The Mortgage and More Blog

Over my 2 plus years of blogging, I have used many platforms. I have to say that WordPress has to be one of my favorites simply because of it’s ability to allow an author to write posts and then schedule them out to be posted at a later date. In this tutorial we will discuss how to do just that. Accomplishing this is much easier than you might think. I have added a couple of pictures to help you with your learning.

In the first picture to the left, you will see two arrows. The first arrow is red and it is pointing to the section that says ‘Publish Immediately’. To the right of that verbiage will be a section that says ‘Edit’. Click on it and it will open up an option to pick the date and time. Our second arrow, the green one, points to this section. Once you chose the date and time, simply click ‘OK’. Now our first step is completely done.

To finish scheduling a post, write all of your article. Once you are done with that portion, you are then ready to schedule your post. This might be the easiest of the steps as all you need to do is click on the word ‘Schedule’ that our purple arrow in the image to the right points to.

In closing, that is all you need to do to be able to schedule a post. Now you can go on vacation and appear to still be posting on a regular basis.

© 2010 My WordPress Tutorial All Rights Reserved – Copyright notice by Blog Copyright

Using The Schedule Function in WordPress For Posts is a post from: Test Account

©2010 Test Account. All Rights Reserved.

Before I even get into this article, let me state this fact; this article is not meant to offend anyone based on religious views, instead, it is meant to point out the obvious: Replacing Home Inspections with a Spiritual Cleansing is not smart.

Last night I was able to lay back and watch some of the programs that I had TIVOed. One of the programs that I like to check in on is My First Place. The show held my attention like they usually do (I watch them until I fall asleep). However, last night’s viewing through me for a loop. After the you gentleman decided what house he wanted to buy, he decided to go with a Spiritual Cleansing of the property instead of the normal home inspection.

Now, I try to remain as open minded as the next person, but there are places where I have to draw the line. While I might not want to live with the ghost of Elvis Presley, I most certainly do not want to buy a home that has a decaying roof on it. While it might be fun to have Marilyn Monroe or Princess Diana running through the halls, having termites in those same halls would not be the ideal situation, but I digress.

In closing, having your home cleansed of bad spirits or ghosts is a great thing. With that said, buying a property without first having a qualified home inspector such as William Troutman, David Lelak, James Brantley, or David Boyd is just asking for trouble.

Replacing Home Inspections With Spiritual Cleansing is a post from: Positive Real Estate Professionals All rights reserved. ©

©2010 Positive Real Estate Professionals. All Rights Reserved.

***There have been changes to the widget discussed in this tutorial since the original publication (9-02-2009) of this tutorial. I have updated the tutorial to reflect these changes. Yellow font indicates where changes have been made. I have used the strike thru to indicate procedures that no longer apply. Also note that some images have been changed or deleted to reflect the changes to the widget.***

In this tutorial you will learn what tags are and how to use them. If you consider the amount of information on the internet it is no surprise that there must be a way to categorize that information for future reference by web surfers who are looking for it. The same holds true for information contained on your site.

To use tags you begin on the same screen where you write a post. After writing a post look to the right of the box where you have just typed the body of your post. You will see a white box labeled ‘Tags’ (notice the RED arrow in the illustration to the right). This is where you enter the tags which accurately describe the content of your post (see the GREEN box in the illustration to the right). Once you have added your tags they will appear under the header entitled ‘Tags used on this post:’ (inside the PURPLE box in the illustration to the right). If your post is about some aspect of the ‘$8000 Tax Credit’ then that phrase would be a good tag. You do not want to use non-relevant tags as visitors might get upset and/or frustrated if they click on ‘$8000 Tax Credit’ and the post(s) which are displayed are not directly related to that tag.

A wonderful tool that is available to help visitors easily use the tags you have entered is the Tag Cloud Widget. This widget is accessed via the dashboard; YOU MUST BE LOGGED IN. From the Dashboard this is the path:

Dashboard>Appearance>Widgets>Tag Cloud

If your tag cloud widget is not active and you want to use it, look for the ‘Appearance’ header on the left side of your Dashboard. If you hover over ‘Appearance’ a GRAY dropdown arrow will appear; click on this arrow. You then click on WIDGETS to open the list of widgets widget page. Simply add the ‘Tag Cloud’ widget to your sidebar by clicking ‘Add’ dragging it to the desired sidebar.

