Daily Archives: October 22, 2012

10 Strategies To Increase Your Credit Score In 24 Hours | Waccabuc Realtor

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When you are in a hurry to increase your credit score there is 10 things that you can do with in 24 hours that help immensly. Here are the 10 things to increase your score:

1. Order your credit reports online for each of the top three credit reporting agencies individually. Even though it may be cheaper to order a three in one report offered by one of the Agencies, ordering individual credit reports will grant you the access to initiate a dispute online with each agency. You can’t improve your score in 24 hours unless you know what it is! Knowing where to start is important.

2. Call your credit card companies and request to increase your credit lines. Increasing credit lines will improve your outstanding debt to-available-credit ratio amounts on your revolving accounts, and can improve your credit by as much as 60 points.

3. Rearrange your debt so that every one of your credit cards have the lowest possible outstanding debt-to-available-credit ratio. A ratio of 25%-35% is ideal.

4. If you have the ability, pay down the cards until that ratio is recognized on your credit report.

5. Borrow money to pay down your debts referenced on your credit reports from a lender that doesn’t report, such as friends and family. Unreported debts will assist you to decrease those debt to available credit ratios and boost your score. Your private lenders may even want lesser interest than you are paying on the cards! While this business deal doesn’t appear on your credit report, it’s still debt, so use it wisely. You don’t want horrible Thanksgiving dinners after failure to pay on a loan made by a family relative.

6. If you have freshly paid down or paid off debts and they don’t show corrected on the report, fax that information to the credit agencies. Providing them with the verification of payoff is much faster then initiating a dispute of the account information. In many cases, the agency won’t verify the payoff with the lender, and accept your proof as correct.

7. Begin your dispute approach online with each service. The online dispute will suspend the negative derogatory items from your credit report for the short term, increasing your score. When the dispute is resolved your score will change accordingly, but for the period in-between you get a momentary reprieve from the effects of the negative derogatory information.

8. If you must choose one credit score to work on, spotlight your focus on the middle score. For most major purchases such as real estate or a vehicle, the lender will pull all three credit scores and use the middle score, (all three scores in one is called the tri-merge score) so this is the one that matters the most. If you improve your middle score over your highest score, the formerly top score is the one that now matters most.

9. Have a close friend or family member with a solid credit history add you to their card. You don’t even need to have the possession of an actual card, but by adding you to the account, you get the benefit of their long credit history. This doesn’t hurt their credit history at all. A Credit report is a compilation of accounts with your social security number attached to them. When your social security number was added to their account, you agreed to be responsible for it, and their years of good credit history now show up on your credit report. The individual person who lent you their excellent credit didn’t add their social security number to any of your accounts with the negative or derogatory history, so there is no way for the bad information to appear on their credit report.

10. If you have recent collection account reporting to your credit file that haven’t been paid? If so call the collection agency and ask, “do you delete?” About half of all collection agencies will take away the item from your credit report if you pay it in full, or a generous portion of the debt. Sometimes the collection agency can remove the debt from the credit bureaus instantaneously.

There are other things that can help you improve your credit score that will take much longer to implement. I think this list will suffice for now because these things can be done in 24 hours.

via articles.submityourarticle.com

Fannie and Freddie becoming ‘wards of the state’? | Bedford NY Realtor

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The government’s failure to overhaul mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is pushing the U.S. toward nationalization of the mortgage market, and would-be homeowners will be the losers if competition between private companies isn’t restored.

That’s according to Jim Millstein, the former Treasury Department official who oversaw the reorganization of American International Group Inc., who thinks the government will have to get into the business of reinsuring mortgages if it wants to restore the private sector’s role in mortgage securitization, and reduce taxpayer exposure to Fannie and Freddie.

Millstein, the Treasury Department’s chief restructuring officer from 2009 to 2011, says neither the Obama administration nor Congress has put forward a workable plan to lift mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac out of conservatorship.

