#something often prevents people from easily accessing housing in many places across the u.s.

[luciferinn]

every time usamericans start a fit over something they perceive as existing in china it's almost always something that is happening here as well (if it even is happening over there at all) it's so genuinely silly and mind boggling

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Dr. Royal S. Copeland, the field marshal in New York City’s battle against the 1918 influenza epidemic, knew his enemy was more than just a virus. As health commissioner, he oversaw a medical crisis that would eventually kill some 30,000 New Yorkers over three waves of the disease. In Copeland’s estimation, the problem was not only influenza but also the city’s crowded tenements and endemic poverty.

To modern eyes, the measures he took to stymie the spread might seem strange. In an extensive interview with The New York Times after the first wave of influenza had passed, Copeland touted the decision not to close New York’s public schools. It was, he reasoned, best to keep them open to give the city’s children respite from crowded apartments and, if need be, a point of access to the medical system. “We have practically 1,000,000 children in the public schools, about 750,000 of them from tenement homes. These homes are frequently unsanitary and crowded,” he said. “The children’s parents are occupied with the manifold duties involved in keeping the wolf from the door. No matter how loving they may be — and, of course, they are just as loving as any parents anywhere — they simply have not the time to give the necessary attention to the initial symptoms of disease.”

Even under normal circumstances, living in New York City requires a certain surrender of personal space: Subways are packed, apartments are small and bodegas get cramped with after-work shoppers. But not all New Yorkers have to live in a stressful crowd all the time, a fact the COVID-19 pandemic has laid all too bare. The city’s wealth inequality has always been apparent: financial safety nets, Whole Foods delivery and routine access to health care. But the pandemic has added a new layer to what affluence can afford some New Yorkers, including routine access to personal space and the flexibility that white-collar work allows. While over 100 years have gone by since the 1918 pandemic, some of Copeland’s worries about the difficult nature of city life — and the inequities of who lives the most comfortably — remain chillingly relevant.

We know already that the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting people of color more than white Americans. While the virus stalks the rich and poor — leading some to call it “the great equalizer” — those with lesser means have fewer places to hide from it. Dr. Andrew Goodman, a professor of public health at New York University who used to work for the city’s Health Promotion and Disease Prevention unit, pointed to the pandemic as “a more dramatic example of the health-inequity side of income inequality and racial inequality in the U.S.” Deaths from diseases that disproportionately affect minority communities, like diabetes and hypertension, “usually get spread out over time, and it doesn’t seem as dramatic,” Goodman said. “This is a more accelerated version.”

While there is a lot of uncertainty about the actual numbers of those infected — only a fraction of people who show symptoms are tested, so the rate of infection is almost certainly higher than what’s being reported — life in two New York City ZIP codes, one working class and one wealthy, gives us a glimpse into different ways of city living that might mean life or death in today’s New York.

Densely populated and working-class, East Elmhurst, Queens, has one of the highest rates of COVID-19 in New York City.

STEPHANIE KEITH / GETTY IMAGES

According to a running ProPublica tally of confirmed positive COVID-19 cases, the ZIP codes with the highest rate of infection are in a certain corner of Queens: East Elmhurst. One East Elmhurst ZIP code, 11370, is home to the notorious Rikers Island correctional facility, and has the highest recorded positive test rate in New York City — 127 percent worse than the city’s average. Jails like Rikers have become hotbeds for spreading the disease given their space constraints — well over 600 inmates and workers are infected with the virus at Rikers. East Elmhurst’s other, non-Rikers ZIP code, 11369, is a residential neighborhood and has the second worst positive test rate in the city, 121 percent greater than the average.

East Elmhurst has seen a high rate of individuals tested, and that might be in part because Elmhurst Hospital in neighboring Elmhurst, Queens — “the epicenter within the epicenter,” in the words of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio — has set up a testing tent outside the hospital. According to 2018 data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, 34,118 people live in the 1.1 square miles of East Elmhurst’s 11369 ZIP code. Sixty-four percent of its residents are Latino, and the median household income is $54,121, three-quarters of the median income in New York’s greater metro area. On the neighborhood’s northern border is LaGuardia Airport, and south of that are mosques and diners, a baseball field and blocks and blocks of houses cramped together. On those cramped blocks, the average household size is 3.2 people, 20 percent above the city average.

Nearly 11 percent of all households in ZIP code 11369 are also multigenerational, with three or more generations living under the same roof. It’s possible that the grouping of young and old together in one house could have something to do with higher infection rates. Researchers are still unclear about how many others a person infects when they have the virus, but early estimates were around 2 to 2.5 people. The elderly are more susceptible, and in Italy, doctors believe that the country’s culture of intergenerational living and familial closeness has had disastrous effects during the pandemic; Italy’s rate of death from COVID-19 is among the highest in the world.

Underlying conditions like asthma tend to be more prevalent in crowded environments, according to Dr. Y. Claire Wang, who specializes in public health and chronic disease prevention at the New York Academy of Medicine. The respiratory condition puts individuals at greater risk for COVID-19 complications, and households in city apartments with pests or mold, common problems in public housing units, often have higher rates of asthma, she said.

Things look different on the other side of the positive test rate list. ZIP code 11215 in Park Slope, Brooklyn, has among the city’s lowest rates of COVID-19, at 56 percent below average.1 Park Slope is a different New York from East Elmhurst in many ways. Two-thirds of its population is white, and at $123,583, the median household income is one and a half times greater than that of the average in New York’s greater metropolitan area. The neighborhood is named for its proximity to one of the city’s largest green spaces, Prospect Park, and it’s known for its gracious brownstones and tree-lined streets. The average household size in Park Slope is 2.4 people, and only 1.8 percent of households are multigenerational.

Residents of Park Slope, Brooklyn, tend to be affluent, with white-collar jobs easily adaptable to working from home.

ROY ROCHLIN / GETTY IMAGES

The racial and ethnic differences between Park Slope and East Elmhurst might prove particularly important as both neighborhoods weather the pandemic. Early statistical reports on the disease are already painting a picture of racial inequity. Earlier this week New York State released preliminary numbers that showed Latinos have the highest rate of COVID-19 fatality in New York City.

A Kaiser Family Foundation report on initial pandemic data reveals that minorities are bearing the brunt of infection and death from the virus in many places. Higher rates of chronic conditions in minorities put them at greater risk for serious complications from COVID-19. In Washington, D.C., where black residents make up 45 percent of the total population, they account for 29 percent of confirmed cases and 59 percent of deaths. In Michigan, black residents are 14 percent of the population, but represent 33 percent of confirmed cases and 41 percent of deaths.

“We say something as simple as ‘your ZIP code should not define your health’ — [but] in New York City, that’s often the story,” said Dr. Torian Easterling, the deputy commissioner of the Center for Health Equity and Community Wellness, a city agency that addresses racial and social inequities in health. He pointed to high rates of chronic diseases like diabetes and hypertension and a lack of access to healthy foods in minority communities as long-standing public health problems that have only been exacerbated by the onset of COVID-19.

During the 1918 pandemic, the white population had a higher rate of infection, according to a 2007 study of the outbreak by Thomas A. Garrett, then an economist at the St. Louis Federal Reserve. But that, Garrett surmised, had to do with the fact that the black population in the U.S. was still largely rural; the pandemic was a particular menace to cities. “[T]he nonwhite population in the United States has become much more urban. … A modern-day pandemic may result in greater nonwhite mortality rates because a greater percentage of the nonwhite population in the United States lives in urban areas,” he wrote. Census estimates from 2019 show that the majority of New York City residents are people of color.

Across New York, communities of color have long been more subject to chronic ailments like diabetes and hypertension. The COVID-19 pandemic has only exacerbated these trends.

JOHN NACION / NURPHOTO VIA GETTY IMAGES / ANGELA WEISS / AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Park Slope and the East Elmhurst ZIP code of 11369 are similarly dense, with roughly 32,000 and 31,000 people per square mile, respectively. But life in the neighborhoods is different in other ways that might contribute to their divergent rates of apparent COVID-19 infection. According to the latest Census Bureau count, the most prevalent jobs in East Elmhurst are clerical work, food service and construction. In Park Slope, management, entertainment, education and business are the most common professions. The typical East Elmhurst worker is required to leave home to perform their job, while the lines of work most common in Park Slope are adaptable to teleworking. And Latinos — East Elmhurst’s dominant ethnic group — are more likely than all other Americans to consider COVID-19 a threat to their financial stability, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey.

We’ve already seen how socioeconomic circumstances can correlate with Americans’ ability to stay at home. A recent New York Times analysis of anonymized cellphone data tracked the movements of Americans and found that those in the top 10 percent income bracket have limited their movements more than those in the bottom 10 percent. What Copeland said in 1918 could very likely still hold true: “I have no doubt that the most dangerous means of transmitting disease was the subway. … Many a man who was sick must have felt that he had to go to work.”

Copeland’s struggle against the currents of poverty and influenza would continue into 1920. Updating the public on the state of the epidemic, which had reemerged, Copeland told The New York Times that the health department was working to stop the eviction of tenants during the outbreak and described the struggle to attract nurses to the city’s hospitals, since wealthy individuals were offering them higher pay to work in private homes. He pleaded for better ventilation on subways and buses and criticized coffin-makers who were price-gouging the city’s residents. Even in death, New York was unrelenting.

And so it remains today. Early this week, the city announced that hospital morgues around New York were overflowing with the dead. An Associated Press report painted a grim picture of one Brooklyn hospital. Even with an infection rate much lower than those in Queens, “mounds of corpses” had become so difficult to navigate that hospital staff were stepping over them.

The great equalizer isn’t COVID-19 — it’s death. But in New York’s epidemic, death attends to the haves and have-nots differently: For the city’s poor, it hovers closely, and when it comes, it leaves them as crowded as ever.

[claremal-one]

Wealth And Race Have Always Divided New York. COVID-19 Has Only Made Things Worse.

Dr. Royal S. Copeland, the field marshal in New York City’s battle against the 1918 influenza epidemic, knew his enemy was more than just a virus. As health commissioner, he oversaw a medical crisis that would eventually kill some 30,000 New Yorkers over three waves of the disease. In Copeland’s estimation, the problem was not only influenza but also the city’s crowded tenements and endemic poverty.

To modern eyes, the measures he took to stymie the spread might seem strange. In an extensive interview with The New York Times after the first wave of influenza had passed, Copeland touted the decision not to close New York’s public schools. It was, he reasoned, best to keep them open to give the city’s children respite from crowded apartments and, if need be, a point of access to the medical system. “We have practically 1,000,000 children in the public schools, about 750,000 of them from tenement homes. These homes are frequently unsanitary and crowded,” he said. “The children’s parents are occupied with the manifold duties involved in keeping the wolf from the door. No matter how loving they may be — and, of course, they are just as loving as any parents anywhere — they simply have not the time to give the necessary attention to the initial symptoms of disease.”

Even under normal circumstances, living in New York City requires a certain surrender of personal space: Subways are packed, apartments are small and bodegas get cramped with after-work shoppers. But not all New Yorkers have to live in a stressful crowd all the time, a fact the COVID-19 pandemic has laid all too bare. The city’s wealth inequality has always been apparent: financial safety nets, Whole Foods delivery and routine access to health care. But the pandemic has added a new layer to what affluence can afford some New Yorkers, including routine access to personal space and the flexibility that white-collar work allows. While over 100 years have gone by since the 1918 pandemic, some of Copeland’s worries about the difficult nature of city life — and the inequities of who lives the most comfortably — remain chillingly relevant.

We know already that the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting people of color more than white Americans. While the virus stalks the rich and poor — leading some to call it “the great equalizer” — those with lesser means have fewer places to hide from it. Dr. Andrew Goodman, a professor of public health at New York University who used to work for the city’s Health Promotion and Disease Prevention unit, pointed to the pandemic as “a more dramatic example of the health-inequity side of income inequality and racial inequality in the U.S.” Deaths from diseases that disproportionately affect minority communities, like diabetes and hypertension, “usually get spread out over time, and it doesn’t seem as dramatic,” Goodman said. “This is a more accelerated version.”

