1. Mortgage Resets Just Getting Started (belowthecrowd.com)
2. Subprime Fiasco Exposes Manipulation by Mortgage Brokerages (bloomberg.com)
3. Fed Sees Housing Damping Growth Longer Than Expected (bloomberg.com)
4. Fed to discuss lending restrictions (blogs.ocregister.com)
5. English Property Market Slowing Sharply (business.timesonline.co.uk)
6. When Will We Hear the Truth About Housing? (efinancedirectory.com)
7. Wow, I could’ve had a prime mortgage! (money.cnn.com)
8. ‘Subprime’ Aftermath: Losing The Family Home (online.wsj.com)
9. Housing Freefall Continues Unabated (usmarket.seekingalpha.com)
10. My income is, uh, $1 million. You believe me? Good. (detnews.com)
11. Refinance and get bombarded (honoluluadvertiser.com)
12. The Subprime Mortgage “Crisis” Will Fix Itself (mises.org)
13. Panel Republicans Back Dugan on ‘Liar Loans’ (nationalmortgagenews.com)
14. Landlords in Foreclosure (sptimes.com)
15. An ATM That’s Out of Money (washingtonpost.com)
16. Builders may violate their bond promises (yahoo.reuters.com)
17. 85 signs. One California neighborhood. (video – reelediting.com)

1. Subprime loan crisis hitting Vallejo: 1 in 4 to foreclose (sfgate.com)
2. Want to buy a house? 18,571 sellers have a deal for you (columbusdispatch.com)
3. Selling short (freep.com)
4. U.S. House Prices Drop (bloomberg.com)
5. U.S. house prices fall (marketwatch.com)
6. Foreclosure risk rises with ARM teaser rates (biz.yahoo.com)
7. Florida Foreclosures Continue (tcpalm.com)
8. Mortgage Fraud Jumps 30% (costar.com)
9. Report: Mortgage fraud on rise in California (nctimes.com)
10. Some see credit storm brewing (newbritainherald.com)
11. Florida Mortgage Lenders, Bankers Blame Fed For Crash (floridahomeloan.com)
12. U.S. House Construction Bust May Last Until 2011 (bloomberg.com)
13. Prospects dim for quick house-price recovery (money.cnn.com)
14. Summer and Housing in the Garden of Eden (drhousingbubble.blogspot.com)
15. Excellent Bubble Lecture, Part 2 (youtube.com)

Like most foreclosure investors nowadays, the internet is an inseperable piece of my business. One of the biggest challenges with this is security issues, ESPECIALLY password security. If you are like I used to be, you have a standard 1 or 2 passwords you use on every website (online banking, email accounts, etc). This sure makes things easy but all it takes is for someone to figure out your password for ONE website and then that’s when the trouble starts … and that is the kind of trouble you DON’T want. I found a very simple and inexpensive solution for this: www.AutoFillSoftware.com. This is just a little way you can keep working smarter, NOT harder

1. Housing is Falling Much Faster than Reported (realestateconsulting.com)
2. Housing Collapse Is Much Worse Than Fed Says (larouchepub.com)
3. US housing market deteriorates at faster pace than expected (news.independent.co.uk)
4. Sales fall as property glut hits record high (rawstory.com)
5. Flood of Empty Houses (gazette.com)
6. 43-month supply of houses in Florida (palmbeachpost.com)
7. Supply of houses on market rises to 15-year high (marketwatch.com)
8. New House Sales Fall 11 Percent, Prices Plummet (efinancedirectory.com)
9. American Dream is not a 100% financed Sprawling House (eyeonmiami.blogspot.com)
10. Big drop in house prices predicted (money.cnn.com)
11. Glut of houses for sale continues to cut down house prices (money.cnn.com)
12. Foreclosures Nearly Double In Chicago (chicagobusiness.com)
13. Economist: Foreclosure ‘bloodbath’ on horizon (examiner.com)
14. Bakersfield Foreclosures Way Up (kget.com)
15. Nervous Condo Investors Try To Flee (nytimes.com)
16. Mortgage Brokers: Are They Friends or Foes of Borrowers? (realestatejournal.com)
17. Man uses pigs to trash own house after foreclosure (kgw.com)
18. An excellent lecture video about the bubble (youtube.com)