Increasing the fees charged by the companies and taking all of their earnings threatens to make Fannie and Freddie “permanent wards of the state,” Millstein argues in an editorial he co-wrote with Phillip Swagel, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy.

Millstein and Swagel have proposed legislation that would create a new government reinsurance program, and turn Fannie and Freddie into one of many private “first loss” insurers that would pay into it.

Four years after the takeover of Fannie and Freddie, they say, “the government now backstops 90 percent of all new mortgages and has no plan to reduce its market share, no plan to protect taxpayers against future losses on the trillions of dollars of mortgage credit underwritten since the firms were placed under government control.”

The Treasury Department’s decision to claim Fannie and Freddie’s earnings as dividends is intended to make sure that taxpayers recoup the $141 billion they’re still owed from bailing the companies out (Treasury has invested $187 billion in the companies and received in $46 billion in dividends). But the government’s “cash sweep” prevents Fannie and Freddie from building up capital reserves that would protect taxpayers against potential losses on $4.5 trillion in mortgage guarantees, Millstein and Swagel argue.

In a similar fashion, recent increases in Fannie and Freddie’s guarantee fees mandated by the Federal Housing Finance Agency would seem “sensible and long-overdue,” the two maintain. Fannie and Freddie, they say, “had grossly underpriced the insurance they provided on mortgages before the crisis, putting taxpayers at risk for the bailout that inevitably came and making it difficult for other private companies to compete with them.”

But the fees are still “significantly below” what private companies would charge, and the increases are all going to the government, rather than helping Fannie and Freddie build up capital and reserves.

“With Washington hungry for revenue, there will be inexorable pressure to milk Fannie and Freddie’s guarantee fees to support other government spending,” Millstein and Swagel warn. “The losers will be potential homeowners, as mortgage availability will be determined by government regulators rather than by private firms competing for their business.”

Ironically, they say, the quickest way to get Fannie and Freddie out of conservatorship and restore competition among private firms is for the government to get into the mortgage reinsurance business. Millstein and Swagel envision a system in which private mortgage insurers would take on a growing proportion of the first loss on bad mortgages before government reinsurance would kick in.

Fannie and Freddie would themselves be transformed into private, “first loss” insurers, and forced to compete with other private companies willing to pay the government for reinsurance.

With “strict regulation to ensure that community banks can originate and securitize mortgages on an even playing field with the giant banks,” competition would breed new entrants in mortgage finance. Any of them, including Fannie and Freddie, could fail without the threat of a housing market collapse, Millstein and Swagel maintain.

A government reinsurance program will be a tough sell to conservatives, they acknowledge. But the government, having placed Fannie and Freddie in conservatorship, is already “creeping” toward nationalization of the mortgage market.

A government reinsurance program with private insurers ahead of the government is perhaps the only way, they say, to shrink Fannie and Freddie’s portfolios, reduce taxpayer exposure, and jump start a competitive private market.

“Today, we’re doing massive guarantees through the conservatorships of Fannie and Freddie,” Millstein tells the Wall Street Journal’s Nick Timiraos. “But it’s a ham-fisted, convoluted way of delivering the guarantee. Taxpayers aren’t being protected at all. There’s no capital ahead of us.”

via inman.com

Survey: Younger generation not fazed by housing crisis | Pound Ridge Realtor

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A survey of 18- to 35-year-old Americans shows that the housing downturn hasn’t deterred most from aspiring to buy a home, and most feel that the crisis made them more knowledgeable about homeownership.

Commissioned by Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate, the online survey of 1,001 members of “Gen X” and “Gen Y” was conducted by Wakefield Research between July 18 and 26.

For 69 percent of respondents, a key “readiness indicator” that someone is ready to buy a home is whether they can also maintain their lifestyle. For 61 percent of respondents, the indicator is that they’ve landed a secure job.

The top areas to research before buying were home prices in a desired neighborhood (59 percent), interest rates (58 percent), and the ability to secure a loan (51 percent).

Many said they were willing to adjust their lifestyle to save for a home by eating out less (62 percent), working a second job (40 percent) or moving back home with their parents (23 percent).