While there is a lot of uncertainty about the actual numbers of those infected — only a fraction of people who show symptoms are tested, so the rate of infection is almost certainly higher than what’s being reported — life in two New York City ZIP codes, one working class and one wealthy, gives us a glimpse into different ways of city living that might mean life or death in today’s New York.

Densely populated and working-class, East Elmhurst, Queens, has one of the highest rates of COVID-19 in New York City.

STEPHANIE KEITH / GETTY IMAGES

According to a running ProPublica tally of confirmed positive COVID-19 cases, the ZIP codes with the highest rate of infection are in a certain corner of Queens: East Elmhurst. One East Elmhurst ZIP code, 11370, is home to the notorious Rikers Island correctional facility, and has the highest recorded positive test rate in New York City — 127 percent worse than the city’s average. Jails like Rikers have become hotbeds for spreading the disease given their space constraints — well over 600 inmates and workers are infected with the virus at Rikers. East Elmhurst’s other, non-Rikers ZIP code, 11369, is a residential neighborhood and has the second worst positive test rate in the city, 121 percent greater than the average.

East Elmhurst has seen a high rate of individuals tested, and that might be in part because Elmhurst Hospital in neighboring Elmhurst, Queens — “the epicenter within the epicenter,” in the words of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio — has set up a testing tent outside the hospital. According to 2018 data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, 34,118 people live in the 1.1 square miles of East Elmhurst’s 11369 ZIP code. Sixty-four percent of its residents are Latino, and the median household income is $54,121, three-quarters of the median income in New York’s greater metro area. On the neighborhood’s northern border is LaGuardia Airport, and south of that are mosques and diners, a baseball field and blocks and blocks of houses cramped together. On those cramped blocks, the average household size is 3.2 people, 20 percent above the city average.

Nearly 11 percent of all households in ZIP code 11369 are also multigenerational, with three or more generations living under the same roof. It’s possible that the grouping of young and old together in one house could have something to do with higher infection rates. Researchers are still unclear about how many others a person infects when they have the virus, but early estimates were around 2 to 2.5 people. The elderly are more susceptible, and in Italy, doctors believe that the country’s culture of intergenerational living and familial closeness has had disastrous effects during the pandemic; Italy’s rate of death from COVID-19 is among the highest in the world.

Underlying conditions like asthma tend to be more prevalent in crowded environments, according to Dr. Y. Claire Wang, who specializes in public health and chronic disease prevention at the New York Academy of Medicine. The respiratory condition puts individuals at greater risk for COVID-19 complications, and households in city apartments with pests or mold, common problems in public housing units, often have higher rates of asthma, she said.

Things look different on the other side of the positive test rate list. ZIP code 11215 in Park Slope, Brooklyn, has among the city’s lowest rates of COVID-19, at 56 percent below average.1 Park Slope is a different New York from East Elmhurst in many ways. Two-thirds of its population is white, and at $123,583, the median household income is one and a half times greater than that of the average in New York’s greater metropolitan area. The neighborhood is named for its proximity to one of the city’s largest green spaces, Prospect Park, and it’s known for its gracious brownstones and tree-lined streets. The average household size in Park Slope is 2.4 people, and only 1.8 percent of households are multigenerational.

Residents of Park Slope, Brooklyn, tend to be affluent, with white-collar jobs easily adaptable to working from home.

ROY ROCHLIN / GETTY IMAGES

The racial and ethnic differences between Park Slope and East Elmhurst might prove particularly important as both neighborhoods weather the pandemic. Early statistical reports on the disease are already painting a picture of racial inequity. Earlier this week New York State released preliminary numbers that showed Latinos have the highest rate of COVID-19 fatality in New York City.

A Kaiser Family Foundation report on initial pandemic data reveals that minorities are bearing the brunt of infection and death from the virus in many places. Higher rates of chronic conditions in minorities put them at greater risk for serious complications from COVID-19. In Washington, D.C., where black residents make up 45 percent of the total population, they account for 29 percent of confirmed cases and 59 percent of deaths. In Michigan, black residents are 14 percent of the population, but represent 33 percent of confirmed cases and 41 percent of deaths.

“We say something as simple as ‘your ZIP code should not define your health’ — [but] in New York City, that’s often the story,” said Dr. Torian Easterling, the deputy commissioner of the Center for Health Equity and Community Wellness, a city agency that addresses racial and social inequities in health. He pointed to high rates of chronic diseases like diabetes and hypertension and a lack of access to healthy foods in minority communities as long-standing public health problems that have only been exacerbated by the onset of COVID-19.

During the 1918 pandemic, the white population had a higher rate of infection, according to a 2007 study of the outbreak by Thomas A. Garrett, then an economist at the St. Louis Federal Reserve. But that, Garrett surmised, had to do with the fact that the black population in the U.S. was still largely rural; the pandemic was a particular menace to cities. “[T]he nonwhite population in the United States has become much more urban. … A modern-day pandemic may result in greater nonwhite mortality rates because a greater percentage of the nonwhite population in the United States lives in urban areas,” he wrote. Census estimates from 2019 show that the majority of New York City residents are people of color.

Across New York, communities of color have long been more subject to chronic ailments like diabetes and hypertension. The COVID-19 pandemic has only exacerbated these trends.

JOHN NACION / NURPHOTO VIA GETTY IMAGES / ANGELA WEISS / AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Park Slope and the East Elmhurst ZIP code of 11369 are similarly dense, with roughly 32,000 and 31,000 people per square mile, respectively. But life in the neighborhoods is different in other ways that might contribute to their divergent rates of apparent COVID-19 infection. According to the latest Census Bureau count, the most prevalent jobs in East Elmhurst are clerical work, food service and construction. In Park Slope, management, entertainment, education and business are the most common professions. The typical East Elmhurst worker is required to leave home to perform their job, while the lines of work most common in Park Slope are adaptable to teleworking. And Latinos — East Elmhurst’s dominant ethnic group — are more likely than all other Americans to consider COVID-19 a threat to their financial stability, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey.

We’ve already seen how socioeconomic circumstances can correlate with Americans’ ability to stay at home. A recent New York Times analysis of anonymized cellphone data tracked the movements of Americans and found that those in the top 10 percent income bracket have limited their movements more than those in the bottom 10 percent. What Copeland said in 1918 could very likely still hold true: “I have no doubt that the most dangerous means of transmitting disease was the subway. … Many a man who was sick must have felt that he had to go to work.”

Copeland’s struggle against the currents of poverty and influenza would continue into 1920. Updating the public on the state of the epidemic, which had reemerged, Copeland told The New York Times that the health department was working to stop the eviction of tenants during the outbreak and described the struggle to attract nurses to the city’s hospitals, since wealthy individuals were offering them higher pay to work in private homes. He pleaded for better ventilation on subways and buses and criticized coffin-makers who were price-gouging the city’s residents. Even in death, New York was unrelenting.

And so it remains today. Early this week, the city announced that hospital morgues around New York were overflowing with the dead. An Associated Press report painted a grim picture of one Brooklyn hospital. Even with an infection rate much lower than those in Queens, “mounds of corpses” had become so difficult to navigate that hospital staff were stepping over them.

The great equalizer isn’t COVID-19 — it’s death. But in New York’s epidemic, death attends to the haves and have-nots differently: For the city’s poor, it hovers closely, and when it comes, it leaves them as crowded as ever.

from Clare Malone – FiveThirtyEight https://ift.tt/3e9SZbb via https://ift.tt/1B8lJZR

[davidcdelreal]

The 7 Best Mortgage Lenders

A lot of moving parts help set your monthly mortgage payment, like interest rates, loan terms, downpayments, insurance premiums, escrow, federal subsidies, lender fees, principal, and so on.

And this list doesn’t include the biggest variable of all — the selling price of your property. Understanding how those pieces work (and how they interact with each other) will give you more control over your loan.

Control, of course, is a very good thing, especially when you’re already taking a risk by going into debt for decades on your new house.

The Importance of Loan Shopping

Every mortgage loan is different. Yours should be customized to your home, your budget, and your plans for the property:

Payments: If you need a lower monthly payment, for example, you’ll do better with a longer-term loan.

Interest: Someone who wants to pay less mortgage interest should opt for a shorter-term loan and a larger down payment.

Credit Score: A borrower with a lower credit score or who has trouble making a big down payment should consider federally subsidized loan programs.

Veterans Loans: A military veteran can access great loan programs through the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).

Property: Someone hoping to start a bed and breakfast or buy a fixer-upper may need to stick with conventional loans.

With so many variables to think about, though, many borrowers forget to ask one of the most basic questions: Who should be my mortgage lender?

Instead of asking that question, a lot of borrowers apply for a loan (or for pre-approval) at only one place. Maybe it’s at their neighborhood bank or on a lending website their sister-in-law recommended.

Sometimes this works out OK. After all, current mortgage rates do not vary that widely between different lenders the way savings rates or CD rates can vary among banks.

Still, even a small increase in your mortgage interest rate can be costly when spread across decades. And not all lenders offer the same options for borrowers.

In your neighborhood, I bet you know which grocery store has the best seafood and which one has the best produce. A third store may have the kind of ice cream you like.

When you’re shopping for a mortgage loan, it helps to have a similar inside knowledge about the lenders you’re considering.

First: Know What You’re Shopping For

Until you know the kind of loan you need, it’s too soon to decide about your lender.

So before applying for a mortgage loan, or even for pre-approval, let’s learn more about the components of your mortgage payment:

How Mortgage Rates Work

Except for temporary promotions when you’re financing a refrigerator or some furniture, borrowing money means paying interest.

Your mortgage lender charges interest as a percentage of the amount you borrow paid over the life of your loan. The higher your interest rate and the longer it takes to repay the loan, the more you’ll pay in interest.

Younger adults in their 20s and 30s have lived in a time of historically low-interest rates. We’d consider a 6-percent mortgage interest rate astronomical.

People in their 50s and 60s can remember buying houses at 8 or 10 percent interest and thinking nothing of it.

So why the change, and will things change again?

Since mortgage interest rates are more a function of the broader economy, especially the secondary mortgage market and its investors, we can’t easily predict future mortgage interest rates.

A borrower can, however, access more competitive rates by maintaining a good credit score. It’s not too early to start improving your score, even if you may not buy a house for a few more years.

I like apps such as Credit Karma and Credit Sesame which give you constant access to your credit score and offer suggestions for improving it.

Just a half-point difference in your mortgage interest rate can grow into some noticeable savings as your loan plays out.

Say your dream house costs $275,000. You’re putting $25,000 down and borrowing $250,000:

At 4 percent interest over 30 years (re-paid on schedule) you’d pay $429,000 to settle the loan.

At 4.5 percent interest, also 30-years on schedule, you’d pay $456,000 by the end of the loan.

In this case a half-point in interest equals about $27,000! That’s almost $1,000 a year more for the same house. Keeping a good credit score and finding a lower rate by shopping around is worth the time.

What about ARMs? Loan scenarios in this post will describe fixed rate loans. Many banks also offer adjustable rate mortgages, or ARMs.

With these loans, you can get a low initial interest rate for the first few years of the loan. After that, your interest rate changes with the market.

If you’re planning to sell the property quickly, or if you expect to have more financial flexibility in a few years, the low introductory interest rate of an ARM may be attractive. If you’re planning to stay on schedule with your mortgage, a fixed rate loan tends to be more appropriate.

Why the Length of Your Loan Matters

The example above included only 30-year mortgages, which are common especially among first-time home buyers. You can save a lot of interest with a shorter-term loan.

With that same $250,000 mortgage at 4 percent interest, for example:

You’d pay $429,000 over 30 years.

You’d pay $364,000 over 20 years.

You’d pay $333,000 over 15 years.

You’d pay $304,000 over 10 years.

With such huge savings available from a shorter loan, why would anyone get a 30-year mortgage? Well, to unlock the savings a short-term loan offers, you’d have to pay more each month.

To borrow $250,000 at 4 percent interest, you’d pay about:

30-year loan: $1,200 a month.

20-year loan: $1,500 a month.

15-year loan: $1,850 a month.

