The Next Step….

by Tom Vanderwell

Mortgage Officer

Author website

I’ve had a lot of people ask me lately, “Tom, what do you see is coming next?   What’s the next step in this mess?”

A couple of thoughts at this point:

• Anyone short of Nouriel Roubini, Paul Krugman, Meredith Whitney and maybe a few others who tell you that they KNOW how this is all going to end is lying.   (Did you notice how I didn’t include Treasury Secretary Geithner or anyone in Washington in that list?)
• But there are some people who have the ability to peer a little farther out into the fog than most do.
• Anyone who tells you this isn’t a confusing and potentially scary time is lying to you as well.   Never in our life times have we seen the kind of financial devastation and economic pain that is currently happening.   

The things that are going on are causing lots of people to question a lot of things that they weren’t questioning before.   Things like: 

1. Will I be able to retire?  
2. Can I ever trust a mortgage lender again?  
3. Will real estate still be a good investment?  
4. What’s happening in the stock market?  
5. Is my financial advisor telling me the whole story?  
6. What are mortgage rates going to do? 
7. How does the actions of the Federal Reserve impact the financial markets? 
8. What are the long and the short term ramifications of the deficits that the government is currently running?
9. How does the value of the dollar impact real estate and mortgages?

Those are just a smattering of the types of questions that I’ve been hearing from people lately.   Okay, some of them aren’t quite in the format that I spelled them out but they have basically been asking that.  Frankly, I think the consumer’s desire to ask more questions is a good thing and a healthy thing in the long run.

So where am I going with this?   I’m getting to it…….

I’ve been fortunate to “hook up” with two of the experts in other areas of the financial spectrum (one of whom is our own Jeff Brown) and we’re setting up a new source for financial and real estate market insight and understanding.   As of probably later this week, the new website will be up and running (oh and it’s being set up by another Bloodhound – Chris Johnson).    We’ve chosen to call it All Markets Considered.  

Why did we pick that name?  It’s pretty simple.   We picked that name because we’re setting up a place that will offer unbiased, highly critical (not in a negative sense, but in a detailed sense) and very thorough insights into what’s going on.   What’s happening in the mortgage world, what’s happening in the finance world, what’s happening in the world of real estate as an investment and what’s happening in the world of stocks will all be discussed, no holds barred, just telling it like we see it.   This is not going to be a place where we’re selling “stuff,” just offering our advice, insight, understanding and perspective to help people navigate these times.    What’s the catch?   It’s pretty simple – if you want to read more than the first few lines of any of the posts, you have to subscribe to the site – and subscribing isn’t free, but we’d like to think it’s priceless…….

I’m excited about the opportunity to help more people through this and I hope you’ll check it out.  I’ll have more as we get things up and running this week.

Stay tuned……

Tom Vanderwell