Sherry Chris, president and CEO of Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate LLC, said in a statement that the survey shows that just as the 1970s oil crisis influenced the thinking of baby boomers, the housing downturn has helped members of Gen X and Gen Y come to “believe that the details, risks and rewards of homebuying are integral to their planning.”

Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate, Chris said, “recognizes this shared generational experience and its effects on young homebuyers. We realize how important it is for real estate professionals to understand generational differences and be able to adapt their business to best serve these two generations that will drive the economy for the next 30 years.”

via inman.com

3 scams to avoid when locking your loan | Bedford Corners Realtor

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Editor’s note: This is the first of a two-part series.

Shopping for the best deal on a home loan has many pitfalls, but by far the most daunting is that lenders will not commit to the prices they quote to shopping borrowers. While borrowers seldom realize it when they begin the process, the fact is that they are forced to select loan providers without knowing the exact price they will pay.

Why quoted prices are subject to revision

Because locking imposes a cost on lenders, they won’t lock until a) they have enough information about the borrower to be reasonably sure that the borrower qualifies and that the price quoted is the correct price, and b) there is a significant probability that the borrower will go to closing. If the quoted price that is locked by the lender is wrong, the lender can realize a loss when it is sold, and if the transaction doesn’t close, the lender has incurred the lock cost for nothing.

The quoted price can be wrong for two reasons: One is that the information provided by the borrower does not check out for the lender. For example, the borrower said that his credit score was 740 but when checked by the lender it is 710, which raises the price of the mortgage.

The quoted price can also be wrong because the market changed. Lenders reset prices every morning, based on changes in the secondary market, and sometimes they change them during the day.

Why the revision of quoted prices may be a scam

Changes in market prices or a reset of the information used to set prices are legitimate reasons why borrowers often don’t receive the prices they were quoted. But these same factors provide a screen behind which less scrupulous lenders can execute lock scams. It is useful to distinguish three scams that occur at different stages of the lending process.

Lowballing scam: The borrower shopping for a mortgage may encounter this scam. Lowballing lenders quote a price below the price the lender can or has any intention of delivering. The purpose is to be selected by the borrower who is shopping prices. It is easy to lowball when you are not committed to your price quote, and it is tempting because it often is the only way that lenders have of distinguishing themselves from other lenders.

Lowballers are not deterred by the price disclosures mandated by the good faith estimate. They merely date the disclosure so that the price has expired before the borrower receives it.

Market volatility scam: The borrower who has selected a lender but has not yet been locked may encounter this scam. The lender takes advantage of changes in the market between the date the lender quoted a price to the borrower and the lock date. If the market price goes down, the borrower is charged the price quoted earlier, and is probably content, since he received what he was quoted. If the price on the lock date is higher, on the other hand, the borrower will be charged the market price or higher, because “the market went against you.”

Property valuation scam: The borrower whose loan has been locked may encounter this scam. Locks are always contingent on a specified credit score and loan-to-value ratio. A material change in one of these can invalidate the lock. While lenders will always verify the credit score before locking because that takes only minutes, in most cases they will lock based on a property valuation that has been checked against only an automated valuation program. An appraisal, which is the final word on valuation, takes days and often weeks.

Nonetheless, the appraisal, when it becomes available, can invalidate the lock. If the appraisal comes in lower by enough to raise the loan-to-value ratio past a notch point where the price increases, the lender increases the price accordingly. But if the appraisal comes in higher by enough to reduce the loan-to-value past a notch point where the price should decrease, the original lock price is retained.

As with the market volatility scam, if the coin comes up heads, the borrower loses; and if it comes up tails, the lender wins.

None of the mortgage disclosures mandated by the government would prevent the scams described above. This includes the disclosures planned by the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Borrowers can protect themselves, however, if they know how to go about it. This will be the topic of next week’s article.

via inman.com

Get over your real estate trauma | Chappaqua Realtor

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Editor’s note: This is the first of a two-part series.

