My Useful Blog

Hello. I wanted to do a video about my blog, which you can find at getloans.com/blog, as you can see here up in the URL. Blogs can be really helpful. There are a lot of lenders that are buying canned material and posting it as their own. They’re paying a finance writer, and it’s just easier that way. And I get it. I write all my own stuff. It takes hours. Honestly, it can take anywhere from two to five hours, depending on the complexity of the topic, to write a really current, accurate value-add blog. It’s really difficult. And not only is their writing something that’s got a value-add and everything in it is accurate, but then you also have to… If you’re not really a great writer, if you don’t have a degree related to writing or grammar or English, you’ve gotta make sure everything in it really reads well, and that it flows right. It takes a lot of time.

0:01:16.9 Speaker 1: So on my blog, I try and post at least once a month, sometimes more frequently. So I may have anywhere from 12 to 20 topics a year. Those topics are going to be current, the data will be accurate. And to make sure to date-stamp as you can see, and I wanna date-stamp them so that if you’re reading a blog from eight years ago, you’ll know that may not be current, and feel free to reach out to me. I’ve got hundreds and hundreds of blogs, I can’t go through and constantly edit them all. So you should know, with my blog or any blog, if the content is a certain age, you should double check with whoever wrote that blog and see what the current status of the information is. But there are some topics that are timeless. I’ve got a blog… I wanna show you my blog here on the screen. So, what I’m in right now is grid view, which I think is an interesting way to scroll through the topics. And list view, is this.

0:02:16.8 Speaker 1: I tend to use grid view. A lot of people don’t give you an alternative. I just think it’s cool, and some people find it easier to read or at least sort through the blogs in one view over another. You can look here for what some of the topics are, the more popular ones are obviously gonna be in bigger font. Or you can search. There’s a blog I wrote, 4506, search that one and see if we can find it. Is this the one? So, the IRS Form 4506 is a form that we lenders send to get tax transcripts from the IRS. It’s a measure that the governmental agency’s Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, FHA and VA make us take. Here’s the interesting thing, I wrote this December of 2015. Look at the comments I’ve got on this. They go back. They go back years, and there’s a lot of comments, as you can see, a couple hundred comments. So this material in particular is actually still current. But when I get a question on it, if there’s something that’s changed, I’ll respond in my response, “This is the way things are now,” and then I may even take the time to go into that blog at that point that I see something is materially different, and I may edit it or put an asterisk and put a resource that, “Here is the new information.”

0:03:42.2 Speaker 1: But anyway, going back to my blog, you can also just click on blog and it takes you there. I think that it’s a good way to get educated without having to engage the loan officer. I know how it is, a lot of people don’t want to talk to a lender, like you don’t wanna talk to… You don’t wanna go on to the car-lot of a used car dealer, they might have a car that looks really interesting and you might be in the market for a car, but you just don’t want the sales pitch, so you don’t bother. So I really try to put out current, accurate, valid value-add data. So check my blog, do a search for a topic you’re looking for. If you find that topic, read the data. If it looks old, ask me. Happy to have you use my blog and my whole website as a free resource, just trying to earn my position to potentially have you engage and ask me questions, or get pre-approved, or get a rate quote, or just discuss what you’re trying to do in buying a house or possibly refinancing.

0:04:50.9 Speaker 1: I’m really happy to put this out there, but wanted to point out a little bit about how it works, how the blog works, and really point out the content is, I think, really good as opposed to a lot of other lenders, which they buy the canned material. You might find a really large lender who probably employs a staff of writers. They probably also have really good content when you’ve got dedicated writers who have financing, mortgage-specific knowledge. I’m not saying I’m the only one writing good mortgage content, but rest assured that what you read from me is well-researched, well thought out. And I really try and make it a value-add, I don’t buy anything canned. Let me know if you have questions on any of my particular blogs or any mortgage question in general. Always happy to help. Thanks very much.