10-year loan: $2,500 a month.

These payments do not include homeowners insurance or property taxes, but you get the idea: to save more long term, you’ll pay more each month.

So decide what you can afford each month and balance it with how much you could save with a shorter-term loan. Before choosing a lender, make sure it offers the terms you need. Some lenders even offer 40-year loans now.

How Much You Can Put Down

Actions speak louder than words.

Making a down payment on your new house tells your lender (and your realtor and the home’s seller) you’re serious about buying the property.

You’re so serious that you’re willing to put your own cash on the line. Some lenders require a down payment of 3, 5, or 10 percent, for example. Certain federally subsidized loans do not require a down payment at all.

Aside from meeting loan requirements and sending a strong message, there are some really good reasons to make a big down payment:

Putting down, say, $25,000 means you own $25,000 worth of your house the day you close on it. Starting out on the plus side has some advantages, especially if you need to sell within a few years of closing.

Putting down 20 percent of the home’s value means you’ll never have to pay Private Mortgage Insurance (PMI). You pay PMI premiums only while you still owe more than 80 percent of the home’s value. PMI protects your lender, not you, if you default.

A bigger down payment means a smaller loan, and a smaller loan saves money on interest and, of course, principal each month.

If putting together $25,000 or $50,000 for a down payment just isn’t something you’ll ever be able to do, don’t sweat it, and don’t let it prevent you from buying a house.

Instead, save what you can as you prepare for homeownership. You can find some good loans which require only 3 or 3.5 percent down.

With a small down payment, it’ll take longer to pay off your loan and you’ll pay more in interest, but at least you’re investing in your own future and not your landlord’s by continuing to pay rent.

How the Federal Government Can Help

Uncle Sam has a stake in the mortgage industry, and it could help you get the best mortgage to meet your needs.

For example, if you expect saving up a 10-percent down payment would be too high a hurdle for your family, a federally subsidized loan can probably help.

Also, if your credit’s not so great, which has the potential to disqualify you for a conventional loan, a subsidized loan can help.

Let’s take a look at some of the leading federal loan programs:

Federal Housing Administration (FHA) Loans: You can get financed with just 3.5 percent down with this kind of loan.

U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Loans: This program has been designed specifically for homeowners in rural areas, and it offers up to 100 percent financing in some cases, meaning you can get a loan with no money down.

Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Loans: Also offers 100 percent financing to avoid down payments and extends loans to applicants with lower credit scores.

Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Loans: For military veterans and their spouses, a VA mortgage lender can make borrowing easier like an FHA or USDA loan. It can also help borrowers after closing by negotiating lower payments. VA loans also do not require borrowers to pay for Private Mortgage Insurance (PMI).

Borrowers should also be aware there are a few limitations with federally subsidized mortgages:

Some federal loans (not VA) require borrowers to pay Private Mortgage Insurance premiums (or similar annual fees) throughout the life of the loan. Conventional loans allow you to cancel PMI when you’ve paid off at least 20 percent of the loan.

Federal financing can limit how you use your property. An FHA loan, for example, will finance only an owner-occupied home. If you’re buying a home to rent or for someone else in your family to live in, you may need a conventional loan.

For safety reasons, federal lenders often balk at older homes that may have lead-based paint or other dangerous living conditions. If you’re buying a fixer-upper or planning to restore the architectural marvel at the end of the block, go with a conventional loan.

Not all lenders have the authorization to sell federally subsidized loans, so check first before starting the pre-approval process with a lender.

Property Taxes and Home Insurance: Add Them In

Owning a home includes some new responsibilities.

If a pipe bursts and floods your basement, it’s your job to repair the damage. If a sinkhole swallows up the backyard, that’s likely on you, too.

Your new responsibilities will also include insuring your property and paying property taxes (in most states). Taxes and insurance can cost thousands of dollars each year, so many new homeowners spread out the expense using an escrow account.

Your mortgage lender should be able to open and manage an escrow account for you.

Each month your mortgage payment will include your interest, your principal, and a payment for your escrow account.

As the months pass, your money in escrow adds up. When your city or county tax bill or your homeowner’s insurance bill comes due, your lender will pay it using your funds in escrow.

You don’t have to use an escrow account. If you’d rather save the money for taxes and insurance in your own savings account, that’s fine. Just be sure to consider these costs when deciding how much money you can spend on a house.

And if you’d like the convenience of an escrow account, check with potential mortgage lenders before applying to make sure they offer this service.

Your realtor or the seller can fill you in on property taxes. Depending on your address, you may need to pay municipal and county taxes, which could be billed separately.

Property taxes help fund police and fire protection, roads and bridges, public schools, EMS, and local parks. They’re an investment in your community.

Closing Costs: Knowing What You’re Paying

Real estate closings can freak out new homeowners, and for good reason. You’re sitting at a conference table signing document after document, committing yourself to a huge amount of debt for a long time.

Then the fees start to pile up, as if a couple hundred thousand dollars in debt wasn’t enough.

Common mortgage-associated fees include:

A loan origination fee: of 1 percent of the loan amount, charged by your lender.

An appraisal fee: usually a few hundred dollars, because your lender wants to make sure they’re not financing more than the home’s value.

Title search fees: also a few hundred dollars, to make sure your new home’s title is clean. You don’t want to learn later that the seller wasn’t actually the owner.

Flood certification fees: to make sure your home isn’t in a flood zone. If it is, you’ll need flood insurance since your homeowners policy won’t cover flood damage.

Attorney’s fees: for handling all these details. These can run up to $1,500 or so.

Collectively, we call these expenses — and others depending on your lender and your locale — closing costs. Ideally, you can negotiate with the seller to help pay some of these costs. In some markets, you could ask the seller to pay all the costs.

Most likely, though, you’ll be paying some or all of your closing costs. You may want to add them into your mortgage loan if you don’t have enough cash to pay up front.

Given a choice, I’d avoid financing closing costs, though. Why add to your debt, your interest, and your monthly payments unless you have to?

Payments You Don’t Have to Make

We looked at some loan scenarios above for a $250,000 mortgage. We said you’d pay about $429,000 over 30 years to pay off the debt (not including property taxes, insurance, and fees).

This schedule includes $179,000 in interest charges over 30 years. However, you can pay less by getting ahead of schedule.

By paying extra money each month directly onto your principal, which is the actual money you borrowed to pay for the house (not the interest), you can pay off the loan more quickly, giving your lender less time to collect interest.

Paying an extra $100 a month on principal on our 30-year, $250,000 mortgage example, you could save almost $28,000 in interest charges and pay off the loan about four years early.

Check with your lender before applying for a mortgage to find out how to make extra payments. Some lenders offer obvious ways to make extra payments to principal; others have more elaborate rules and schedules to know about.

And don’t stress! I’ve known a few people who got so focused on paying off their homes, they didn’t contribute money to their 401(k) or IRAs. Pay extra if you can and when you can, but there are worse things than owing money on your house.

7 Best Mortgage Lenders You Should Explore

You know your budget. You know the kind of house you need. You know some neighborhoods you like. You may already have a particular house in mind.

And now you also know the elements of a mortgage and how they can work more in your favor. So it’s time to apply this knowledge and find the best mortgage lender for your specific needs.

The following list of best mortgage lenders contains my opinions, which are based partly on the experiences of clients I’ve worked with. Feel free to leave a comment if your experience with a lender has been different.

Lending Tree

You’ve seen their ads about banks competing with each other to get your mortgage business. Lending Tree has been connecting home buyers with lenders online since 1996, when the Internet was just a baby.

And it’s gotten pretty good at it. Lending Tree does not originate loans, but it can help analyze your application and connect you with some really good lenders.

Along with this valuable service, Lending Tree’s tools for borrowers offer a lot of guidance in one place. You can check current mortgage rates, check your debt-to-income ratio, and get a good sense for how much house you can afford.

Best for: Conventional loans from borrowers who are shopping for the best terms.

Quicken Loans

Quicken Loans also has garnered some pretty good name recognition through advertising. Founded in 1985, Quicken Loans has grown into one of the biggest mortgage lenders in the nation.

The company offers a wide variety of loans of all sizes. They’re authorized for VA mortgage lending and other federal loan programs, jumbo mortgages, and adjustable or fixed rate plans.

Quicken Loans’ website makes it easy to find out what kind of loan fits your needs, even if you’re not quite sure going in.

Best for: Shoppers who need guidance finding a loan program to meet their needs.

Guide to Lenders

Like Lending Tree, Guide to Lenders can connect you with a loan but will not originate a mortgage.

The strength of Guide to Lenders lies in its massive list of connections. You can fill out one, simple application online and let Guide to Lenders can connect your application with a wide variety of leading lenders in minutes.

Best for: Homebuyers who aren’t sure what kind of loan they need but who want to shop for competitive rates.

Rocket Mortgage

Quicken Loans, which I’ve already listed, launched Rocket Mortgage in 2016 to streamline the mortgage-lending process. With Rocket Mortgage you can go through the entire lending process completely online.

Some of the company’s early ads said you could complete the process within eight minutes. I’d set aside at least an hour, though, just to make sure you’re entering your information correctly.

Still, it’s hard to find a more streamlined approach to lending online, especially considering the wide variety of loan programs Rocket Mortgage offers. If you’re refinancing, I’d start here.

Best for: Consumers who are somewhat familiar with mortgages, though the site is intuitive enough for anyone who’s comfortable online.

North American Savings Bank

You won’t see as many ads for North American Savings Bank, but they’ve caught my attention over the years because of their customer service.

The bank allows you to easily apply for pre-qualification, which gives you a great idea how much you can borrow (assuming you enter correct information about your income and expenses).

A pre-qualification helps when you’re home shopping because you already know about how much you can spend.

Then, when it’s time to officially apply, North American Savings Bank has personalized counseling available to help guide you through the process.

Best for: First-time homeowners who need a 15 or 30-year mortgage and some personalized help available.

AmeriValue Mortgage Refinance

Here’s another aggregator, like Guide to Lenders and Lending Tree, except AmeriValue focuses exclusively on refinances.

If you’ve been in your house a while and need to tap into the equity, or if you can now qualify for a lower interest rate than when you first got your mortgage, AmeriValue can help.

I like their simple online application that does not require all of your personal and financial details before it starts matching you with potential lenders. The site doesn’t include many bells and whistles such as mortgage calculators. It assumes you know what you’re after.

Best for: Experienced loan shoppers looking for a good deal on a mortgage refinance.

NBKC Bank

NBKC, formerly known as National Bank of Kansas City, started back in 1999 to serve online customers’ mortgage needs.

The bank specializes in subsidized loans, especially VA loans for veterans and their families, and in customer service.

Applicants can get a personal loan officer like you would at a neighborhood bank or savings and loan. While actual, in-person customer service is available only in Kansas and Missouri, the bank’s phone support makes the process easier for customers in all 50 states.

Best for: First-time buyers who need subsidized loans and in-person guidance.

Your Home, Your Loan, Your Future

Mortgages are common. Banks, credit unions and other lenders originate 6 to 8 million of them a year.

So what makes yours different? That’s a question only you can answer because your loan should match your individual needs.

It’s also a question you should answer.

Yes, your payment must fit your current monthly budget, but you need an eye on the future, too. A mortgage is an investment, after all.

You can make this happen by understanding how to find:

The right length for your loan: You can save a lot with a shorter-term loan so long as you can make the payments.

The best interest rate you can qualify for: Start working on your credit score now. Refinance your home if you’ve improved your score a lot since purchasing.

The best use of your own money for a down payment: Get more house with less debt by spending some of your own money.

The right amount of help from government subsidies: If you need help with credit or down payments, Uncle Sam can offer it.

The right balance between paying off your loan early and staying on schedule: The faster you pay off your loan, the more control you’ll have.

When you build a mortgage to match your needs, you’re getting more than just a loan. You’re getting a tool to help build a more stable financial future.

The post The 7 Best Mortgage Lenders appeared first on Good Financial Cents®.

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Facebook spends more protecting Mark Zuckerberg than most Fortune 500 CEOs make in a year

It costs a lot to keep Mark Zuckerberg safe.