Tags which accurately relate to the content of your post are a great organizational tool. This organization can make your site much more visitor friendly. Imagine for a minute that you are the visitor and you arrive at a webpage looking for information on the ‘$8000 Tax Credit.’ If the site owner uses accurate tags then a visitor can simply click on the topic they are looking for in the tag cloud to display all of the posts that are tagged with that term! See the tag cloud to the right for an example of how a well utilized tag cloud might look.

How To Use Tags ***UPDATE*** is a post from: Test Account

©2010 Test Account. All Rights Reserved.

***There have been changes to the widget discussed in this tutorial since the original publication (August 13th, 2009) of this tutorial. I have updated the tutorial to reflect these changes. Yellow font indicates where changes have been made. I have used the strike thru to indicate procedures that no longer apply. Also note that the first two images have changed to reflect the changes to the widget.***

One of the most powerful developments on the internet for both business and personal connections is the emergence and widespread use of social media outlets. I would surmise that most internet users and even many people who do not use the internet have heard of at least one social media network; even if they do not realize it. MySpace? Twitter? Facebook? One of these three will generally ring a bell with most people as they are mentioned often on television, the radio, and in print media. In addition to these three social medias there are others, lots of others.

As a PREP member you have access to a pre-loaded widget from your Dashboard that can easily allow visitors to your site to connect with you via numerous social medias. This tutorial is going to give you step by step instructions (with illustrations) on how to:

1. access this widget
2. enter your social media usernames
3. place this widget on your sidebar

To begin with you will need to be logged into your Dashboard. From your dashboard, here is the path to access the widget:

Dashboard > Settings > Social Media Page (SMP)

As you can see from the graphic to the left, the Widget named ‘Social Media Page’ is where you need to begin. Locate the ‘Setting’ tab on the left hand side of your dashboard. When you hover over the settings tab a grey arrow will appear next to the tab name; click this arrow. When you have clicked this grey arrow a dropdown with numerous options will appear. In this list of dropdowns you will need to locate ‘Social Media Page.’ This is the widget we will be working with. In the image to the left I have placed a red box around the widget with a red arrow pointing to it. Click on ‘Social Media Page’ to begin working with this widget. Follow the directions on the image to the left.

When you click on ‘Add profile to list‘ the image to below  will appear on your dashboard:

From this point you fill in your Username/User ID for each of the social medias that you belong to and that you would like to utilize to easily connect with visitors to your site. Be sure that once you have filled in this information that you click ‘Update Profiles & Options’ at the bottom of the page to save the information you have entered. WARNING: If you do not click update the info you entered will not be saved and you will have to re-enter it. Now you are ready to place the widget on your sidebar.

To place the completed Widget on your sidebar, here is the path:

Dashboard > Appearance > Widgets > Add

On left hand side of your dashboard, locate the ‘Appearance’ tab. Just like you did with the ‘Settings’ tab above, hover over Appearance and a grey arrow will appear. Click this grey arrow to open up a dropdown. In this dropdown, locate ‘Widgets’ and click on it. I have placed a blue oval around widgets in the image to the right.

When you click on widgets, a new screen will open on your dashboard. From this screen, you can now add the completed ‘Social Media Page’ widget to your sidebar. Simply click ‘Add’ to place it in drag the widget to the sidebar you have selected. Once you have added it to your selected sidebar be sure to click ‘Save Changes’ or it will not be added.

That’s it! Now if you open your PREP site you will see the widget added to your sidebar with the various social media icons present and linked to your accounts. Just another way to connect with those potential clients.

Integrating Your Social Media Accounts ***UPDATE*** is a post from: Test Account

©2010 Test Account. All Rights Reserved.

Test is a post from: Test Account

©2010 Test Account. All Rights Reserved.

