Get Pre-Qualified Online!

Almost all of you are familiar with our pre-qualification services. Normally, you tell your customers to call us so that we can review their credit rating, employment history, and net worth and savings.

Sometimes, though, despite your strong encouragement, they just don’t always get around to doing what you recommend. It might be that they’re just too busy at work, or that they can’t talk because of lack of privacy, or something as simple as the fact that they’re not working anywhere near a phone. Others simply either don’t want to be bothered with “mortgage homework” and wait until the weekend to do this mortgage homework, only to find that getting in touch with someone over the weekend is oftentimes impossible.

We now have a second option for all of our customers. Take a look at the screenshot of our pre-qualification page from our web site (www.universalmortgageinc.com). It asks all of the standard fact gathering questions we need to make a valid judgment on mortgage eligibility. The requested information is so basic that anyone can fill it out easily and quickly.

Some of your customers only want to speak directly to one of us on the phone and “talk” their way through the pre-qualification. Others want to do it electronically - fast, easy, simple, and most importantly for them, doing it over the internet gives them complete flexibility to do it whenever they want.

Either way, of course, is perfect for us. The most important thing is to make sure that all of your customers take that very crucial first step of getting pre-qualified.

Please feel free to direct your customers to our web site. It takes less than a minute to fill out the form. Once they hit the submit button, we will review the information immediately and contact both you and the customer with the pre-qualification results.

The City That Never Sleeps

Over the past year or so, my newsletters have constantly advocated that the New York real estate market is the greatest in the country, despite literally hundreds of articles to the contrary. I predicted that we will not experience a “bubble” here, and in fact, I gave reasons why values will continue to go up. Many, if not most, of my peers in real estate circles doubted me, not because any of us has any definitive proof of our opinions, but simply because literally everywhere you looked, the media was predicting a crash.

Then, just this last Sunday, almost out of nowhere, the New York Times (see the article “Reading the Signposts”, October 2, 2005) seems to be changing its tune. Finally, after nearly two years of predicting a bubble or a “correction”, the newspaper finally seems to be getting it right. Those of us who actually work in the real estate industry in New York know very clearly what the New York Times is finally admitting - namely that New York is completely and totally unique in the country. It can’t be compared to and analyzed along with other national statistics simply because the market here truly has nothing in common with the rest of the country.

Here are some of the most important highlights of the article:

· Flipping apartments for quick re-sale is only a very small part of the market (1.3 to 4.9% since the mid 1980’s). Compare this to over 40% for Miami or Las Vegas where much of the “doom & gloom” comes from. Hence, there is no “speculation” bubble occurring here in New York.
· Real estate in Manhattan (although Brooklyn is not mentioned in the article, we can extrapolate the data to include much of the Brooklyn Heights to Park Slope areas) is actually more affordable than ever before. Statistics can be misleading - when you analyze all wage earners, your numbers are skewed by the lower end of the spectrum. If, however, you take just the top 20% of wage earners (ie. those most likely to purchase in our marketplace) you can clearly see that their income has increased by 87% in real terms since 1981, whereas average prices are up 50% or so in real terms over the same time.
· There’s no glut of apartments for sale, nor will the new condo construction cause excess supply to dampen price. On the contrary, census information shows that currently the city has a shortage of at least 135,000 homes. Adding this to the fact that New York City officials are predicting another 200,000 new residents by the end of the decade, it is likely that despite the over 25,000 new units being built, we will still have a housing shortage (and hence, upward pressure on prices).

Hopefully, this article is the beginning of a new wave of understanding by the media. I am sure that other publications such as Business Week, Fortune, Money Magazine, etc. will pick up at least the “mood” of this article and start reflecting in their two year tirade against real estate. Maybe they will at least understand that New York City is clearly unique and that the best that we can hope for is further articles extolling the greatness of this grand city and grand real estate market.

Have a great weekend!