1 lb- ground beef
1 tsp- salt
1/4 tsp- pepper
1 tsp- cumin powder
1 tsp- garlic powder
2 tbls- Worcestershire sauce
3 tbls- chili powder
1 tbls- minced onion
2 cups- red wine
2- 28 oz can diced tomato
2- 6 oz can tomato paste
1- 8 oz can undrained mushrooms
2- 15 oz can undrained black beans
In a world that seems to be consumed with consumption – sorry for the play on words – and kids that are only interested in getting ‘things’ there are a few heart warming stories that warm the heart -doooh… i did it again. [I sound like Yogi]
A good friend of mine, and a solid family man, recently shared a story that should be shouted from the roof tops. Rather than me messin’ it up, here is Ted in his own words:
Caleb came home with straight A’s on his report card. Of course I was proud and yes I’m bragging here. I asked him what he would like as a reward expecting him to say Chucky Cheese, a new X box game, a trip to the movies (something big). Wow was I wrong. He said “dad, I wanna shave with you again” Are you kidding me? That’s it–shave with dad.Let me rewind. About a month ago, Caleb observed me shaving and asked if he could try it. I let him lather up with some Edge gel and then I handed him a disposable with the plastic still covering the blade. I guess he REALLY enjoyed the experience.This made me realize how something so small and insignificant to me (adults) can be a huge deal with our children. That 3 minutes of “SPECIAL” 1 on 1 attention that I spent with my son a month ago seemed so irrelevant at the time.The entire story reminded me of a quote.”Your children want your presence more than presents”
Ted is a normal guy just like you and me, but he just seems to invest in his family like the rest of us want to an try hard to do. He is also a local author! He wrote Springing Forward which can be found at Amazon.
If you have questions for Ted or would just like to catch up with an all-around-good-guy, you can reach him at springingforward [at] yahoo [dot] com
Chris Brown
All Around Good Guy
Trinity Mortgage
153 Parliament Loop
#1001
Lake Mary, Florida, 32746
Finding the best Longwood mortgage interest rates can be tricky business… locking them in before the market swings makes it even more so!
Each Wed., the Mortgage Bankers Association [MBA] releases its Weekly Applications Survey which gives a detailed look at the new mortgage applications done over the last seven days.
A recent interest rate report will reveal what most of us already know — dropping mortgage rates created an onslaught of mortgage movement in Longwood and Lake Mary, Florida.
If you’re among the many Americans taking advantage of Florida’s low rates, don’t forget that when…
This is not meant to be a political post, but merely a post about truth andImage Ref: 9906-09-8 – Harvest Thanksgiving, Viewed 18184 times how it is not being taught in the public school system. It is no mystery that the public education system is failing our children, but I think only a small part falls at the feet of the front line… it is more of an institutional and union issue in my mind, but I digress….anddddd… this isn’t a rant post.
Like him or not, and I know that some of my readers will not be able to get past this, Rush nailed this True story of Thanksgiving. We are taught that the Pilgrims were an incompetent group of boobs and were saved by the Indians… revisionist history at best. Brace yourself… you may never have heard this before and i encourage you to seek out the FACTS yourself if you doubt the balance of this post.
The Mayflower set sail in the summer of 1620. On its deck it carried a group of just over 100 people [including 40 Pilgrims] led by William Bradford. On the journey, Bradford set up an agreement, a contract, that established just and equal laws for all members of the new community, irrespective of their religious beliefs.
Where did the revolutionary ideas expressed in the Mayflower Compact come from?
Lake Mary First Time Home Buyers… perk up. We all know what inflation is and the ugliness that can go with it. Most of us know that deflation is the opposite of inflation…. but don;t know much more than that.
In fact, business TV and newspapers have inflated deflation [sorry for the play on words… but I like doin’ that] as a hot topic this week and, since Monday, Google has tracked 13,000 mentions of it. Make this 13001.
Deflation is a recurring cycle in which the prices of goods and services fall. Suh-weet… falling prices that is so cool, right? Well, um, not really. Why? Human nature.
When prices are declining across manyindustries at the same time, IT CAN SHUT DOWN THE ECONOMY!
If you think about it…
Find out the ugly truth of deflation by finishing the blog post here:
It is important for Florida Home buyers to know that Florida FHA loan limits are going down for 2009. For 2008 Seminole County loan limits, it is a HUGE drop. The new loan limits per county are as follows:
Foreclosure – especially in Florida is a hot topic among the press lately and it is interesting to see a staggering number of the sales in today’s market are comprised of foreclosures and/or short sales… especially in South Florida. It’s hard to turn on the TV or open up a paper without seeing a sensationalized story about it.