1. New house prices have record plunge, sales, uh, “soar” (money.cnn.com)
2. Good news or bad? (news.bbc.co.uk)
3. Mortgage Sector Shaking Economic Foundation (realtytimes.com)
4. Toll Brothers hurting (ft.com)
5. Drop in Housing Permits One of the Biggest on Record (efinancedirectory.com)
6. Subprime Derivatives Say Bernanke Will Be Wrong (seekingalpha.com)
7. Trump Struggles To Sell Chicago Condos (chicagotribune.com)
8. Irish housing market fears hangover after 10-year boom (turkishdailynews.com.tr)
9. Building in Michigan continues in spite of slow sales (freep.com)
10. Speed of subprime bust surprises lenders (money.cnn.com)
11. 8 default notices hit realtor Crisp, family (bakersfield.com)
12. Lifestyles of the Poor and Notorious (drhousingbubble.blogspot.com)
13. No One Knows Anything (eyeonmiami.blogspot.com)
14. Start of OC real estate’s 2007 has been major disappointment (ocregister.com)

I went to Barnes & Noble yesterday looking for some travel books (reading Tim’s book has really got me interested in a mini-retirement) and ran across a book-on-CD by Seth Godin, a Silicon Valley “guru” whose writing I have enjoyed in the past. The book-on-CD is called “The Dip”; costs $7.77; is a quick read (or listen … if you prefer the CD version); and tackles an odd topic – It is OK to quit (sometimes).

My main takeaway from listening to the 60-min CD was when people have a problem they need solved, they want the best problem solver in the “world” for that particular problem. Now a persons “world” may be their own city. How that translates to foreclosure investors is that you need to be the BEST IN THE “WORLD” at solving homeowners’ problems, and if you can’t do that then you may be in the wrong line of work. Your “world” is your city, county or metro area and if you aren’t the best then you need to figure out if this is where you should be … and if it ain’t then you should consider quitting. There is too much competition out there for someone to be OK with being the 7th best foreclosure investor in Madison county (or where ever your “world” is). He goes on to define “the dip” and how to tell if you aren’t the best because you are in “the dip” or because you are in a dead end.

It is worth getting because the idea that quitting is OK (sometimes) is very provacative but makes sense when you see it in the way he presents. If you have read the book or have any comments, PLEASE post them below!

1. Housing crash leads to job cuts (northjersey.com)
2. Law firm starts practice to address real estate problems (bizjournals.com)
3. Bankruptcy Trends: A Perfect Storm of Debt (Mish)
4. Hate Writing the Mortgage Check? Charge It!! (cnbc.com)
5. When the credit bubble goes ‘pop’ (money.cnn.com)
6. Economic Tsunami Warning (americanchronicle.com)
7. NetBank to sell some assets at a discount (yahoo.reuters.com)
8. Yet another dying mortgage lender (EasyHUD.com/blog)
9. Mortgage Industry Spends $210 Million to Woo Congress (efinancedirectory.com)
10. California Slow to Curb Subprime Lenders (sfgate.com)
11. Mortgage brokers pressured appraisers to inflate values (bloomberg.com)
12. Ex-FBI Director Freeh joins Fannie Mae board (usatoday.com)
    

1. Retirement Interrupted by Bad Real Estate Decisions (money.cnn.com)
2. Blame For Mortgage Mess Abounds (usatoday.com)
3. Protesting high house prices (sacbee.com)
4. Banks to Have Trouble Selling Risky Loans (forbes.com)
5. Mortgage lenders get creative (money.cnn.com)
6. Vegas market was never as deep as everybody thought (inbusinesslasvegas.com)
7. Building materials makers suffering from housing crash (chicagobusiness.com)
8. House Tightens Reins Over Mortgage Firms, or Not? (nytimes.com)
9. Joint Financing – Not what you think (pe.com)
   
   
   

On my quest to continue to take my business as virtual and automated as possible, I have found yet another inexpensive tool that will fit into my plan. I think that after reading how I plan on using this service, you too, will start to see the value in this service … and if you read the entire post you will see how you can essentially try it for one month for FREE.