Facebook Inc. spent US$7.33 million last year protecting its chief executive officer at his homes and during his tour across the U.S. Last week, the social-media giant said it would provide an additional US$10 million a year for him to spend on personal security.

The cost for this year far exceeds what other firms will spend for their bosses and probably surpass the average annual compensation for S&P 500 CEOs. For the world’s sixth-richest person, it doesn’t necessarily amount to much.

“Security at multiple residences, transportation, a protection team, cyber, travel — if you also have a wife and a few kids, you’re already over US$10 million just for a basic package,” said Roderick Jones, chairman of risk consultant Concentric Advisors.

Mark Zuckerberg departs a meeting on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on April 9.

Not all corporate titans need security. An executive who avoids the limelight, shuns media interviews and donates to charity anonymously can more easily blend in with the public.

Zuckerberg is, well, Zuckerberg. He’s the founder and leader of one of the world’s most valuable companies, regularly sharing photos and videos of himself playing with his two daughters, meeting world leaders and barbecuing brisket in his backyard. And he’s worth US$68.6 billion.

Facebook also took a barrage of criticism over its data-privacy policies, especially in countries such as Myanmar and Sri Lanka, where misinformation on the firm’s website led to violence. It faced significant backlash from investigations into Russia’s efforts to influence the outcome of the 2016 U.S. elections. Those controversies — not to mention angry customers, terrorist attacks and workplace shootings — can make tight security essential.

The costs for Facebook’s CEO security program is appropriate and necessary, considering Zuckerberg’s “position and importance” to the firm, and he doesn’t receive any other compensation beyond a US$1 salary, the Menlo Park, California-based company said in its most recent quarterly report.

Regulatory filings provide occasional glimpses into company-paid arrangements. Perks that are available to all employees — such as free snacks or security guards at building entrances — don’t have to be reported. But benefits solely for an executive, such as bodyguards or home-security systems, are taxable and typically must be included as part of the person’s annual compensation.

Most big companies pay for CEOs to use private jets for personal trips, both to ensure their security and give them flexibility to return on short notice. Some provide cars and drivers and pay for home security. Only a few cover bodyguards.

While Facebook has spent US$24.7 million on Zuckerberg’s protection since 2013, the additional money will come in handy, said Paul Viollis, CEO of security firm Viollis Group International. Corporate security programs usually don’t include protection for members of a person’s immediate or extended family. They also may not cover multiple residences in far-flung places.

Home security

Walls, fences or other barriers surrounding homes of the ultra-wealthy are typically equipped with motion sensors and monitored by cameras that can be programmed to recognize certain faces. The space between external barriers and a house often contain another layer or two of intrusion detection, such as buried cables or pressure pads, or something as simple as dense vegetation or crushed gravel that’s noisy underfoot.

Typical measures inside residences can include ballistic windows, cameras, safe rooms, reinforced doors, walls and locks, and simple things such as strong hinges to prevent doors from being knocked down. The costs of all that, as well as maintaining surveillance, can run into the seven figures, Jones said.

Costs Multiply

Being tailed by bodyguards in suits, shades and earpieces at all hours can cost as much as US$1 million. Each 24/7 position requires four people who each can command six-figure salaries, said Christopher Falkenberg, a former Secret Service agent and founder of Insite Security. And they never work alone, meaning a detail for one executive might require a staff of about 10. Add relatives and the costs multiply.

Many of the best security personnel come from government agencies such as the State Department or Federal Bureau of Investigation, which gives them a broader range of experience than the military, Jones said. Facebook’s security program, for example, is run by an ex-Secret Service agent who served on former Vice President Joe Biden’s detail, according to her LinkedIn profile.

Travel Travails

Executives are typically most at risk when they travel, said Peter Martin, CEO of security consultancy Afimac, recalling a client who was robbed at gunpoint during a cab ride in Mexico after forgetting to lock the door.

Trips for the ultra-wealthy start with an assessment of the threats at the destination, such as heightened risk of kidnapping or terrorist attacks. A team is deployed in advance to scout the area, learn evacuation routes and liaise with local security professionals or government resources. Bringing backup doses of medicines and renting armored cars also can be part of the program, Martin said.

Avoiding Extortion

Protecting a person’s devices is also important. Beyond cellphones, tablets and computers, smart devices such as toilets and refrigerators can make home networks vulnerable. Gaining access, a person can obtain sensitive information that could be used for extortion or identity theft.

Network-security firms offer myriad options for enterprise customers, but it’s harder for smaller outfits, like a household or family office, to get hold of tailored solutions that are both sophisticated and affordable, according to Jones.

“People have a perception of what security is from popular entertainment,” he said, referring to muscular men with military experience. The reality, however, is pretty boring. “Security is 1,000 little things done well.”

With assistance from Sarah Frier.

Bloomberg.com

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9 Habits of Highly Successful Cultivators

According to Cannabis Business Times:

More than $5 billion in state-legal marijuana flew off store shelves in 2015, and national sales are expected to boom as voters and legislators christen new markets and relax rules. But with the piecemeal end of prohibition, growing the plant is more complicated than ever.

That’s partially because the sprouting industry confronts a pile of rules, but also because growers are often raising thousands of plants at a time.

Today, above-board growers must work not only to raise plants, but also to cultivate employee talent and build relations with neighbors, while dutifully obeying regulations they often have worked to help shape, ensuring on-site biosecurity, investing in technology and developing a niche.

Some of the nation’s leading cultivators spoke with Cannabis Business Times and shared lessons they have learned along the way, as well as basic best practices for anyone looking to follow in their footsteps.

1 Pick Your Partners Wisely

It’s one of the most important rules in life and in business: Commit to a business partner with whom you’re compatible.

Former high school biology teacher Tim Cullen, co-owner of the large Colorado Harvest Company, says he found a good match in partner Ralph Morgan, but all around him sees shotgun marriages exploding or slowly coming unglued.

“It would be easier for my wife and I to get divorced,” he says, than it would be for him to break up with Morgan. “My wife and I just have one son and own one house. If Ralph and I got divorced, we have 80 employees, we have six buildings, we own a lot more real estate together, we have a lot more money at stake. Ralph and I cannot get divorced.”

Cullen says it’s important for partners to be compatible in work ethic and complementary in experience and demeanor. He brought to the table a larger grow operation, Morgan a stronger retail presence. “We were just like nice puzzle pieces that fit together,” he says, with similar ages and family experiences meshing well.

But everyone hasn’t been so fortunate.

John Lord, the owner of LivWell, a business described in media reports as Colorado’s largest grower — but not by Lord, who pleads ignorance to that fact — says he chose not to have a partner after a rocky past relationship.

Lord’s pre-cannabis professional background includes the tightly regulated manufacture and sale of baby products to big-box retailers; he says that throughout the cannabis sector would-be industrialists like himself have partnered with younger people enthusiastic about growing the plant.

“What happens in a lot of situations is you ended up with the senior money guys and the young entrepreneurial grower, and that was your marriage. And most of the times that relationship has ended badly,” Lord says.

Many younger growers, he says, consider growing cannabis an art form, something he says is not conducive to a large marijuana-growing business that must turn out reliable product, just like grocery stores, without whimsical variation.

When manufacturing a product on an industrial scale, “you can’t just randomly say, ‘I want to make purple ones today,’ ” he says, noting he’s also seen many formerly illicit growers have trouble adjusting to a rules-compliant MO.

As cannabis businesses grow, all sorts of relationships grow into business partnerships. Some grow out of friendships and others vaguely resemble a family farm.

Rachel Cooper of Washington state’s Monkey Grass Farms, one of the state’s largest growers as a Tier III operation, says her business associates are a pleasure to work with. They’re her mother, father and sister, with past careers in construction, nursing and corporate procurement.

“At least with family, we get over things really quickly, and at the end of the day we’re working to the same goal,” says Cooper, who handles the business’ marketing and public relations. “It’s been fun, actually.”

2 Shape Regulations Before They Shape You

Around the nation’s capital, Corey Barnette is becoming a familiar face, advocating with municipal leaders to tweak local laws and appearing at a press conference last year with three U.S. senators to unveil a bill that would undo federal prohibition on medical marijuana.

Barnette, easily one of his city’s most accessible and civically minded medical marijuana growers, knows the value of molding the regulatory clay before it hardens. “In our industry right now, there’s a serious risk that legislators and regulators will get it wrong simply because they don’t know,” he says. “It does us no good to propose a medical marijuana bill if once we pass those laws it prevents patients from getting the care they need.”

There’s been success so far for D.C.-based cultivators like Barnette, with the city drastically expanding qualifying medical conditions from a short list to one of the nation’s most relaxed standards, and lifting a cap of fewer than 100 plants per grow operation to 500 and then 1,000.

But Barnette, sole owner of District Growers, is not done lobbying. He says one of his next targets is a restriction on licensees moving their grow location, and he’s hoping legislation will soon pass allowing his company to move.

Right now, Barnette is forced to grow his plants only to a small size to cope with limited growing space and his desire to offer a wide range of strains. District Growers’ facility has about 700 plants now, but only 250 would fit if they were grown larger.

“The space I need to grow 95 plants is radically different than 1,000 plants,” he says. “Luckily we had the foresight that at some point these rules had to relax. The question was how long it would take.”

If not for businesspeople going down to city hall, he says, the evolution of laws would have been much slower.

Cooper says Monkey Grass Farms works with a lobbyist in Washington state’s capital to ensure the business’s needs are well-represented, and Cullen says about 25 percent of his time is devoted to rubbing shoulders with decision-makers.

3 Prevent the Need for Pesticides

The U.S. government currently does not approve any pesticides for use on cannabis, which remains federally illegal, and the presence of chemicals on retail product has led state regulators and consumers to panic in states like Colorado, where officials have scrambled to curb their use and where a lawsuit (that has since been dropped) was filed last year by consumers against LivWell for alleged pesticide use.

Growers say one of the most effective ways to reduce the need for pesticides is to simply keep gardens clean.

Lord says LivWell stopped using synthetic pesticides a year ago and advises other growers to do the same, but he says that is, more than anything, to ward off bad press. The public is naive, he says, if it believes unblemished supermarket produce is organically grown.

Still, bureaucrats in places like Colorado and Oregon now are giving their blessing to some pesticides due to labels not explicitly ruling out use on cannabis. Lord says, “There are certain products that are approved now, [which] my guys wouldn’t have within 100 yards of our grow.”

Cullen says his company also had to adjust to changing rules, but has managed to work with restrictions by strictly following an integrated pest management protocol, though he says some insects he’s come to tolerate, particularly gnats.

His staff wears what Cullen calls “hospital gown uniforms” to limit outside contamination.

Some growers, of course, eagerly embrace organic solutions.

The co-owners of northern California’s Artifact Nursery, established last year and already topping more than 2,000 clients, seek out nature’s fixes.

Co-owner Jamie Westbrook* says he watched a nature documentary with his son where a small forest mushroom’s spores infected and then killed an insect before it sprouted a new mushroom from the corpse and unloading another dose of biological warfare on nearby insects.

“Literally the next day I was reading through the farm bureau magazine on companies that had isolated these from the wild,” he says, prompting him to buy the product.

Westbrook says using natural pesticides that affect only the surface of a plant is ideal, as they can simply be washed away, unlike systemic pesticides that travel through a plant’s vascular system and potentially deposit themselves in soil.

Some of his other go-to treatments are organic oils — including sesame and clove — which are applied to plants with a backpack sprayer, coating them and suffocating mites, some of which are microscopic.

Joshua King*, Westbrook’s business partner, says the best measures to reduce the need for pesticides sometimes are the simplest.

“The best preventative is keeping plants healthy,” he says, with “simple things like having fly strips around,” and adding hydrogen peroxide to water or a nutrient solution and applying it to soil/media, can help prevent bacteria in the water, pythium (a waterborne root disease), to some extent, and other things that effect roots. Plus, the residual is oxygen, which the roots love.

(Note: In the world of microbe organic cultivation, however, the use of hydrogen peroxide is not advisable for anything but cleaning.)