Every day, more and more Americans click into a decidedly post-recession state of mind. Whether or not they’re still unemployed or upside-down, ever-increasing numbers of us have grown tired of being down and depressed and decided to do whatever it takes to get back on our feet and back into the flow of life — it’s so short, after all.

Fortunately, the real estate market seems to be flowing in that same direction: Millions of Americans have seen their underwater mortgages dry out this year, due to nothing more than increased buyer demand, which, in turn, increased home values. But millions more still owe more than their homes are worth — and many more than that are still dealing with the financial and emotional trauma of struggling to make the mortgage payment, tussling with their banks over loan modification requests, a past foreclosure or short sale, or even recession-created fears around buying a home, or selling and locking in losses.

Here’s the deal: The more you fear or focus on this trauma, the more it becomes a major influence on your decisions and your life. So, how can you extinguish it altogether? Here are some strategies:

1. Focus on what you are for, not on what you are against. We often create what we fear, largely out of our panic and paralysis around the topic. So, if you constantly worry about losing your home, being upside-down and whether your home’s value will ever recover, you are simply more likely to get and stay in these situations. Anxiety will cause you to spend more than you should, or to perform poorly at work, snowballing into high credit card bills or an interruption in income.

It’s a small mindset tweak, but a powerful one, to focus instead on what you want to have happen — or, as “Three Simple Steps” author Trevor Blake puts it, what you are for.

If you are for being debt-free, you might be inspired to start a small business and be your own bailout. If you are for getting out from underwater, you might decide to aggressively pursue the loan modification options, or to rent out an extra room on Airbnb to fund extra payments to reduce your mortgage principal.

I’m not saying these are the things you have to do to create the situations you want — I’m simply suggesting what I know from personal experience, which is that if you focus on what you are for, then you are much more likely to see that happen than when all of your time, energy and emotion is fixated on the things you hope don’t happen.

2. Metabolize the trauma. I believe that everything we do — every endeavor we make, every decision, no matter how painful or joyous the outcome — is a success. We are either successful at what we were trying to accomplish, or the experience is a successful education. But when we have painful experiences, it’s difficult to get free from the pain and move on until we can appreciate the successful education that the experience holds.

In order to let go of the trauma you might still have from things that happened around your mortgage or your home, you might find it helpful to work with the image Dr. Henry Cloud creates in his book “Necessary Endings”: the image of metabolizing the experience.

When we eat food, we metabolize it, holding onto the elements that are nourishing and beneficial and eliminating the rest. You can do the same thing with experiences like losing a home to foreclosure or short sale, or being upside-down on your mortgage: Take some quiet time to be real with yourself and identify what learnings you can cull from all the decisions and events that led to your real estate trauma.

Once you do that, you can almost have a ceremony of sorts where you simply declare to yourself that you’ve got what you needed from the experience, and you’re ready to let the rest go. It might sound new age-y, but even the most wizened business execs and hardened military strategists will tell you that learning and letting go of past failures and disappointments so you can fight the next battle are essential ingredients of resilience, and that resilience is a prerequisite for long-term success.

Next week, I’ll provide you with three more strategies for letting go of your real estate baggage.

via inman.com

Homebuying wish list lets buyers see the big picture | Armonk Realtor

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“I’ll know it when I see it.” “This doesn’t feel like home to me.” “Someday the right one will come along; I’ll keep looking until it does.” “It’s going to be my home; it has to feel special.”

These comments are typical of buyers who’ve looked for a while but haven’t committed to buying. The objections sound sensible. Yet, they could be excuses not to buy.

Homebuying is not for everyone. It’s a major commitment and is often the most expensive purchase most people will make in their lifetime. It’s understandable that some buyers approach the home search with reservations.

You’ll save a lot of time and energy if you can determine if homebuying is for you before you start looking. Then for the best result, approach the house hunt methodically and with the understanding that it will take time.

The first step is to make a list of all the features you need and want in a home. Think about your current home, and others that you’ve lived in. Consider what you liked and disliked about them.

