Mortgage Refinance During Hard Times

by Robert Melkonyan The term recession has been thrown around a lot lately and it seems every time we turn on the television we are hearing about people who are struggling to keep their jobs or their homes, and about shortages of food. This is a time when many people are looking at all of the things that they own and seeing how they can save and mortgage refinance seems like a great option because it can help you substantially reduce your monthly payment, giving you a bit more leeway where your finances are concerned. Mortgage Refinance Can Help Even if you are not currently having a hard time and you are just trying to prepare for the worst as you watch people around you losing their homes and their jobs, you may find that mortgage is an option for you. Through this process you have the ability not only to save money, but change the loan program that you are currently on so that your financial situation can be as stable as possible. When you look into mortgage refinance you may be looking to get the lowest monthly payment possible. Before jumping at the lowest option you need to consider how long you plan on living in your home. If you only plan on being there for a short period of time it may be worth looking into an adjustable-rate mortgage, because this will offer you the lowest interest rates and payments initially, but the interest rates and payments will rise considerably as time goes on. If you plan to be in the home for many, many years, it may be more beneficial to go with a fixed-rate loan. With a fixed-rate loan your interest rate will be a bit higher but you have the security of an interest rate that will not change over time, which will offer you more financial stability so you can plan for later on down the road. If you are already having a hard time paying your mortgage it is still worth looking into mortgage refinance and seeing what can be done to help you. Sometimes lowering your payment just a little bit each month is all you need to get back on top. You would be surprised to see how much you can lower your payment, if you just find the right loan program at the right time. You need to know what your plans are when refinancing so you can choose the right loan, but it’s worth the time and small amount of effort that goes into putting your feelers out there and seeing what you come up with in the way of more affordable mortgage options. Everyone hits hard times during their home ownership. Instead of simply shaking your head and throwing up your hands, see what you can do to keep your home. Mortgage refinance has helped a lot of people get through their hard times with their home still in their names. This may be just the thing that you have been looking for to give you that bit of stability that you need as you get through this time. Refinancing won’t provide a miracle, but it may be that little bit of help that you have been looking for that will allow all of the cards to fall into place so your finances become a bit more optimistic. Refinance.com is managed by a group of professionals in the Mortgage refinance field who are able to provide expert advice to help you refinance even during difficult situations, to learn more visit our site at http://www.refinance.com/ Article Source: BlissPublisher - Free Article Directory

Mortgage Lead Generation Business Model Exposed: How Mortgage Refinancing Portals Work?

Author: Pedro Neira

During the last weeks, I’ve been interviewing with a company, a new Internet Start-Up in Barcelona based on a Mortgage Lead Generation business model. In my research, I found some interesting things about this market that I wanted to share in this article.

The mortgage refinancing business model

First of all, I just want to clarify how this business model works. This model consists mainly on users filling their personal and financial data into a mortgage refinancing portal. Then the portal commits to send the user personalized offers (real offers from brokers or banks) to improve the actual conditions of the user’s mortgage. This service is usually free for the end user and the value created is clear: It basically saves you a lot of time in comparing different offers from different banks that are applicable to your specific financial situation. On the other hand, what these portals get from the end user is valuable information for banks/mortgage brokers: They have a potential customer interested in refinancing its mortgage, all his/her relevant financial data and the permission to send this information to banks/brokers to obtain the best possible conditions. This information is highly valuable for these institutions…. But how valuable?? Lets just make some rough calculations:

Given that the average commission on closing a mortgage deal is around 1-3% on let’s say an average home value of (let’s say) US$ 250.000, It means that what a broker earns on closing a mortgage deal is around US$ 2.500 – 7.500. Of course not all the leads sent to a broker end up in a refinanced mortgage, but let’s just assume that 10% - 20% of qualified leads (meaning people interesting in refinancing its mortgage, that took the time to fill many forms and questionnaires with personal information) end up in signing a new deal. This means that the maximum value of a “lead” for a broker (the same goes for a bank) would be around US$ 250 – 1500 (10% - 20% x US$ 2500 – 7.500). Anything below this, means margin for the broker. Depending on each broker’s ability to close deals, the quality of the leads, competition and other factors, each broker would be willing to pay a % of these maximum values per lead.

Two of the first and most succesful companies within this industry are lendingtree.com and lowermybills.com. For more information about Lowermybills, you can read the LowerMyBills Case Study.

Expensive Keywords

The first thing that caught my attention was that some keywords in this industry, keywords like “Mortgage refinance”, “Credit remortgages” or “Refinancing mortgage” are amongst the highest paying keywords in Google’s Advertising Network. What this suggest is that this market has become so competitive that has drove the price to one of the highest paid keywords in Internet advertising. It also suggests that at this superhigh price (around US$ 40 per click) the companies dedicated to mortgage lead generation still make money. Therefore, either they have an amazing conversion rate or they earn really a lot for each lead they generate, either for a mortgage broker or directly to the banks.

A simple calculation would be:

If the conversion rate of these keywords is, let’s say 10% (assuming a very high rate), it means that any company in this industry should at least make US$ 400 (US$ 40 / 10% = US$ 400) to break even… This figure is consistent with the ones obtained in the firs part of the article, where I got a possible value range per lead that went from US$ 250 – 1.500.

Opportunity for "arbitrage"

Assuming that the U.S. Mortgage refinancing market is already a mature market (and it’s safe to assume that after the mortgage mayhem of the last years), another important point would be that there is an opportunity for arbitrage (and an opportunity to make a lot of money) in any market where the PPC’s of these keywords is still very low. For example, if you get the estimated cost for the keyword “Hipoteca” (Mortgage in Spanish) the CPC is still around 3€ (roughly US$ 5). If we assume that when the market for mortgage lead generation matures the CPC will be close to what it is in the US (around US$40), it means that someone, probably the first ones in the market that make it reasonably well, will make a lot of money. The same goes for any other market where the CPC of the main keywords is still very low.

Maybe Offline advertising is the answer in the long run

As a final thought, with CPC’s at US$ 40, thousands of different sites competing in a market with not much differentiation and a huge market base of potential customers (estimated at around 45 million homes), the key elements are in place to switch at least an important part of the marketing budget to regular offline advertising. When the PPC market gets that competitive, TV or radio campaigns could lead to a much lower cost per conversion.

View the full article at my blog MBA Internet Marketing Manager

About the Author:

Pedro Neira is an MBA Internet Marketing Manager. Freelance Consultant and Online Entrepreneur with experience in Strategic Consulting, Start-Up fundraising and general management. Online Marketing expert with special abilities in SEO and SEM. MBA Internet Marketing Manager

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/