“There’s a lot of tricks you learn over the years,” King says. “Organic is very time consuming.”

4 Be a Good Neighbor

What democracy giveth, democracy can take away. It’s a lesson learned across the nation as jurisdictions legalize marijuana. In Washington state, Monkey Grass Farms had first-hand experience beating back a ban. And much like dealing with pests, prevention matters.

“Our county planning board was trying to ban producers/processors,” Cooper recalls. “It stemmed from some neighbors who were angry there was a pot farm a few blocks from their house.”

“Some people do find it very offensive, and it’s important to educate them that we’re good businesspeople and that we’re setting up legitimate businesses,” she says.

Barnette says although there’s a steady march to repeal prohibition, “there’s still a significant level of taboo, and it’s important at all times to be aware of that. We have to be aware that not everyone everywhere utilizes cannabis.”

5 Consider Investing in Technology

As commercial cannabis growers ramp up production, some are turning to technologies and equipment that save valuable staff and production time, that make products more consistent, and that also save them money.

Artifact Nursery’s owners say that they recently decided to push the technological envelop by turning to LED lights for the company’s clone-producing mother plants, which require more than 15 hours of light each day to be arrested in a vegetative state. The gamble has paid off, Westbrook says, and the nursery now uses 80 percent less electricity than it did previously.

Cullen says one piece of machinery that’s been invaluable is an electric Twister trimmer for some products — “a godsend,” he says.

An “Agritech” computer helps mix nutrients for different plant rooms, and monitors temperature and other environmental parameters.

6 Gather the Right Team and Help Your Workforce Grow

Lord says he fired many of LivWell’s original employees, finding they fancied themselves master growers and artists rather than industrial farm workers.

David Bonvillain, founder and CEO of Elite Cannabis Enterprises in Colorado, says he has seen this more often than he would like in the industry. “The delusion of grandeur just because you grow an agriculture crop is insanity and needs to be stomped out,” he says. “Nobody else but cannabis cultivators see themselves as some gift from above. They all need to spend a six-month tour-of-duty in a four-acre production tomato greenhouse with the teams in there grinding all day, every day and get a reality check on what this is about to be like for them.”

As a solution, Lord says that he now works to educate his employees and provide them a career path, with an eye toward retaining talent.

The staff generally starts off as trimmers, about 70 of them working the field currently, and after a while it becomes clear whether they have the desire and skill to move forward, Lord says. If they stick around, they have a 401K plan and opportunities for growth.

“We put them through training and get them to understand there are probably 1,000 ways to grow cannabis, but we’ve chosen one, and you will follow that regardless of your personal preference,” he says.

Several PhD holders and botanists are on staff, Lord says, and the company works to ensure they, too, grow in knowledge. Seven members of the company’s research and development team traveled to Panama last year for a large agricultural conference.

“We’re not going to find the answers within the cannabis world,” he says. “It’s going to come from high-tech agriculture. We’ve exceed the knowledge base by a long way.”

Bonvillain suggests that if you want to be a truly qualified expert, “Get a degree or the equivalent through work/life experience. Be the very best at your craft. Learn everything possible. A ‘master grower’ should know every methodology, every style, everything about the plant from the cell structure to growing mediums (all of them) to [integrated pest management] strategies, as well as have a comprehensive knowledge set on what does what within those strategies.

“They should understand the fundamentals of planning and supply chain, the cost of goods sold,” he says, “all the way through the tiers of costs. And they should understand personnel management and control/compliance documentation procedures and interpersonal communication skills,” he says.

Cooper says Monkey Grass Farms similarly had to weed through employees, but that there remains a core team that feels it’s progressing together. Among the businesses’ important hires were an operations manager and someone who ensures strict compliance with regulations.

“We’ve found some very loyal employees. They’ve been growing with us, and we’re hiring consultants to educate them,” she says.

Cullen, meanwhile, has found investing in a solid bookkeeper and a chief operations officer essential to success. A federally illegal business can’t be too careful, and a large grower can’t do everything themselves, he notes.

7 Consider Certification

While growers can’t call themselves organic, a federally regulated term, they can choose third-party certifications that at least verify their practices.

Artifact Nursery sees their “Clean Green” certification as a reflection of their values, but also sees it as useful in attracting customers. “Some people really care about what you’re using on their product,” Westbrook says. “You get the whole gamut of people with different moral imperatives and concerns.”

Other certifications exist, such as the Patient Focused Certification (PFC), established by Americans for Safe Access, one of the nation’s largest medical marijuana advocacy groups.

The PFC program applies standards backed by compliance inspections, staff training and an independent consumer complaint process, giving dispensaries with which growers work a sense of quality assurance. Medical growers, distributors and labs are eligible for the certification.

“Certification from patient-focused organizations using objective criteria can help cannabis farmers establish safe and reasonable industry standards,” says PFC Program Manager Tim Murphy, which also can be useful “as states adopt product safety regulations.”

Lord says he’s not seen the recreational industry turn en masse to non-governmental certifications, at least not yet. Consumers must be able to recognize the meaning of a certification for it to have value, he says.

8 Don’t Try to Do Everything. Focus on What You Do Best

“Far too many groups try to take on too much and frequently don’t have the experience, expertise or bandwidth to do everything well,” says Elite Cannabis’ Bonvillain. “Just because you ‘can’ make a new product (say, a tincture) doesn’t necessarily mean that you should. Many folks fail to consider all facets of product development, packaging, labeling, distribution, customer service, etc.”

If you are going to do it all yourself, he says, “pick the right internal partners for your organization. Otherwise, strategically partner with strong third-party organizations that can complement your capabilities while you complement theirs.”

9 Early Bird Gets the Worm

It’s difficult to know when the moment is right to jump into the cannabis-growing market. Currently, state lines are walls through which locally legal product cannot pass, leaving open the door for would-be cultivators on the other sides of those walls.

“The time is still out there for a lot of people,” says Cullen, who credits his success in part with being among the first to enter Colorado’s medical market, which he did after growing on a small scale for himself and his father following their diagnosis with the same medical condition.

*Editor’s Note: Names have been changed at the interviewees’ request.

TO READ THE ARTICLE ON CANNABIS TIMES, CLICK HERE.

http://www.cannabisbusinesstimes.com/article/nine-habits-of-highly-successful-cultivators/

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Entrepreneurship is not for the faint of heart. Starting a business can feel like trying to swim upstream, in crowded, icy waters — with weights on your ankles. It isn’t at all like your childhood lemonade stand where there were no consequences for closing up shop. Being a business owner is stressful, time-consuming, and risky.

And yet, people start businesses every single day. According to the most recent Census data, 5.73 million businesses existed in the marketplace in 2012, many of which are small businesses and startups. Of those companies, 99.7 percent had fewer than 500 employees and 89.6 percent had fewer than 20. If you add in the companies with no paid employees (usually sole-proprietorships, also known as “nonemployers”), the “share of U.S. businesses with less than 20 workers increases to 97.9 percent.”

That is a lot of entrepreneurs trying to get their startups off the ground. But the reality of the situation is that about one-third of small businesses will close before their second birthday. There are numerous reasons why these businesses didn’t make it — many of which are no one’s fault, but are instead results of circumstance and perhaps, lack of luck.

To-do lists will keep your life (and your business) organized.

None of these entrepreneurs believed their business would close. No one opens a business hoping it will fail — but everyone wants to know what they can do to prevent it from happening. We spoke to some successful entrepreneurs across the country to get advice for startups guaranteed to set you on the right path. Here are some tools and tips that will help you reach your goals.

Advice for Startups: What You Can’t Afford to Miss

Have a Clear Definition of Who You Are

Joey Pepe has always loved donuts. After his wife (then, girlfriend) bought him a donut making kit as a gift, Joe’s Doughs was born in his tiny kitchen. He started off making donuts for his family and friends, but before long, he was selling out pop-up shops and markets around Charlotte, North Carolina (we can see why), leading him to open a brick and mortar store in the NoDa district.

When it comes to running your startup, Pepe points out the importance of having a clear definition of who you are and what your goals are, saying that “everyone is going to try and tell you what to do or what you should be doing. If you have a clear identity for your business, you can surround yourself with people who have a similar vision.”

At the same time, you must “also be open to making that idea fluid. Recognize and take stock of what is and isn’t working — and don’t hesitate too much to change those things.” Pepe believes that being honest with yourself (not everything will go your way), while keeping that core mission in place will make the tough decisions less stressful.

This advice for startups crosses industry borders. No matter what your business is, your vision and mission should be at the core. When faced with decisions, ask yourself: “Does this plan benefit the mission? Will it move me closer to my goals?” If not, maybe it isn’t the best use of your resources.

Get Your Books in Order — and then Properly Report to Investors

Duane Jackson has worked with his share of startups, even founding a couple of his own. In his early days, he found himself struggling with accounting issues often associated with startups — specifically, “the various regulations and requirements that spring up alongside the actual business side of things.”

As entrepreneurs tend to do, Jackson decided to solve his own problem by creating Kashflow. Jackson knows that we’re not all accountants and that we could benefit from “using a dedicated service to help with accounts and financial matters — and if you can afford to outsource finances to a professional accountant, even better.”

His second piece of important advice for startups is to properly (and frequently) report progress to investors. After selling Kashflow, he invested in multiple startups, but found that some entrepreneurs had difficulty creating regular investor reports. Again solving his own problem, he founded Supdate on the belief that “being able to create detailed monthly reports and send them out on time is a good skill for any entrepreneur to develop.”

We couldn’t agree more. If you are asking investors to trust you with their hard-earned money, you’d better be able to keep them in the loop. They’ll want to know what progress you’re making (or not making) and frankly, they deserve to know. Be sure to keep the lines of communication open — lest they decide to pull back their investment.

Startups have to be organized — even if that means a series of sticky notes on the wall.

Get on the PR Train Immediately

So you’ve created your startup. You’ve done the legal stuff, you made a Facebook page, got a Twitter handle, and started posting photos to Instagram, but the customers aren’t magically pouring through your door. The phone is not ringing. It would seem that people don’t know you exist yet.

To help solve this problem, Ben Walker, CEO of Transcription Outsourcing recommends getting as much PR as you possibly can — as soon as possible. Some entrepreneurs are intimidated by this, but PR doesn’t have to be scary. There are plenty of resources online that will help you learn how to navigate the “PR Engine” and if you’d rather not deal with it, invest in services from PR agencies. They can take care of the legwork for you.

Hire People Smarter Than You

With any luck, your startup will flourish and you’ll need to start hiring people to help you. When you do, Ted Chan, CEO of CareDash recommends hiring people that are smarter than you. Specifically, this means you need to find people who can make meaningful contributions to your business.

Look for people who know things that you don’t and can fix your pain points. You might be great with customers and even better at getting them to sign contracts, but it might be time to admit you’re terrible with organization. The paperwork is pretty important, so hire an office manager — one with actual experience managing an office.

Because startups tend to be cautious about hiring, it isn’t unusual for a person to have a wide variety of responsibilities. So since you don’t know how to tweet, see if your new office manager can also handle social media marketing (or is willing to go through training) so that you are freed up to manage your clients.

Entrepreneurs are always on, no matter what their schedule says.

It’s Okay to Say No!

Entrepreneurs have a tendency to say “yes” to pretty much anything. In fact, it’s actual advice given to startups — “Say yes and figure out how you’ll do it later.” The desire to accept any work that comes your way is perfectly acceptable. If you turn it down, it may not come back, right?

It’s this kind of advice that Rafael Romis, CEO of Weberous, wished someone would have cautioned him about during his startup days. Romis says that “learning to be more discerning with your time and energy is the crucial part of starting a business. Time is the most precious resource you have and you don’t want to waste it.”

Romis poses an idea that perhaps more business owners should consider: “Some clients aren’t worth getting involved with and some opportunities are too inconsequential to bother with.” While it may seem counterintuitive, this is great advice for startups. Entrepreneurs too often bog themselves down, taking whatever contracts come their way, stretching themselves to the brink of exhaustion just to pay the bills. There is something honorable in this strategy, but you must ask yourself if it’s the best use of your finite time and precious resources.