But what’s even more interesting about the foreclosure situation is that they appear to be consolidated in certain areas of the country. Of the four primary states… two of those were head and shoulders above the others. [Woo hoo… we never do anything half baked here in FL!] Okay, sorry, that wasn’t funny.
Drum roll please: California, Florida, Arizona, and Nevada take the cake. Something worthy of note about these states is that they share some similar characteristics:
They all have relative [no pun intended] popularity with retirees
Popular with real estate investors
They have had large home value jumps during this decade
Everyone else… yeah… they are normal. the other 46 states account for the remaining 48.8% of foreclosures, or a mere 1.06% average per state of October’s foreclosures.
Now, this isn’t meant to make light of the impact of these foreclosures on the economy — nope. Foreclosures…
How come everything in Orlando gets cheaper when everyone is worried about their job and don’t want to spend any money!!
Okay, so it is a rhetorical question and the answer is somewhat obvious, but how cool would that be if, everything got cheaper and you just got a raise!?
I feel your pain.
Well, on the first Friday of every month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases the ‘jobs report’… officially called the ‘Non-Farm Payrolls report.’ Well, the October’s data is trending with the rest of 2008. See the pretty graph? Don’t let the green fool you.
After dropping another 240,000 jobs last month like a newbie at a craps table, the economy…
SO how are the evil mortgage products doing? Huh, they may actually be better than the fixed products? Maybe they aren’t evil after all… just different.
It is true that some of the wrong people got bad advice from some neophyte mortgage ‘professional’, but the good news is that those folks are back waiting tables.
The interest rate against which adjustable-rate mortgages [ARMs] change is continuing to fall — This could very likely be the evidence we need indicating that the worldwide banking system is starting to stabilize.
On any ARM, the initial “start rate” remains fixed for some period of time [typically 3 – 5 – 7 – or 10 years], and then adjusts according to some pre-determined agreement. It is more a hybrid than it is a pure “ARM”.
For a conforming mortgage, an ARM will typically adjust once per year after that initial locked period, based on this formula:
Conforming mortgage guidelines are the Home Loan Rule Book for Longwood real estate, Lake Mary real estate… and well… pretty much anywhere these days. This Orlando Home Loan ‘Rule Book’ helps in delineating between applicants that get approved for an Orlando mortgage and those that do not.
Well, the rule book just got a little bit tougher.
By Michael Dale – Vice President, Dave Brewer Realty, Inc.
Wow, given the recent dramatic economic events where do I begin; the stock market, the mortgage market, the secondary mortgage market as represented by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac?
Each of the aforementioned have so overwhelmingly impacted our economy let alone our housing market. Many I have conversed with this past week are angry and frustrated. These institutions are so mammoth and to most of us represent entities that we can’t touch let alone think of impacting or affecting change upon. And then when you add the additional frustration…
Read the whole blog post and see the TELLING historic chart here:
Do they go to a special school to ‘speak FED’??? Good Lord, fellas… we gotta be able to understand this stuff to be able to respond appropriately… or is that not what you want? LMAO
Well, the Federal Open Market Committee voted to cut the Fed Funds Rate by .5% today. The benchmark rate now stands at 1.0%. THIS DOES NOT LOWER MORTGAGE RATES
In its press release, the Fed got busy addressing the main issue at-hand, stating that economic activity has “slowed markedly”. Ha… ‘markedly’… have you ever used that word in your life? Well, my readers are notably smarter than I am, so you probably have! Anyway, they pointed to three main causes:
Consumer spending…
Read the whole Blog post at THE Orlando Real Estate and Mortgage Chili Blog:
NEWS FLASH: THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA is not your friend. Okay, maybe the subject of this Orlando Mortgage Blog Post is a little extreme, but it does prove my point. Sensational sells. Unfortunately, truth doesn’t always carry the same punch if it is not. Despite turmoil on Wall Street, despite the drum beat of doom from the media…the real estate sector continues to deliver good news.
Last month, led by a 22% surge from the West Region, new home sales went UP by 2.7% from August’s numbers. Okay, so the “West region” isn’t exactly Orlando Real Estate news, but the trend is important. Waiting for the bottom? You just might miss it if you don’t perk up and get pre-qualified now.
[A “new home” is a newly-built residence, i.e. a brand-new house.]
The surge in New Home Sales volume is aligned with the other good news we’ve seen from in the real estate market.
Lets count down the good news for real estate that you HAVEN’T HEARD in the last two weeks….
The TOP 4 countdown:
#4 …
Read the Top 4 ‘good news’ stats and more in my blog post:
Ugh… for current home owners with soon-to-adjust adjustable rate mortgages [ARM], the recent financial market upheaval worldwide may lead to a personal catch-22.