The next step is to prioritize the list distinguishing what you must have and what you’d like to have. You’re unlikely to find all of the items on your list in one home.

HOUSE HUNTING: It will help to prioritize your list if you look at some homes for sale in your price range and in the areas where you’d like to live. Visiting Sunday open houses or looking at listings online can help you to familiarize yourself with the local inventory if you haven’t already selected a local real estate agent.

You may find that some of the items you’d like to have in your home don’t exist in your target area. For example, let’s say you want to live in a neighborhood of charming older homes that are close to shops and transportation. You also want a two-car attached garage. Smaller homes built in the 1920s or earlier usually don’t have two-car garages.

This is where compromise comes into play. If the older, conveniently located neighborhood is high on your wish list, you will need to be willing to settle for a one-car garage, or perhaps no garage. If the two-car garage is a must, you may need to consider homes that were built more recently, and are not as conveniently located.

As you’re looking at homes for sale, try to see beyond the seller’s décor and the staging. A well-staged home can mask floor plan defects. It can be misleading in terms of what you need in a home. For instance, a first-time buyer made the mistake of buying a home that was staged so well that she didn’t realize that there was no formal dining room and no eating area in the kitchen.

On the other hand, you may be tempted to turn down a home that’s staged to appeal to the widest audience but appears not to suit your needs. Let’s say a home has three bedrooms but no home office. If you need only two bedrooms, you could use the third bedroom as an office, even though it’s not represented that way.

The best way to see a home you’re really interested in is with your agent. Many buyers aren’t good at visualizing a home any other way than how it’s shown. An experienced agent should be able to show you how you can adapt a home to your needs.

It’s often hard to make a good assessment of a home you’re serious about at a Sunday open house. Have your agent take you back for a second or third look.

THE CLOSING: Bring your wish list and discuss the pros and cons before you make a final decision.

via inman.com

A Basic Visual Design Guide for the Visually Incompetent | Mount Kisco NY Real Estate

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Have you ever woken up one day, looked at your blog’s header and other visual elements, and thought, “My, this is ugly!”

You need a visual redesign.

What to do?

There are two solutions to this problem: you hire a designer to work on your new visuals from scratch, or you try to do it yourself. The first solution can come at a cost, so cash-strapped bloggers can easily be tempted to try building their blog’s visual elements by themselves.

But what if, like me, you’re visually incompetent? I mean, really incompetent? You can’t draw a stick figure to save your life, and you know absolutely nothing about the basics of visual design. You’re a writer, after all, and writers are better off writing than playing around with pictures.

And yet, you can’t afford a designer, so you need to find a way, any way, to do it yourself.

In this article, I will share the lessons I have learned trying to redesign my blog visuals on my own—header, logo, and all.

Start with software that you understand

We’ve all tried to play with those complex professional photo and visual design programs. You load a picture or an empty canvas and you think “Wow, with all these great tools, I’m sure I can come up with something amazing!”

Well, not so much. After five minutes of trying to understand the functions of the program, you give up. This happened to me time and time again, until I discovered a nice little Mac app called Logoist.

Logoist is simple and has all the functions I need. I can use cliparts from its extensive library, add text, apply filters and effects and insert pictures and photos. Its interface is intuitive and it has a few tutorials to show you the ropes. It also has automatic grid lines that help align all your elements. This simplicity let me create more freely than any professional design program could.

There are a lot of apps and programs you can use for both Mac and PC. Some are free and most are reasonably priced. You don’t have to go for the $500 creative suite to get the job done.

Black and white are your friends

I’ve always worked under the principle that, when in doubt, you should take the simplest route. In visual design, black and white is a great base to start with.

A black and white design looks professional, clean, and easy to work with. You don’t have to worry about colors matching or clashing. You know your text and your visual elements will be readable on a computer screen, a tablet or a smartphone. Black and white reminds readers of printed paper, something that’s ubiquitous and familiar. It’s trustworthy.