The company is called PaperlessMail.com and they turn your postal mail into scanned images. First, once you get your acct set up you will start to forward all of your “snail mail” to the PO Box in San Francisco that they assign to you. They will start collecting your mail, throw away the junk, and scan the mail in and send you an email with the scanned mail as an attachment. Now you may be thinking, what about magazines, newsletters, packages, etc? Well, I have recently hired a virtual assistant (VA) from Get Friday, a company mentioned in Tim Ferriss’s book “The Four Hour Work Week”. Now, I have assigned my VA the task of logging into my accounts and changing the mailing address to the PO Box that was assigned to me from PaperlessMail. That way, any mail that hasn’t been forwarded (magazine subscriptions, newsletters, packages, checks) will still arrive at my office address.

ex) My Amex bill was coming to my office. I had my VA log into my amex acct and change the billing address from my office to the PO Box assigned to me. Now, when PaperlessMail.com receives my Amex bill they will scan the bill and send it to me as an email attachment.

Now you may ask, “Why do this?”. Well, the simple answer is that my new bookkeeper lives in Marin County, CA and it would be a real pain to send her bundles of my bills each week. Instead of sending my scanned mail to me, they are sending it to my VA who will review the scanned mail each day, and based on mail filtering rules I set up with him he will send the scanned image to the apropriate email address: Scanned bills get emailed to the bookkeeper; Legal docs get emailed to my attorney, etc.

Now, should my girlfriend michelle and I decide that a couple of weeks in COsta Rica is in order then the mail is one less thing I have to worry about.

If you decide to try them out, you can use the referral code “cdaigle@EasyHUD.com” to get a $10 credit. ANd that is a pretty big credit considering the service is only $9.99 per month!. You can watch their promotional video by clicking HERE

I would love to hear your thoughts on this! Just post a comment below

1. Misery lures opportunists at foreclosure auction (news.yahoo.com)
2. Housing Flagging, Sales Sagging (bradenton.com)
3. Bubble Bloggers’ collective wisdom (freeerisa.com)
4. Housing weakness seen weighing on stocks (marketwatch.com)
5. Weak April retail sales bring May jitters (msnbc.msn.com)
6. California new house sales down 37 percent in March (ocregister.com)
7. Record 16.6 months of inventory in Orlando (orlandosentinel.com)
8. California Prices Have A Long Way Yet To Fall (signonsandiego.com)
9. Delinquent loans up 300% at Accredited House Lenders (signonsandiego.com)
10. Edwards Says He Didn’t Know About Subprime at His Company (washingtonpost.com)
11. Rear View Mirror Experts (Mish)
12. A Real Estate Bull Has a Change of Heart (audio – npr.org)
13. San Francisco: 40% of last year’s loans are near default (californiahousingforecast.com)
14. Banks tightening mortgage-lending standards: Fed (marketwatch.com)
15. Bank CEO Says He Saw Writing on the Wall Early (sdbj.com)
16. Mortgage Woes Force Banks To Drop House Prices (articles.news.aol.com)
17. Weak spring driving house prices lower (marketwatch.com)
18. Update on the Subprime Bailout (efinancedirectory.com)
19. Two trade groups want loosened Fannie legislation (today.reuters.com)
20. California foreclosures already forcing price cuts up to 50% (usmarket.seekingalpha.com)
21. “No Closing Cost” Mortgage Advertising Is A Lie! (bestsyndication.com)
22. Chicago condo sales down 46% in first quarter (chicagobusiness.com)
23. ‘60 Minutes’ puts Realtors on defensive (heraldtribune.com)
24. Idaho Not Immune to Falling House Prices (ktvb.com)
25. Palm Beach Owners don’t budge as houses sit unsold (palmbeachpost.com)
26. Former Ameriquest Workers Tell of Deception (audio – npr.org)
27. The Competitiveness Roadmap: 2007 — 2050
28. Lending’s next tsunami of default? (ocregister.com)
29. Realtors Lie, and Lie, and Lie (adage.com)
30. Thought the real estate market hit bottom? Think again. (app.com)
31. Middle class living on the edge (articles.moneycentral.msn.com)
32. Housebuilders in a Hole (news.yahoo.com)