This is mainly because most conforming ARMs made after 2003 are based on an index called “LIBOR” [London Interbank Offered Rate… this is the rate that banks charge one another] and LIBOR is up an uncharacteristic 2 percent since September. Ooof.
Historically, LIBOR has tracked the U.S. treasury market, plus about 1/2-percent. This suggests that banks are only slightly less likely to default versus the U.S. government. That communicated that banks, at thte time were only fractionally less likely to default than the US Govt.
Well guess what?
Banks aren’t that confident in one another anymore. Oops. Now you have seen a diverging trend between the two indices. Wow, that makes me feel smart! [Breathe Chris, breathe….]
Today, that spread is around 4.500%.
The LIBOR spike is hurting homeowners with ARMs because adjusted rates on conforming mortgages are often calculated by adding a margin of between 2.250% and 2.750% to the current 12-mo. LIBOR rate.
The big group at risk? You guessed it…sub-prime mortgages, their margins are even more steeperer. [There’s my awesome grammar again! Smart felling from before… it’s gone now.]
In general, ARMs are not bad in and of themselves, so be weary of News anchors that try to pass off they know what they are talking about… they are just reading this 10 minutes before their broadcast and know likely less than you do if you have a good mortgage professional.
Your mortgage professional, the good ones at least, likely explained that ARMs are typically lower rates because you are taking some of the risk yourself. Unfortunately, current market conditions are worse than could have been imagined 3-5 years ago. If you still have 18 months or more on your ARM, you are in a better position than those with less than that, but to be sure, if you have any questions, call or email your loan officer, or a CMPS like me, to talk about how LIBOR may impact your adjusted mortgage rate and payment.
For many of us… I personally have an ARM as well, it’s less expensive to refinance into a new home loan that to just let the adjustment happen… especially if you can qualify for an FHA loan.
Orlando Short Refinances are a relatively new phenomenon and all the chips haven’t fallen yet as to how these are going to shake out… that being said, they may be an alternative to the ugly process of a short sale. [Which is anything BUT short!] It is important that you know that I am staying on the cutting edge along with a couple other high-profile loan officers from around the country. To get in on the front end of the wave, Apply for a FHA Short Refinance here.
BUY BUY BUY!!! Doooh… did you miss it? Throughout the feverish activity on Wall Street last week, mortgage backed securities sold off with vengeance, driving mortgage rates to their highest levels since July. It was the 4th consecutive week in which long-term rates got more badder. [Grammar police – I know that is not correct, breathe.]
But, with the mortgage markets taking a siestacelebrating Columbus Day on Monday, stocks had a little fiesta with the largest point gain LIKE….EVER! In fact the only reason it is #5 on the chart here is because the other days were back in the 30’s where a, no joke, 8 point gain was a 15% increase! Woooaahhhhh.
The Dow’s gains are expected to push mortgage rates down today, but as of right now, that is not the case. Mortgage Backed Securities are up about +28bps but it is quite likely that they will reverse before days end.
Expect continued volatility until investor fears are somewhat squelched. For now, keep those seltbelts fastened and all extremities in the vehicle at all times.
This week, look for key inflation info including the Producer Price Index [PPI] on Wed and the Consumer Price Index [CPI] on Thurs.
Both measure the “cost of living” and reflect on price pressures in the economy. If costs are rising, it’s considered inflationary and that tends to edge mortgage rates higher. [Again… the economic anti-Christ, remember?]
my son a month ago seemed so irrelevant at the time.The entire story reminded me of a quote.”Your children want your presence more than presents”
Finding the best 
Lake Mary First Time Home Buyers… perk up. We all know what inflation is and the ugliness that can go with it. Most of us know that deflation is the opposite of inflation…. but don;t know much more than that.
How come everything in 
Conforming mortgage guidelines are the Home Loan Rule Book for 
By Michael Dale – Vice President, Dave Brewer Realty, Inc.
Okay… I am going to say the “N” word… when the government Nationalized the mortgage biz in September, housing analysts predicted lower mortgage rates.
sells. Unfortunately, truth doesn’t always carry the same punch if it is not. Despite turmoil on Wall Street, despite the drum beat of doom from the media…the real estate sector continues to deliver good news.
BUY BUY BUY!!! Doooh… did you miss it? Throughout the feverish activity on Wall Street last week, mortgage backed securities sold off with vengeance, driving mortgage rates to their highest levels since July. It was the 4th consecutive week in which long-term rates got more badder. [Grammar police – I know that is not correct, breathe.]
Orlando Real Estate and the Mortgage Chili Blog 