Today is a very exciting day as Sell Buy Rent Online has launched ahead of schedule.

As you may be wondering what SellBuyRentOnline.com is exactly here is the mission statement:

Expertly optimized website that is designed to centrally locate and/or search properties around the world.

As the world has shrunk thanks to both travel and the internet a Realtor’s® client is not necessarily limited to the local shop owner from Main Street anymore. In today’s world your next client could just as easily be the shop owner from half a world away. From vacation homes and second homes to rental and commercial property the only limit listing agents have is their exposure to that wider audience. Sell Buy Rent Online is designed to provide that exposure. Simply click the image to the right to visit Sell Buy Rent Online today. The value of SellBuyRentOnline in terms of exposure for your listings will far exceed the annual $25.00 (USD).

SellBuyRentOnline.com Launches Ahead of Schedule is a post from: Positive Real Estate Professionals All rights reserved. ©

©2010 Positive Real Estate Professionals. All Rights Reserved.

Over the last year to 2 years, I have been talking to REALTORS® from all over the USA and abroad. It seems that no matter who I talk to the one bit of universal feedback I hear is that agents want to be able to list their properties as cheap as possible, and without competitor ads.

Well, being the web developers that we are, we decided to see what we could do about that. So, we developed a site that will allow it’s members to list their properties advertisement free. Now that does not mean the site is completely free of advertisers. It just means that the listings themselves are free of advertisements. We are offering memberships to the site for $25 a year and you can list all the properties that you have contracted. We are not allowing agencies to list all of their REALTORS® listings at this point in time.

Listings can have up to 11 pictures.

You can have a contact form embedded in your listing as well.

So, what makes this site different from others. Simple, the only listings that are searchable on this site are our members’ listings. Also, it is free for the public to search and they do not have to sign up for anything.

With that said, if you are interested in joining prior to launch, email me. I will send you an invoice for the $25.

Lastly, we will be allowing guest post on the site as well. This way, you can drive readers back to your personal website as well.

If you have questions please contact me directly.

SellBuyRentOnline.com Set to Launch on 7-26-2010 is a post from: Positive Real Estate Professionals All rights reserved. ©

©2010 Positive Real Estate Professionals. All Rights Reserved.

It has been some time since I have had time to write an article. Unfortunately, today is not one of those times. However, I felt that it was time to shed some light on some SEO (search engine optimization) stumbling blocks. Our real estate network webmasters believe that SEO should be gained through organic means. With that said, many webmasters do not agree and decide to take their clients down the road of black hat tactics as opposed to white hat tactics. Others choose to skirt the issue and use grey hat tactics (gray hat tactics). So let’s take a look at what black hat and grey hat tactics are as well as some of the stumbling blocks to SEO.

Before we dive into this, let’s discuss something very important to all of you site owners. Whether you know it or not, your webmaster’s tactics ultimately effect your site. If the webmaster chooses to use these tactics to get your site to the top of the rankings, things could be good for some time. Mark my words however, eventually your site will get caught. When that day comes, you will lose all that you have worked so hard for. You can say goodbye to your PageRank (PR), your site being indexed, and most importantly, all the hard work that you thought that you were putting in to get your site indexed organically to begin with.  As you will notice in the picture to the left, Positive Real Estate Professionals has 3,100 pages index in their 16 months of existence. With that said, many of our real estate professionals are also indexed right along with us. There is really no rhyme or reason to our members’ placement in this index list however. So, without further adieu, let’s get to the meat of this post.

Black hat tactics can be easily spotted by the trained eye most of the time. With that said, many search engines can also spot these tactics and will soon kill off these sites. Being banned from Google indexing your site might as well be equivalent to cutting off your nose to spite your face. However, just like black magic, black hat and grey hat tactics are evolving daily, if not hourly. One of the easiest is redirection. A week or so ago, I was reading an article on As I was getting completely immersed in this article I came across a “Read More” link. While I was salivating to read more of this great article, I clicked the link. To my surprise, and disappointment, it took me to a splash page where they wanted me to buy a product that was in no way related to the article that got my attention. That, my friends, is black hat tactics. Redirections should be just what they are intended for. When a link that you worked hard to create is dead or rebuilt with a new URL, that is the time to use redirection. When you are building a page and the page that it is going to refer to is not able to be placed in the navigation, that is when you use redirection. In the cases where redirection is used correctly, this is white hat tactics.

