith (Vicki Hogan) |
Cary Grant (Archibald Leach) |
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Chuck Norris (Carlos Ray Norris) |
Courtney Love (Courtney Harrison) |
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Col. Tom Parker (Andreas Van Kuiijk) |
Curly (Three Stooges) Jerome Horwitz |
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Dean M artin (Dino Crocetti) |
Ho Chi M inh (Nguyen Thanh Thank) |
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Fred Astaire (Fred Austerlitz) |
Corky Watts (Calvin Watts) |
- You know how Einstein supposedly said that compound interest was the most amazing thing in the universe? We decided to apply it to the game of golf to see what happened. If you bet $1 on the first hole and kept doubling it each hole, you’d be betting $1,048,000 on the 18th hole. Interesting. Examples like this sure got mis-applied when it comes to investing. Remember all those examples that started out “If you invest $1,000 a year for 30 years and average 12% a year….” That 12% seems kind of absurd now, doesn’t it?
- From Axia Mortgage in the Seattle area: “We did bring a professional speaker in to talk on ethics. He didn’t know anything about the mortgage business and we were initially a little nervous that he wouldn’t connect with our originators. However, he did a fantastic job and it went over very well. He spoke mostly about the obligation to give clients good advice and not mislead them. “Congratulations to Axia for doing this. Ethics is much more than just giving good advice to clients, but it’s a good start.
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