Building an Informed Consumer's Arsenal Against Abuse

I just came across your posts this evening and absolutely love the blatent honesty. I am a real estate broker of 5 years now and by far the youngest in my area. I have 65 agents and an mls of 1500. It is absolutely unbeleivable to me that there is NO knowledge of basic finance in our industry. We have nothing but unscrupulous mortgage brokers in our area, and I find myself "saving" all of my clients and doing the job of 2 — realtor and lender, just to see people not get screwed over for their most important investment in life. I'm sure you know the feeling.

Your posts actually taught me a couple of things that I am thrilled to learn as I am always looking for a better education. I love the piece of the "adding client to the tradelines of an existing account". I plan to use that myself to help my parents out of a difficult situation that has plagued them for years without jeopardizing my own credit.

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Thanks in advance for your response and keep up the good work on educating the public with the TRUTH!

Okay, sometimes when the world has you a little bit down an email like this can really make your day, and I hope that nobody minds the self-boosting too much.

Now, I do not believe I am the sole or ultimate fount of wisdom on loans, real estate, financial planning, or insurance. If anyone has tips and tricks and points of view that they'd like to share, I believe in sending traffic your way (if you have your own site) and giving full credit in any case, as my "Links and Minifeatures" stuff should illustrate. I reserve all of the usual editorial prerogatives, of course (I may comment, amplify, qualify, or disagree with it, take it to task, etcetera, etcetera.) What I am trying to build here is an informed consumer's arsenal aimed at curbing abuses. I can't pay for articles (at least not yet, although that is a goal), but if you have something aimed at educating the consumer, my server logs show well over 1000 visits most days (December 22nd, which due to some issues my host is having right now, is the most recent day I have a full report for, showed 1487 visits). It ain't Instapundit, and it probably won't ever be Instapundit, but if you've written something helpful to the consumer, there are worse things than 1000 folks or more (and rising!) looking at your stuff, and I'm more than willing to share the podium, such as it is. If you're a working professional, consider that some of these folks are likely to be in your area, and having articles linked or even published here would, I hope, be more likely to help than hinder your professional reputation. And pocketbook.

Guidelines: Target for education, not sales. Keep the language and attitude professional, but humor helps. Approach from a point of view of an intelligent layperson. "A is where you are, and B is where you want to be, and this is how you get there and these are wrong turnings and information and calculations is why." I don't expect chapter and verse of the regulations, or even want it unless the exact wording is central to the point. I do want to see a correct application of how it works in practice.

(Links and articles on other site interests are also welcome)

If you have a question you would like me to answer, please send to the issues (at) Searchlight (no space here) Crusade (dot) net e-mail. I am not going to give individually situation specific advice for free, but I'll certainly deal with broad issues, approaches to problem solving, and if it's got applicability to (in my opinion) a large number of potential readers, I'll crunch numbers and work through the decision-making process.

The "issues" email is also where actual articles should go. Please include your name, whether you want to be publicly identified (and if so, how: name only, email, address, etcetera). Because it's my credibility on the line, I will accept anonymous submissions although I reserve all of the usual editors rights.

I usually check "issues" once or twice per day, but I'm more likely to flag stuff there than the personal email ("dm") which I may check more often, but all sorts of stuff unrelated to this site's primary specialty goes there. Sending to the "issues" may take a slight bit longer, but if it relates to Consumer Information, it is a more certain way to get my attention.

UPDATE: I have since given up on trying to get folks to use the issues email. Please use the dm one for everything.