But of course, black and white can become a little bland. To add variety, choose one (and when I say that, I really mean one) accent color for your sidebar widgets, for the picture in your logo, or for the blog title in your header.

For example, on my writer’s website, I decided to go with dark red. It’s a color I like, and I think it brings about the right amount of visual interest. On my blog, I count on the pictures inserted in my posts for a blast of color.

Play with fonts

For my blog’s header, I decided to keep everything simple and play with fonts rather than pictures or images. Each word of my title (Read, Write, Live) uses a different font that expresses something unique about that word.

“Read” is in a formal, serif type that you could find in a book or newspaper. “Write” is in a handwritten-looking font that illustrates the act of writing on paper and separates it visually the other two words. “Live” is in a bold, sans-serif font with unexpected lines. I added a small ornament (one of the cliparts in Logoist) in the middle for visual interest.

Here’s the logo version, with the first letter of each word:

Blog logo

Fonts are great because you can give personality to words and ideas before they are processed by the brain through reading. They leave an instant impression, and can make or break the viewer’s desire to read on.

A tool I love for choosing awesome fonts is Google Fonts. If you’re tired of Times New Roman and Comic Sans, Google Fonts has an impressive collection of independent, public domain fonts you can use.

Be yourself, be realistic

The most important thing when you’re stuck having to design your own visual elements without training is to be honest with yourself. If you don’t know how to use vector software, then don’t. There are a lot of solutions that are within your reach and your abilities.

You also need to be realistic: there is no substitute for a professional design. As much as a self-designed header and logo can fill in temporarily, as soon as you get a steady flow of readers, you’ll be expected to get some custom, professional visual design on your blog. But as a beginner or novice blogger, a handmade, simple header and minimal visual elements can go a long way

One last thing: remember to have fun. I can tell you that this kind of visual work can be absorbing and exciting when you really get into it. I didn’t know I could come up with something so attractive on my own. I was very proud of the results, and it got me compliments from readers too!

Have you ever tried to design your own visual elements? Do you have any other basic visual design tips you’d like to share with the visually incompetent among us? I’d love to hear from you!

via problogger.net

Weekly Wrap-Up: How Evil Is Your Smartphone, When To Pivot Your Startup, And How To Watch The Presidential Debate Online | North Salem NY Real Estate

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How Evil Is Your Smartphone, 8 Startups On When To Pivot, and How To Watch The Presidential Debates Online. All of this and more in the ReadWriteWeb Weekly Wrap-up.

After the jump you’ll find more of this week’s top news stories on some of the key topics that are shaping the Web – Location, App Stores and Real-Time Web – plus highlights from some of our six channels. Read on for more.

How Evil Is Your Smartphone?

Okay, maybe there are no ethical smartphones. But some must be better than others, right?  How Evil Is Your Smartphone?

More Top Posts:

When Is It Time To Pivot? 8 Startups On How They Knew They Had To Change

There comes in a time the life of many startups when it becomes clear that everything is not going according to plan. But how do entrepreneurs tell if they need to keep going all in on the original plan, or pivot to something new? When Is It Time To Pivot? 8 Startups On How They Knew They Had To Change.

How To Watch The U.S. Presidential Debates Online – Updated

As Mitt Romney and Barack Obama prepare for their third and final debate on Monday night, your options for tuning in are greater than ever before, How To Watch The U.S. Presidential Debates Online.

Don’t Make The Mistake Of Preordering A Windows Surface RT Tablet

The problem is Microsoft’s “long tease” – the slow, steady drip of information leading up to the launch of Windows 8, Don’t Make The Mistake Of Preordering A Windows Surface RT Tablet.

Why Brands Should Build Their Own Social Communities

Meet SocialEngine, white-label software that helps businesses build their own branded, interest-driven social networks, control their message and turn participants into potential customers. The service has been around for a few years with some success, but the product has now been relaunched as SocialEngine Cloud, retooled for bigger clients, Why Brands Should Build Their Own Social Communities.