Tools Startups Can’t (or Shouldn’t) Live Without

Tools to Protect Yourself — and Your Startup

Handling the legal issues that come with being a business owner can be time consuming, whether you have a background in law or not. To help you navigate the waters, here are some tools to protect yourself:

Insureon offers a place to easily find and compare small business insurance from over 35 different insurance companies. To help customers find what they need, they developed a tool called Policy Buddy. You select a number of factors that determine what type of protection you need, such as what your business offers (products or services), whether you own or rent a physical location, and if you employ others. Once you’ve made your selections, Policy Buddy recommends the types of insurance that might be in your best interest.

One way for business owners to protect themselves is to incorporate or form an LLC (limited liability company). Deborah Sweeney, CEO of MyCorporation says that doing so “allows you to protect your personal assets and separate them from your professional ones, save money on taxes, and establish credibility with consumers to ensure your startup remains successful in the long run.”

Sweeney also recommends trademarking your business name and logo. She says that “trademarks allow you to claim your name and protect your unique business identity to keep anyone else from plagiarizing or copying the assets.” This is especially true if your business name uses common words or if other businesses have similar names.

Every startup has to start somewhere — oftentimes in an entrepreneur’s home.

Tools to Make Your Startup Accessible

When you first start your business, it might be out of your house. Or even out of a startup incubator that allows you to rent space a couple days a week. Putting your cell phone number on the internet for all the world to see is a scary prospect, but potential customers need a way to reach you (email can’t be used for everything). Nick Santora at Curricula used Grasshopper to get an 800-number to make his business more easily accessible. Not only do they have a toll-free number for customers to use, they can transfer calls between cell phones so the client can reach exactly who they need.

This one may seem like a no-brainer, but for startups, Skype is essential. There are plenty of reasons to love Skype (it’s free, it’s easy to use, it lets you make international calls), but one of our favorites is that it allows you to screen share. Whether you’re giving a presentation, showing another employee something new, or walking someone through a problem, screen sharing is an effective way to communicate.

Getting Your Startup Off the Ground

Startups are a tough business. In the beginning, many entrepreneurs (even ones that go on to be successful) wonder why they chose to open their own business in the first place. There were definitely times they wanted to quit. But in the end, they stuck with it. For better or worse, entrepreneurs like running a business. Solving people’s problems comes naturally.

On the days when you’re struggling to find the will to keep going, remember the advice for startups here. Remember what Joey Pepe said about staying true to yourself and your goals. If you’re feeling burnt out, maybe now is the time you need to look into hiring people — people smarter than you who share the same vision.

Apple co-founder Steve Jobs once said, “I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.” Don’t let setbacks and failures deter you. Hold your head up high, take a deep breath, and push forward. You never know when you’ll turn the corner.

Proto.io lets anyone build mobile app prototypes that feel real. No coding or design skills required. Bring your ideas to life quickly! Sign up for a free 15-day trial of Proto.io today and get started on your next mobile app design.

Originally published at blog.proto.io on April 4, 2017.

Tools and Tips for Startups You Can’t Afford to Miss was originally published in The Startup on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

April 21, 2017 at 09:28AM http://ift.tt/2pK03VF from Proto.io http://ift.tt/2pK03VF

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The 7 Best Mortgage Lenders

A lot of moving parts help set your monthly mortgage payment, like interest rates, loan terms, downpayments, insurance premiums, escrow, federal subsidies, lender fees, principal, and so on.

And this list doesn’t include the biggest variable of all — the selling price of your property. Understanding how those pieces work (and how they interact with each other) will give you more control over your loan.

Control, of course, is a very good thing, especially when you’re already taking a risk by going into debt for decades on your new house.

The Importance of Loan Shopping

Every mortgage loan is different. Yours should be customized to your home, your budget, and your plans for the property:

Payments: If you need a lower monthly payment, for example, you’ll do better with a longer-term loan.

Interest: Someone who wants to pay less mortgage interest should opt for a shorter-term loan and a larger down payment.

Credit Score: A borrower with a lower credit score or who has trouble making a big down payment should consider federally subsidized loan programs.

Veterans Loans: A military veteran can access great loan programs through the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).

Property: Someone hoping to start a bed and breakfast or buy a fixer-upper may need to stick with conventional loans.

With so many variables to think about, though, many borrowers forget to ask one of the most basic questions: Who should be my mortgage lender?

Instead of asking that question, a lot of borrowers apply for a loan (or for pre-approval) at only one place. Maybe it’s at their neighborhood bank or on a lending website their sister-in-law recommended.

Sometimes this works out OK. After all, current mortgage rates do not vary that widely between different lenders the way savings rates or CD rates can vary among banks.

Still, even a small increase in your mortgage interest rate can be costly when spread across decades. And not all lenders offer the same options for borrowers.

In your neighborhood, I bet you know which grocery store has the best seafood and which one has the best produce. A third store may have the kind of ice cream you like.

When you’re shopping for a mortgage loan, it helps to have a similar inside knowledge about the lenders you’re considering.

First: Know What You’re Shopping For

Until you know the kind of loan you need, it’s too soon to decide about your lender.

So before applying for a mortgage loan, or even for pre-approval, let’s learn more about the components of your mortgage payment:

How Mortgage Rates Work

Except for temporary promotions when you’re financing a refrigerator or some furniture, borrowing money means paying interest.

Your mortgage lender charges interest as a percentage of the amount you borrow paid over the life of your loan. The higher your interest rate and the longer it takes to repay the loan, the more you’ll pay in interest.

Younger adults in their 20s and 30s have lived in a time of historically low-interest rates. We’d consider a 6-percent mortgage interest rate astronomical.

People in their 50s and 60s can remember buying houses at 8 or 10 percent interest and thinking nothing of it.

So why the change, and will things change again?

Since mortgage interest rates are more a function of the broader economy, especially the secondary mortgage market and its investors, we can’t easily predict future mortgage interest rates.

A borrower can, however, access more competitive rates by maintaining a good credit score. It’s not too early to start improving your score, even if you may not buy a house for a few more years.

I like apps such as Credit Karma and Credit Sesame which give you constant access to your credit score and offer suggestions for improving it.

Just a half-point difference in your mortgage interest rate can grow into some noticeable savings as your loan plays out.

Say your dream house costs $275,000. You’re putting $25,000 down and borrowing $250,000:

At 4 percent interest over 30 years (re-paid on schedule) you’d pay $429,000 to settle the loan.

At 4.5 percent interest, also 30-years on schedule, you’d pay $456,000 by the end of the loan.

In this case a half-point in interest equals about $27,000! That’s almost $1,000 a year more for the same house. Keeping a good credit score and finding a lower rate by shopping around is worth the time.

What about ARMs? Loan scenarios in this post will describe fixed rate loans. Many banks also offer adjustable rate mortgages, or ARMs.

With these loans, you can get a low initial interest rate for the first few years of the loan. After that, your interest rate changes with the market.

If you’re planning to sell the property quickly, or if you expect to have more financial flexibility in a few years, the low introductory interest rate of an ARM may be attractive. If you’re planning to stay on schedule with your mortgage, a fixed rate loan tends to be more appropriate.

Why the Length of Your Loan Matters

The example above included only 30-year mortgages, which are common especially among first-time home buyers. You can save a lot of interest with a shorter-term loan.

With that same $250,000 mortgage at 4 percent interest, for example:

You’d pay $429,000 over 30 years.

You’d pay $364,000 over 20 years.

You’d pay $333,000 over 15 years.

You’d pay $304,000 over 10 years.

With such huge savings available from a shorter loan, why would anyone get a 30-year mortgage? Well, to unlock the savings a short-term loan offers, you’d have to pay more each month.

To borrow $250,000 at 4 percent interest, you’d pay about:

30-year loan: $1,200 a month.

20-year loan: $1,500 a month.

15-year loan: $1,850 a month.

10-year loan: $2,500 a month.

These payments do not include homeowners insurance or property taxes, but you get the idea: to save more long term, you’ll pay more each month.

So decide what you can afford each month and balance it with how much you could save with a shorter-term loan. Before choosing a lender, make sure it offers the terms you need. Some lenders even offer 40-year loans now.

How Much You Can Put Down

Actions speak louder than words.

Making a down payment on your new house tells your lender (and your realtor and the home’s seller) you’re serious about buying the property.

You’re so serious that you’re willing to put your own cash on the line. Some lenders require a down payment of 3, 5, or 10 percent, for example. Certain federally subsidized loans do not require a down payment at all.

Aside from meeting loan requirements and sending a strong message, there are some really good reasons to make a big down payment:

Putting down, say, $25,000 means you own $25,000 worth of your house the day you close on it. Starting out on the plus side has some advantages, especially if you need to sell within a few years of closing.

Putting down 20 percent of the home’s value means you’ll never have to pay Private Mortgage Insurance (PMI). You pay PMI premiums only while you still owe more than 80 percent of the home’s value. PMI protects your lender, not you, if you default.

A bigger down payment means a smaller loan, and a smaller loan saves money on interest and, of course, principal each month.

If putting together $25,000 or $50,000 for a down payment just isn’t something you’ll ever be able to do, don’t sweat it, and don’t let it prevent you from buying a house.

Instead, save what you can as you prepare for homeownership. You can find some good loans which require only 3 or 3.5 percent down.

With a small down payment, it’ll take longer to pay off your loan and you’ll pay more in interest, but at least you’re investing in your own future and not your landlord’s by continuing to pay rent.

How the Federal Government Can Help

Uncle Sam has a stake in the mortgage industry, and it could help you get the best mortgage to meet your needs.

For example, if you expect saving up a 10-percent down payment would be too high a hurdle for your family, a federally subsidized loan can probably help.

Also, if your credit’s not so great, which has the potential to disqualify you for a conventional loan, a subsidized loan can help.

Let’s take a look at some of the leading federal loan programs:

Federal Housing Administration (FHA) Loans: You can get financed with just 3.5 percent down with this kind of loan.

U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Loans: This program has been designed specifically for homeowners in rural areas, and it offers up to 100 percent financing in some cases, meaning you can get a loan with no money down.

Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Loans: Also offers 100 percent financing to avoid down payments and extends loans to applicants with lower credit scores.

Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Loans: For military veterans and their spouses, a VA mortgage lender can make borrowing easier like an FHA or USDA loan. It can also help borrowers after closing by negotiating lower payments. VA loans also do not require borrowers to pay for Private Mortgage Insurance (PMI).

Borrowers should also be aware there are a few limitations with federally subsidized mortgages:

Some federal loans (not VA) require borrowers to pay Private Mortgage Insurance premiums (or similar annual fees) throughout the life of the loan. Conventional loans allow you to cancel PMI when you’ve paid off at least 20 percent of the loan.

Federal financing can limit how you use your property. An FHA loan, for example, will finance only an owner-occupied home. If you’re buying a home to rent or for someone else in your family to live in, you may need a conventional loan.

For safety reasons, federal lenders often balk at older homes that may have lead-based paint or other dangerous living conditions. If you’re buying a fixer-upper or planning to restore the architectural marvel at the end of the block, go with a conventional loan.

Not all lenders have the authorization to sell federally subsidized loans, so check first before starting the pre-approval process with a lender.

Property Taxes and Home Insurance: Add Them In

Owning a home includes some new responsibilities.

If a pipe bursts and floods your basement, it’s your job to repair the damage. If a sinkhole swallows up the backyard, that’s likely on you, too.

Your new responsibilities will also include insuring your property and paying property taxes (in most states). Taxes and insurance can cost thousands of dollars each year, so many new homeowners spread out the expense using an escrow account.

Your mortgage lender should be able to open and manage an escrow account for you.

Each month your mortgage payment will include your interest, your principal, and a payment for your escrow account.

As the months pass, your money in escrow adds up. When your city or county tax bill or your homeowner’s insurance bill comes due, your lender will pay it using your funds in escrow.

You don’t have to use an escrow account. If you’d rather save the money for taxes and insurance in your own savings account, that’s fine. Just be sure to consider these costs when deciding how much money you can spend on a house.