Another instance of a black hat trick is where a web master takes any page on a site and list many keywords using the same text color as their background. To the eye, the keywords are not visible. However, the search engines do see them. To the trained webmaster’s eye, you only need to see the extra spacing there. In some cases, this is hard to do. However, you can also right click on a page in FireFox and chose “View Selection Source”. In Internet Explorer, you would choose “Selection Source”. When you do this, you can actually locate keywords that are used employing this black hat tactic.

Now, for the sake of not making this article longer than it needs to be, let’s talk about one that I frankly consider grey hat. This would be hiding links. Now, this is one of the more difficult things to follow. However, not completely impossible. Methods that are used to do this is hiding the link in “Alt Text” or PHP coding (PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor is a widely used, general-purpose scripting language that was originally designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. courtesy of Wikipedia). Many times I have been reviewing PHP code and come across these hidden links. I will either remove them or just remove the PHP program completely.

In closing, none of these tactics are necessary. You and your webmaster need to sit down and discuss whether or not they are employing these tactics on your behalf. Ultimately, it is your site that they are playing with.

Positive Real Estate Professionals (PREP) can help you achieve the recognition you and your business deserve through our highly versatile and search engine optimized member websites, lead capture, and visitor friendly layout. If you are a professional who works in the real estate industry or one of the related fields that service the needs of the real estate industry then this real estate network can be just what you need to take your business to the next level. If you have questions or would like to join CLICK HERE.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Stumbling Blocks is a post from: Positive Real Estate Professionals All rights reserved. ©

©2010 Positive Real Estate Professionals. All Rights Reserved.

While many experienced real estate agents have a general understanding of the mortgage approval process, there are a few important details that frequently get overlooked which may cause a purchase to be delayed or denied.

New regulation, updated disclosures, appraisal guidelines, mortgage rate pricing premiums, credit score, secondary approval layering, rescission deadlines, property type, HOA insurance requirements, title and property flip rules are just a few of the daily changes that can have a serious impact on a borrower’s home loan financing.

With today’s volatile lending environment, it’s obviously important for home buyers to get a full loan approval which clearly defines all contingencies that pertain to each unique home buyer’s scenario prior to spending any time looking at new homes with an agent.

Either way, we’ve listed a few of the top things your agent should keep in mind while showing you new properties:

Caution – Agents Beware:

Property Type –

High-Rise, Condo, Town House, Single Family Residence, Dome Home or Shoe House… all have specific lending guidelines that can influence down payment, credit score and mortgage insurance requirements.

Residence Type –

Need to sell one home before moving into another? Is a property considered a second home if it’s in the same city?  What if I’m buying a home for my children to live in, it is still considered an investment property?

These are just a few of several possible residence related questions that should be addressed by your agent and loan officer at the initial loan application.

Rates / Locks –

Mortgage Rates are typically locked for a 30 day period, and one of the only ways to get a new rate is to switch mortgage lenders.  Rates also have certain adjustments for property / residence type, credit score and down payment which could have a big impact on monthly payments and therefore approvals.

A 1% increase in rate could literally mean the difference between an approval or denial.

Headline News / Employment –

Underwriters watch the news as well.  Borrowers who work in a volatile industry during hard economic times may have to jump through a few extra hoops to prove that their employment and income is secure.

Job changes, periods of unemployment or property location in relation to the subject property are other things to consider that may cause a speed bump in the approval process.

Title / Property Flip –

A Flip is considered a property that has been purchased by an investor and quickly sold to a new buyer within a 30-90 day period.  Generally, an investor will do a little rehab work, fresh paint, landscaping…. and try to re-sell the property for a significant profit margin.

While it seems like a perfectly fair transaction, many lenders have strict guidelines in place that prevent borrowers from obtaining financing on properties that have a previous owner with less than 90 days of documented ownership.