Color’s Epic Collapse: Why Everybody Is Loving It

Reports say that the engineering talent from Color is going to be acquired by Apple and the app will be shut down. No one but its investors and employees not going to Apple will shed a single tear, Color’s Epic Collapse: Why Everybody Is Loving It.

What The Hell Just Happened At Google?

There’s only one thing worse than missing your numbers – and that is missing your numbers and not even being able to report that news correctly, What The Hell Just Happened At Google?

The FTC Wants YOU! – To Kill Robocalls

The FTC Robocall Challenge is offering a cash prize for anybody that can come up with the best way to eliminate robocalls from reaching consumers’ cellphones and landlines. The submission window runs from October 25 to January 17, 2013. Winners, if there are any, will be announced in April 2013, The FTC Wants YOU! – To Kill Robocalls.

The Democrats Prank Romney With Clever Search Engine Fun

This is what national, presidential-election-year political campaigns do now: They make little prank websites to undermine their opponents. It’s the tech-savvy, 21st Century equivalent of a TV attack ad, The Democrats Prank Romney With Clever Search Engine Fun.

The iPad Mini’s Killer Feature = Price

The tablet market is different from that of other gadgets. While many people believe they need a mobile phone and a computer to meet their personal and business goals, a tablet is more of a “not necessary, but nice to have” type of device, The iPad Mini’s Killer Feature = Price.

via readwriteweb.com

Move Inc. mortgage lead platform gaining traction | Cross River NY Real Estate

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Screen shot of PreQualplus tool on Realtor.comScreen shot of PreQualplus tool on Realtor.com

After getting off to a false start, Realtor.com operator Move Inc. says its mortgage lead generation platform, PreQaulplus, is taking off, receiving more than $4 billion in mortgage requests during the summer buying season.

Citing the increase in mortgage prequalification applications, Move Inc. says it’s expanded the PreQualplus platform to accommodate multiple loan originators.

Move launched a lending site that included prequalification tools, MortgageMatch.com, in December 2010, with Houston-based Cornerstone Mortgage Co.

The companies said they planned to integrate MortgageMatch.com’s prequalification tools into Realtor.com to help homebuyers focus on homes they were most likely qualified to buy.

But Move and Cornerstone parted ways, and Move stopped offering loans through the site within a few months of launching it.

Last year, Move launched PreQualplus with MetLife Home Loans, the residential mortgage division of MetLife Bank, N.A. But in January, parent company MetLife Inc. announced that MetLife Home Loans was getting out of the forward mortgage business.

To keep PreQualplus alive, Move then partnered with Discover Home Loans Inc., an Illinois-based lender licensed in 49 states (all but New York). This week, Move announced that it had brought a second lender to the platform — Irvine, Calif.-based Intercap Lending.

“PreQualplus has expanded to support multiple mortgage originators and will continue to add loan originators to meet rising demand, particularly in the states of California, Florida and Texas,” Move said in announcing the addition of Intercap.

PreQualplus employs an automated underwriting process to evaluate consumers’ credit scores and their capacity to afford monthly mortgage payments using decision-making technology based on pricing, eligibility, underwriting, a full credit history review, credit risk analytics, and loan scenario modeling.

Consumers can access PreQualplus at PreQualplus.com or on Realtor.com by clicking on “Estimate My Payment” or “Get Prequalified Today” links on Realtor.com listing detail pages.

Rival real estate search portal Trulia got into the business of generating leads for mortgage lenders last month with the launch of a consumer mortgage rate and fee comparison tool. Participating lenders include First Financial Services Inc., BNC National Bank, West Star Mortgage Inc., Box Home Loans, CapWest Mortgage, North American Savings Bank, RoundPoint Mortgage Co., RMC Vanguard Mortgage and First Choice Bank

Zillow has been offering mortgage loan quotes from multiple lenders on its “Mortgage Marketplace” since April, 2008 — a service the company says generates more than 300,000 consumer loan requests a month.

Google launched a consumer mortgage comparison service in 2009 which became part of Google Advisor before being discontinued without explanation, Search Engine Watch reported in February.

via inman.com