And if you’d like the convenience of an escrow account, check with potential mortgage lenders before applying to make sure they offer this service.

Your realtor or the seller can fill you in on property taxes. Depending on your address, you may need to pay municipal and county taxes, which could be billed separately.

Property taxes help fund police and fire protection, roads and bridges, public schools, EMS, and local parks. They’re an investment in your community.

Closing Costs: Knowing What You’re Paying

Real estate closings can freak out new homeowners, and for good reason. You’re sitting at a conference table signing document after document, committing yourself to a huge amount of debt for a long time.

Then the fees start to pile up, as if a couple hundred thousand dollars in debt wasn’t enough.

Common mortgage-associated fees include:

A loan origination fee: of 1 percent of the loan amount, charged by your lender.

An appraisal fee: usually a few hundred dollars, because your lender wants to make sure they’re not financing more than the home’s value.

Title search fees: also a few hundred dollars, to make sure your new home’s title is clean. You don’t want to learn later that the seller wasn’t actually the owner.

Flood certification fees: to make sure your home isn’t in a flood zone. If it is, you’ll need flood insurance since your homeowners policy won’t cover flood damage.

Attorney’s fees: for handling all these details. These can run up to $1,500 or so.

Collectively, we call these expenses — and others depending on your lender and your locale — closing costs. Ideally, you can negotiate with the seller to help pay some of these costs. In some markets, you could ask the seller to pay all the costs.

Most likely, though, you’ll be paying some or all of your closing costs. You may want to add them into your mortgage loan if you don’t have enough cash to pay up front.

Given a choice, I’d avoid financing closing costs, though. Why add to your debt, your interest, and your monthly payments unless you have to?

Payments You Don’t Have to Make

We looked at some loan scenarios above for a $250,000 mortgage. We said you’d pay about $429,000 over 30 years to pay off the debt (not including property taxes, insurance, and fees).

This schedule includes $179,000 in interest charges over 30 years. However, you can pay less by getting ahead of schedule.

By paying extra money each month directly onto your principal, which is the actual money you borrowed to pay for the house (not the interest), you can pay off the loan more quickly, giving your lender less time to collect interest.

Paying an extra $100 a month on principal on our 30-year, $250,000 mortgage example, you could save almost $28,000 in interest charges and pay off the loan about four years early.

Check with your lender before applying for a mortgage to find out how to make extra payments. Some lenders offer obvious ways to make extra payments to principal; others have more elaborate rules and schedules to know about.

And don’t stress! I’ve known a few people who got so focused on paying off their homes, they didn’t contribute money to their 401(k) or IRAs. Pay extra if you can and when you can, but there are worse things than owing money on your house.

7 Best Mortgage Lenders You Should Explore

You know your budget. You know the kind of house you need. You know some neighborhoods you like. You may already have a particular house in mind.

And now you also know the elements of a mortgage and how they can work more in your favor. So it’s time to apply this knowledge and find the best mortgage lender for your specific needs.

The following list of best mortgage lenders contains my opinions, which are based partly on the experiences of clients I’ve worked with. Feel free to leave a comment if your experience with a lender has been different.

Lending Tree

You’ve seen their ads about banks competing with each other to get your mortgage business. Lending Tree has been connecting home buyers with lenders online since 1996, when the Internet was just a baby.

And it’s gotten pretty good at it. Lending Tree does not originate loans, but it can help analyze your application and connect you with some really good lenders.

Along with this valuable service, Lending Tree’s tools for borrowers offer a lot of guidance in one place. You can check current mortgage rates, check your debt-to-income ratio, and get a good sense for how much house you can afford.

Best for: Conventional loans from borrowers who are shopping for the best terms.

Quicken Loans

Quicken Loans also has garnered some pretty good name recognition through advertising. Founded in 1985, Quicken Loans has grown into one of the biggest mortgage lenders in the nation.

The company offers a wide variety of loans of all sizes. They’re authorized for VA mortgage lending and other federal loan programs, jumbo mortgages, and adjustable or fixed rate plans.

Quicken Loans’ website makes it easy to find out what kind of loan fits your needs, even if you’re not quite sure going in.

Best for: Shoppers who need guidance finding a loan program to meet their needs.

Guide to Lenders

Like Lending Tree, Guide to Lenders can connect you with a loan but will not originate a mortgage.

The strength of Guide to Lenders lies in its massive list of connections. You can fill out one, simple application online and let Guide to Lenders can connect your application with a wide variety of leading lenders in minutes.

Best for: Homebuyers who aren’t sure what kind of loan they need but who want to shop for competitive rates.

Rocket Mortgage

Quicken Loans, which I’ve already listed, launched Rocket Mortgage in 2016 to streamline the mortgage-lending process. With Rocket Mortgage you can go through the entire lending process completely online.

Some of the company’s early ads said you could complete the process within eight minutes. I’d set aside at least an hour, though, just to make sure you’re entering your information correctly.

Still, it’s hard to find a more streamlined approach to lending online, especially considering the wide variety of loan programs Rocket Mortgage offers. If you’re refinancing, I’d start here.

Best for: Consumers who are somewhat familiar with mortgages, though the site is intuitive enough for anyone who’s comfortable online.

North American Savings Bank

You won’t see as many ads for North American Savings Bank, but they’ve caught my attention over the years because of their customer service.

The bank allows you to easily apply for pre-qualification, which gives you a great idea how much you can borrow (assuming you enter correct information about your income and expenses).

A pre-qualification helps when you’re home shopping because you already know about how much you can spend.

Then, when it’s time to officially apply, North American Savings Bank has personalized counseling available to help guide you through the process.

Best for: First-time homeowners who need a 15 or 30-year mortgage and some personalized help available.

AmeriValue Mortgage Refinance

Here’s another aggregator, like Guide to Lenders and Lending Tree, except AmeriValue focuses exclusively on refinances.

If you’ve been in your house a while and need to tap into the equity, or if you can now qualify for a lower interest rate than when you first got your mortgage, AmeriValue can help.

I like their simple online application that does not require all of your personal and financial details before it starts matching you with potential lenders. The site doesn’t include many bells and whistles such as mortgage calculators. It assumes you know what you’re after.

Best for: Experienced loan shoppers looking for a good deal on a mortgage refinance.

NBKC Bank

NBKC, formerly known as National Bank of Kansas City, started back in 1999 to serve online customers’ mortgage needs.

The bank specializes in subsidized loans, especially VA loans for veterans and their families, and in customer service.

Applicants can get a personal loan officer like you would at a neighborhood bank or savings and loan. While actual, in-person customer service is available only in Kansas and Missouri, the bank’s phone support makes the process easier for customers in all 50 states.

Best for: First-time buyers who need subsidized loans and in-person guidance.

Your Home, Your Loan, Your Future

Mortgages are common. Banks, credit unions and other lenders originate 6 to 8 million of them a year.

So what makes yours different? That’s a question only you can answer because your loan should match your individual needs.

It’s also a question you should answer.

Yes, your payment must fit your current monthly budget, but you need an eye on the future, too. A mortgage is an investment, after all.

You can make this happen by understanding how to find:

The right length for your loan: You can save a lot with a shorter-term loan so long as you can make the payments.

The best interest rate you can qualify for: Start working on your credit score now. Refinance your home if you’ve improved your score a lot since purchasing.

The best use of your own money for a down payment: Get more house with less debt by spending some of your own money.

The right amount of help from government subsidies: If you need help with credit or down payments, Uncle Sam can offer it.

The right balance between paying off your loan early and staying on schedule: The faster you pay off your loan, the more control you’ll have.

When you build a mortgage to match your needs, you’re getting more than just a loan. You’re getting a tool to help build a more stable financial future.

The post The 7 Best Mortgage Lenders appeared first on Good Financial Cents®.

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The 7 Best Mortgage Lenders

A lot of moving parts help set your monthly mortgage payment, like interest rates, loan terms, downpayments, insurance premiums, escrow, federal subsidies, lender fees, principal, and so on.

And this list doesn’t include the biggest variable of all — the selling price of your property. Understanding how those pieces work (and how they interact with each other) will give you more control over your loan.

Control, of course, is a very good thing, especially when you’re already taking a risk by going into debt for decades on your new house.

The Importance of Loan Shopping

Every mortgage loan is different. Yours should be customized to your home, your budget, and your plans for the property:

Payments: If you need a lower monthly payment, for example, you’ll do better with a longer-term loan.

Interest: Someone who wants to pay less mortgage interest should opt for a shorter-term loan and a larger down payment.

Credit Score: A borrower with a lower credit score or who has trouble making a big down payment should consider federally subsidized loan programs.

Veterans Loans: A military veteran can access great loan programs through the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).

Property: Someone hoping to start a bed and breakfast or buy a fixer-upper may need to stick with conventional loans.

With so many variables to think about, though, many borrowers forget to ask one of the most basic questions: Who should be my mortgage lender?

Instead of asking that question, a lot of borrowers apply for a loan (or for pre-approval) at only one place. Maybe it’s at their neighborhood bank or on a lending website their sister-in-law recommended.

Sometimes this works out OK. After all, current mortgage rates do not vary that widely between different lenders the way savings rates or CD rates can vary among banks.

Still, even a small increase in your mortgage interest rate can be costly when spread across decades. And not all lenders offer the same options for borrowers.

In your neighborhood, I bet you know which grocery store has the best seafood and which one has the best produce. A third store may have the kind of ice cream you like.

When you’re shopping for a mortgage loan, it helps to have a similar inside knowledge about the lenders you’re considering.

First: Know What You’re Shopping For

Until you know the kind of loan you need, it’s too soon to decide about your lender.

So before applying for a mortgage loan, or even for pre-approval, let’s learn more about the components of your mortgage payment:

How Mortgage Rates Work

Except for temporary promotions when you’re financing a refrigerator or some furniture, borrowing money means paying interest.

Your mortgage lender charges interest as a percentage of the amount you borrow paid over the life of your loan. The higher your interest rate and the longer it takes to repay the loan, the more you’ll pay in interest.

Younger adults in their 20s and 30s have lived in a time of historically low-interest rates. We’d consider a 6-percent mortgage interest rate astronomical.

People in their 50s and 60s can remember buying houses at 8 or 10 percent interest and thinking nothing of it.

So why the change, and will things change again?

Since mortgage interest rates are more a function of the broader economy, especially the secondary mortgage market and its investors, we can’t easily predict future mortgage interest rates.

A borrower can, however, access more competitive rates by maintaining a good credit score. It’s not too early to start improving your score, even if you may not buy a house for a few more years.

I like apps such as Credit Karma and Credit Sesame which give you constant access to your credit score and offer suggestions for improving it.

Just a half-point difference in your mortgage interest rate can grow into some noticeable savings as your loan plays out.

Say your dream house costs $275,000. You’re putting $25,000 down and borrowing $250,000:

At 4 percent interest over 30 years (re-paid on schedule) you’d pay $429,000 to settle the loan.

At 4.5 percent interest, also 30-years on schedule, you’d pay $456,000 by the end of the loan.

In this case a half-point in interest equals about $27,000! That’s almost $1,000 a year more for the same house. Keeping a good credit score and finding a lower rate by shopping around is worth the time.

What about ARMs? Loan scenarios in this post will describe fixed rate loans. Many banks also offer adjustable rate mortgages, or ARMs.

With these loans, you can get a low initial interest rate for the first few years of the loan. After that, your interest rate changes with the market.

If you’re planning to sell the property quickly, or if you expect to have more financial flexibility in a few years, the low introductory interest rate of an ARM may be attractive. If you’re planning to stay on schedule with your mortgage, a fixed rate loan tends to be more appropriate.

Why the Length of Your Loan Matters

The example above included only 30-year mortgages, which are common especially among first-time home buyers. You can save a lot of interest with a shorter-term loan.

With that same $250,000 mortgage at 4 percent interest, for example:

You’d pay $429,000 over 30 years.

You’d pay $364,000 over 20 years.

You’d pay $333,000 over 15 years.

You’d pay $304,000 over 10 years.

With such huge savings available from a shorter loan, why would anyone get a 30-year mortgage? Well, to unlock the savings a short-term loan offers, you’d have to pay more each month.