These rules change frequently, and are specific to particular property types, so make sure your agent is aware of all the boundaries associated with your approval letter.

Homeowner’s Association Insurance –

Some lenders require Condos and Town House communities to have sufficient insurance and reserves coverage pertaining to specific ratios on units that are owner occupied vs rented.

It may also take a few weeks and cost up to $300 to receive an HOA Certification, so make sure your Due-Diligence period is set accordingly in the purchase contract.

Appraisal Ordering Procedures –

Appraisal ordering guidelines are changing quite frequently as regulators implement many new consumer protection laws created to prevent future foreclosure epidemics.

Unfortunately, some of the new appraisal regulations have proven to slow the home buying process down, as well as confuse lenders about the true estimate of neighborhood values.

VA, FHA and Conventional loan programs all have separate appraisal ordering policies, so make sure your agent is aware of which loan you’re approved for so that they document any anticipated delays in the purchase contract.

For example, if an appraisal takes three weeks and the average time for an approval is two weeks, then it probably isn’t smart to write a purchase contract with a four week close of escrow.

_________________________________

Related Articles – Home Buying Process:

• Home Buying Process
• First-Time Home Buyer Credit Checklist
• Assembling Your Home Buying Team – Knowing The Players
• Important Factors To Consider When Getting Financing On A Foreclosure, Short Sale or New Construction
• Where Does My Earnest Money Go?
• HOA Hurdles to be Aware of When Looking at New Properties
• What You Need To Know About The Home Inspection Process

Seven Things Your Agent Should Know About Your Mortgage Approval is a post from: Positive Real Estate Professionals All rights reserved. ©

©2010 Positive Real Estate Professionals. All Rights Reserved.

If you , you are not alone. In fact Twitter is probably the fastest growing social media that has ever hit the World Wide Web.  The term social media still holds some of the negative stereotypes associated with that term. But thanks to Twitter much of that negative image is beginning to diminish; think about the flow of information during the recent populist uprisings in Iran earlier this year that came via Twitter Here are some statistics from Business Insider that were released almost a month ago at Twitter’s developers conference.

• Twitter has 105,779,710 Registered Users – Just how many people do you think see that billboard, park bench, or phone book add that you PAY top dollar for?
• Twitter is adding 300,00 Registered Users A Day – Approximately the entire population of Albany, New York (Source: U.S. Census Bureau)
• Twitter gets 180,000,000 Unique Visitors – Some perspective, Brazil, the 5th most populated country in the world, has an estimated population of 192,000,000 (Source: Brazilian Official Population Clock)
• Apps are important because 75% of traffic is outside Twitter.com – PREP recently added TweetMeme alongside TwitMe to the available integrations to further the ease of use of Twitter by members
• Twitter receives 3,000,000,000 (BILLION) requests a day (Roughly the number of Tweets read per day) – This is roughly the same number Google receives per day (Source: Search Engine Land, Feb. 23, 2010)

WOW! These numbers may seem incomprehensible because they are so large; the upside to that…because they are so large, there is room for everyone at the ‘Twitter Table’. It would be very short sighted to view Twitter as people only talking about ‘…just washed the car’ or some other type of status update. Twitter is now a megaphone to what is going on in your community or around the world! Though Facebook still commands the spotlight in the social media arena, Twitter is the rising star that will continue to draw that spotlight to itself.

Again I ask: You Tweet, Who Knew?!? So dust off that Twitter account you created months ago and get to Tweeting. It is time for you and your business to shine.

Positive Real Estate Professionals (PREP) can help you achieve the recognition you and your business deserve through our highly versatile and search engine optimized member websites, lead capture, and visitor friendly layout. If you are a professional who works in the real estate industry or one of the related fields that service the needs of the real estate industry then this real estate network can be just what you need to take your business to the next level. If you have questions or would like to join CLICK HERE.

YOU Tweet, Who Knew?!? is a post from: Positive Real Estate Professionals All rights reserved. ©

©2010 Positive Real Estate Professionals. All Rights Reserved.