There Is No Good Mortgage Blog

September 9-

We’re putting the newsletter together this week (it goes out next Friday, thanks for asking), and the lead article is about blogs, what they are, and what they’re good for, and what our blog does that nobody else does.  That’s led to some research on blogs themselves and has led to some revelations.

One, there’s an incredible number of really entertaining blogs out there.  I especially like B.L. Ochman’s What’s Next Blog and Hinderaker, Johnson, and Mirengoff’s Power Line Blog, both of which I read every day, and although it isn’t really a blog in the traditional sense (it’s more of an e-newsletter) I love John English’s Jerms, which is the main source of my encyclopedic knowledge of entertainment happenings.  John happens also to be a client, and his wife Monica is one of the most talented birth coaches on earth.  I have this from a credible source.  Feel free to let me know what you like.

Two, there is no good mortgage blog.  No, now, really, there isn’t.  I have pretty high standards for material – I admit it – but boy, there’s nothing out there that does anything like what we do here, so far as I can find, and I am not new to the whole websearch thing, if you know what I mean, and I think you do.  There are lots and lots of sites that tell you what the rates are, and how You Too Can Get a Cheap Mortgage Right Now, but nobody that I can find blends the same level of financial analysis with a so-what-does-that-mean-to-me approach.  We aim to please.  We hope we do.

Speaking of financial analysis, the bond markets are going absolutely nowhere again despite evidence that Greenspan is going to continue to destroy the short-term lending market (and hey, who needs that?  You’d only need a short term loan if you were going to be having to build a couple of thousand new houses in the next six…months….oh, wait….).  

The stock market appears to be doing its patriotic thing (albeit within the same fairly narrow range that it’s been in for months), but that’s not taking a lot of money out of the bond market as far as I can tell.  That keeps rates in the high 5% range on the 30 year and about 5.25% on a 15.  ARMs are getting back in the game, but they are still not on the recommended list.  And a lot of those people who had option ARMs a year ago are now talking about getting off the train and taking a fixed rate while they still can.  The option ARM is still not a bad loan in some circumstances, but it’s not the magic bullet that it was a year or so ago.

I see that Randy Moss is not going to take the Oakland Raiders to the Super Bowl this year.  Fine by me.  I sit next to a Broncos fan.  I myself, as previously stated, am a Rams fan, and we’re not going to the Super Bowl, either.

College football.  BYU will win this weekend by 5 touchdowns.  Utah will beat Utah State.  Texas will beat Ohio State, but it will be close.  Notre Dame will lose to Michigan on a last-second touchdown.  Your prediction here.

We watched Finding Neverland a week or so ago, and it is everything they say it is.  Watch with a box of tissues.  We also watched Hitch, which was amusing, but the ending was really screwed up in a way I explain here.  And we watched Star Wars Phantom Menace (Episode 1) again last night.  As I was watching Anakin’s “tearful” farewell to his mother I turned to my friend and said “who knew that this would be the best of the tender scenes in the entire seven hours of the first three episodes?”  We went from “no reward is worth this!” to “no, it’s because I’m so in love with you”.  Frankly, my dear….