To borrow $250,000 at 4 percent interest, you’d pay about:

30-year loan: $1,200 a month.

20-year loan: $1,500 a month.

15-year loan: $1,850 a month.

10-year loan: $2,500 a month.

These payments do not include homeowners insurance or property taxes, but you get the idea: to save more long term, you’ll pay more each month.

So decide what you can afford each month and balance it with how much you could save with a shorter-term loan. Before choosing a lender, make sure it offers the terms you need. Some lenders even offer 40-year loans now.

How Much You Can Put Down

Actions speak louder than words.

Making a down payment on your new house tells your lender (and your realtor and the home’s seller) you’re serious about buying the property.

You’re so serious that you’re willing to put your own cash on the line. Some lenders require a down payment of 3, 5, or 10 percent, for example. Certain federally subsidized loans do not require a down payment at all.

Aside from meeting loan requirements and sending a strong message, there are some really good reasons to make a big down payment:

Putting down, say, $25,000 means you own $25,000 worth of your house the day you close on it. Starting out on the plus side has some advantages, especially if you need to sell within a few years of closing.

Putting down 20 percent of the home’s value means you’ll never have to pay Private Mortgage Insurance (PMI). You pay PMI premiums only while you still owe more than 80 percent of the home’s value. PMI protects your lender, not you, if you default.

A bigger down payment means a smaller loan, and a smaller loan saves money on interest and, of course, principal each month.

If putting together $25,000 or $50,000 for a down payment just isn’t something you’ll ever be able to do, don’t sweat it, and don’t let it prevent you from buying a house.

Instead, save what you can as you prepare for homeownership. You can find some good loans which require only 3 or 3.5 percent down.

With a small down payment, it’ll take longer to pay off your loan and you’ll pay more in interest, but at least you’re investing in your own future and not your landlord’s by continuing to pay rent.

How the Federal Government Can Help

Uncle Sam has a stake in the mortgage industry, and it could help you get the best mortgage to meet your needs.

For example, if you expect saving up a 10-percent down payment would be too high a hurdle for your family, a federally subsidized loan can probably help.

Also, if your credit’s not so great, which has the potential to disqualify you for a conventional loan, a subsidized loan can help.

Let’s take a look at some of the leading federal loan programs:

Federal Housing Administration (FHA) Loans: You can get financed with just 3.5 percent down with this kind of loan.

U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Loans: This program has been designed specifically for homeowners in rural areas, and it offers up to 100 percent financing in some cases, meaning you can get a loan with no money down.

Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Loans: Also offers 100 percent financing to avoid down payments and extends loans to applicants with lower credit scores.

Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Loans: For military veterans and their spouses, a VA mortgage lender can make borrowing easier like an FHA or USDA loan. It can also help borrowers after closing by negotiating lower payments. VA loans also do not require borrowers to pay for Private Mortgage Insurance (PMI).

Borrowers should also be aware there are a few limitations with federally subsidized mortgages:

Some federal loans (not VA) require borrowers to pay Private Mortgage Insurance premiums (or similar annual fees) throughout the life of the loan. Conventional loans allow you to cancel PMI when you’ve paid off at least 20 percent of the loan.

Federal financing can limit how you use your property. An FHA loan, for example, will finance only an owner-occupied home. If you’re buying a home to rent or for someone else in your family to live in, you may need a conventional loan.

For safety reasons, federal lenders often balk at older homes that may have lead-based paint or other dangerous living conditions. If you’re buying a fixer-upper or planning to restore the architectural marvel at the end of the block, go with a conventional loan.

Not all lenders have the authorization to sell federally subsidized loans, so check first before starting the pre-approval process with a lender.

Property Taxes and Home Insurance: Add Them In

Owning a home includes some new responsibilities.

If a pipe bursts and floods your basement, it’s your job to repair the damage. If a sinkhole swallows up the backyard, that’s likely on you, too.

Your new responsibilities will also include insuring your property and paying property taxes (in most states). Taxes and insurance can cost thousands of dollars each year, so many new homeowners spread out the expense using an escrow account.

Your mortgage lender should be able to open and manage an escrow account for you.

Each month your mortgage payment will include your interest, your principal, and a payment for your escrow account.

As the months pass, your money in escrow adds up. When your city or county tax bill or your homeowner’s insurance bill comes due, your lender will pay it using your funds in escrow.

You don’t have to use an escrow account. If you’d rather save the money for taxes and insurance in your own savings account, that’s fine. Just be sure to consider these costs when deciding how much money you can spend on a house.

And if you’d like the convenience of an escrow account, check with potential mortgage lenders before applying to make sure they offer this service.

Your realtor or the seller can fill you in on property taxes. Depending on your address, you may need to pay municipal and county taxes, which could be billed separately.

Property taxes help fund police and fire protection, roads and bridges, public schools, EMS, and local parks. They’re an investment in your community.

Closing Costs: Knowing What You’re Paying

Real estate closings can freak out new homeowners, and for good reason. You’re sitting at a conference table signing document after document, committing yourself to a huge amount of debt for a long time.

Then the fees start to pile up, as if a couple hundred thousand dollars in debt wasn’t enough.

Common mortgage-associated fees include:

A loan origination fee: of 1 percent of the loan amount, charged by your lender.

An appraisal fee: usually a few hundred dollars, because your lender wants to make sure they’re not financing more than the home’s value.

Title search fees: also a few hundred dollars, to make sure your new home’s title is clean. You don’t want to learn later that the seller wasn’t actually the owner.

Flood certification fees: to make sure your home isn’t in a flood zone. If it is, you’ll need flood insurance since your homeowners policy won’t cover flood damage.

Attorney’s fees: for handling all these details. These can run up to $1,500 or so.

Collectively, we call these expenses — and others depending on your lender and your locale — closing costs. Ideally, you can negotiate with the seller to help pay some of these costs. In some markets, you could ask the seller to pay all the costs.

Most likely, though, you’ll be paying some or all of your closing costs. You may want to add them into your mortgage loan if you don’t have enough cash to pay up front.

Given a choice, I’d avoid financing closing costs, though. Why add to your debt, your interest, and your monthly payments unless you have to?

Payments You Don’t Have to Make

We looked at some loan scenarios above for a $250,000 mortgage. We said you’d pay about $429,000 over 30 years to pay off the debt (not including property taxes, insurance, and fees).

This schedule includes $179,000 in interest charges over 30 years. However, you can pay less by getting ahead of schedule.

By paying extra money each month directly onto your principal, which is the actual money you borrowed to pay for the house (not the interest), you can pay off the loan more quickly, giving your lender less time to collect interest.

Paying an extra $100 a month on principal on our 30-year, $250,000 mortgage example, you could save almost $28,000 in interest charges and pay off the loan about four years early.

Check with your lender before applying for a mortgage to find out how to make extra payments. Some lenders offer obvious ways to make extra payments to principal; others have more elaborate rules and schedules to know about.

And don’t stress! I’ve known a few people who got so focused on paying off their homes, they didn’t contribute money to their 401(k) or IRAs. Pay extra if you can and when you can, but there are worse things than owing money on your house.

7 Best Mortgage Lenders You Should Explore

You know your budget. You know the kind of house you need. You know some neighborhoods you like. You may already have a particular house in mind.

And now you also know the elements of a mortgage and how they can work more in your favor. So it’s time to apply this knowledge and find the best mortgage lender for your specific needs.

The following list of best mortgage lenders contains my opinions, which are based partly on the experiences of clients I’ve worked with. Feel free to leave a comment if your experience with a lender has been different.

Lending Tree

You’ve seen their ads about banks competing with each other to get your mortgage business. Lending Tree has been connecting home buyers with lenders online since 1996, when the Internet was just a baby.

And it’s gotten pretty good at it. Lending Tree does not originate loans, but it can help analyze your application and connect you with some really good lenders.

Along with this valuable service, Lending Tree’s tools for borrowers offer a lot of guidance in one place. You can check current mortgage rates, check your debt-to-income ratio, and get a good sense for how much house you can afford.

Best for: Conventional loans from borrowers who are shopping for the best terms.

Quicken Loans

Quicken Loans also has garnered some pretty good name recognition through advertising. Founded in 1985, Quicken Loans has grown into one of the biggest mortgage lenders in the nation.

The company offers a wide variety of loans of all sizes. They’re authorized for VA mortgage lending and other federal loan programs, jumbo mortgages, and adjustable or fixed rate plans.

Quicken Loans’ website makes it easy to find out what kind of loan fits your needs, even if you’re not quite sure going in.

Best for: Shoppers who need guidance finding a loan program to meet their needs.

Guide to Lenders

Like Lending Tree, Guide to Lenders can connect you with a loan but will not originate a mortgage.

The strength of Guide to Lenders lies in its massive list of connections. You can fill out one, simple application online and let Guide to Lenders can connect your application with a wide variety of leading lenders in minutes.

Best for: Homebuyers who aren’t sure what kind of loan they need but who want to shop for competitive rates.

Rocket Mortgage

Quicken Loans, which I’ve already listed, launched Rocket Mortgage in 2016 to streamline the mortgage-lending process. With Rocket Mortgage you can go through the entire lending process completely online.

Some of the company’s early ads said you could complete the process within eight minutes. I’d set aside at least an hour, though, just to make sure you’re entering your information correctly.

Still, it’s hard to find a more streamlined approach to lending online, especially considering the wide variety of loan programs Rocket Mortgage offers. If you’re refinancing, I’d start here.

Best for: Consumers who are somewhat familiar with mortgages, though the site is intuitive enough for anyone who’s comfortable online.

North American Savings Bank

You won’t see as many ads for North American Savings Bank, but they’ve caught my attention over the years because of their customer service.

The bank allows you to easily apply for pre-qualification, which gives you a great idea how much you can borrow (assuming you enter correct information about your income and expenses).

A pre-qualification helps when you’re home shopping because you already know about how much you can spend.

Then, when it’s time to officially apply, North American Savings Bank has personalized counseling available to help guide you through the process.

Best for: First-time homeowners who need a 15 or 30-year mortgage and some personalized help available.

AmeriValue Mortgage Refinance

Here’s another aggregator, like Guide to Lenders and Lending Tree, except AmeriValue focuses exclusively on refinances.

If you’ve been in your house a while and need to tap into the equity, or if you can now qualify for a lower interest rate than when you first got your mortgage, AmeriValue can help.

I like their simple online application that does not require all of your personal and financial details before it starts matching you with potential lenders. The site doesn’t include many bells and whistles such as mortgage calculators. It assumes you know what you’re after.

Best for: Experienced loan shoppers looking for a good deal on a mortgage refinance.

NBKC Bank

NBKC, formerly known as National Bank of Kansas City, started back in 1999 to serve online customers’ mortgage needs.

The bank specializes in subsidized loans, especially VA loans for veterans and their families, and in customer service.

Applicants can get a personal loan officer like you would at a neighborhood bank or savings and loan. While actual, in-person customer service is available only in Kansas and Missouri, the bank’s phone support makes the process easier for customers in all 50 states.

Best for: First-time buyers who need subsidized loans and in-person guidance.

Your Home, Your Loan, Your Future

Mortgages are common. Banks, credit unions and other lenders originate 6 to 8 million of them a year.

So what makes yours different? That’s a question only you can answer because your loan should match your individual needs.

It’s also a question you should answer.

Yes, your payment must fit your current monthly budget, but you need an eye on the future, too. A mortgage is an investment, after all.

You can make this happen by understanding how to find:

The right length for your loan: You can save a lot with a shorter-term loan so long as you can make the payments.

The best interest rate you can qualify for: Start working on your credit score now. Refinance your home if you’ve improved your score a lot since purchasing.

The best use of your own money for a down payment: Get more house with less debt by spending some of your own money.

The right amount of help from government subsidies: If you need help with credit or down payments, Uncle Sam can offer it.

The right balance between paying off your loan early and staying on schedule: The faster you pay off your loan, the more control you’ll have.

When you build a mortgage to match your needs, you’re getting more than just a loan. You’re getting a tool to help build a more stable financial future.

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