by SpringFour | Dec, 4, 2011 | Default
How many of you out there have purchased a new “widget,” only to find out two months (or two weeks…or two days) later, that your technology is no longer the latest and greatest thing on the planet?
Now imagine that you have 6,000 widgets. And your job is to keep all of them updated at all times. Sound like a job for a super hero?
Welcome to MortgageKeeper…with a database of 6,000 resources around the country and around the corner for struggling homeowners. We are only as good as our data. And our “secret sauce” is our data team, who keeps our current data up to date.
So what qualifies someone to research 6,000 community-based, nationally-based, or government agencies to determine if they are best in class? All members of our team have:
* a college education
* worked extensively for nonprofit organizations.* experience with community organizing and education. (Yes, just like the President…)
Nearly all are published writers. Some have graduate school experience. Others work for top national universities. A few are fully bilingual (they make our MKEspanol–our database, translated into Spanish–a reality). One holds a U.S. patent. Another served in the Peace Corps. They live all over the United States. And they have a tenacious gift for finding and tracking down agencies that can make a huge difference to those who need financial or personal help.
But, sadly, they can’t leap tall buildings or fly invisible jets. At least, they don’t mention this in their resumes…
Got a question about how we keep our data up to date? Post it here…
by SpringFour | Nov, 15, 2011 | Default
Add the MortgageKeeper gang to the 445+ housing counselors asking Congress to restore the HUD funding for counseling.
Now we understand that cutting has to happen somewhere. The U.S. budget is a bit too big to remain viable forever. But cutting funds for counseling in the midst of a housing crisis such as our country’s never seen? Seems a bit off to us.
And to the research that says “housing counseling doubles the likelihood of receiving a loan modification”? Please add our stats to the mix…
One of our top 20 servicing clients wanted to be sure they saw results with MortgageKeeper. They conducted a study in July 2010, comparing clients who had access to MortgageKeeper’s local resources and counseling, vs. those who weren’t given this access. 38% of their borrowers who were referred by MortgageKeeper to local resources improved their mortgage loan’s performance. Only 15% performed better without access to these resources.
Now, the MortgageKeeper folks aren’t necessarily the rabble-rousing types, but if you feel as passionate about these cuts as we do, we encourage you to contact the Congressional leaders involved. You can find their name, and the letter sent by the 445 agencies here.
by SpringFour | Oct, 21, 2011 | Default
Those of us living in here in the Upper Midwest are still talking about last winter: record snowfalls, cold temps, and what seemed like a longer season than usual. And elsewhere, folks aren’t easily forgetting “Snowmageddon”–the February 2011 storm that shut down most of the eastern U.S.
Then there was the summer of 2011–with high temperatures in Texas and Oklahoma well over 100 degrees F. for several months in a row.
Here at MortgageKeeper, our stats tell us that 2011’s extreme weather left not only bad memories, but also high heating and cooling bills that have yet to be paid.
In Q3, MortgageKeeper referred nearly 224,000 homeowners–more than ever before–to local, best-in-class services to get financial and personal help. Of those hundreds of thousands of referrals, 15% were asking for help with their utility bills. This beat out food assistance (13%) and employment services (12%) as the most requested referral type.
Solutions aren’t easy, with predictions that a winter of similar magnitude is heading our way. We’ll continue to batten down the hatches, and hope that local organizations can offer help to those still fighting the weather changes months in arrears.
by SpringFour | Aug, 27, 2011 | Default
Every once in a while, a story comes across the collective MortgageKeeper desk that reminds us why we do what we do.
We’ve heard a few great stories recently. One is below. It was shared by a foreclosure counselor in San Francisco who used MortgageKeeper’s vetted, localized data to help a struggling homeowner in another part of the country.
Hope you enjoy it.
A homeowner (“Sue”) was referred to a food bank in her area and also received one-time assistance on her energy bill which helped her catch up on other past due expenses that month. Her monthly budget now has a surplus of a few hundred dollars and she has started building an emergency savings fund. She didn’t have a fund prior to her mortgage crisis, but now realizes this is an important priority. She’s continuing to pursue the referrals she received for prescription drug assistance to see if she might qualify for regular assistance from a local agency.
In the words of her housing counselor:
“As a new counselor, I’m often hesitant to believe that my recommendations can make any meaningful impact on my clients’ lives, but after my 30-day follow-up call with one of my first clients, I realized that my clients not only listen to me but trust my expertise and rely on me to help them turn around their difficult situations. This client was so excited to let me know that she was taking advantage of the local referrals she got as a result of my [help]. Her voice exuded a relieved confidence as she realized she felt more in control of her finances and her future.”
by SpringFour | Aug, 22, 2011 | Default
We here at MortgageKeeper have taken great pains not to boast on our blog. But we are about to throw that out the window, just for today.
MortgageKeeper is profiled in this week’s column by Lew Sichelman. He writes on consumer real estate matters for United Feature Syndicate. It’s a perfect article, and we are thrilled that Lew honored us with a feature like this.
Here’s a look at this week’s column, as it appears in the Los Angeles Times.
by SpringFour | Jul, 13, 2011 | Default
Gruesome unemployment numbers (9.2%) reverberated across the country this week.
Odds are good that you know one of the 14 million folks who aren’t working. Here in Minnesota, our state shutdown just added 20,000 more people to the UE lines. And Treasury Secretary Geithner says hard times will continue.
So how do the unemployed find work in such a dismal market? Or do they?
Friends of mine are returning to school in droves, gambling that an MBA or a Ph.D. will pay off down the road. Some are retraining, networking, learning new skills, living on monster.com and careerbuilder.com, and interviewing for whatever comes up. MortgageKeeper’s database offers searchers programs for training, resume writing, interviewing, and job sourcing. It also offers links for unemployment claims filing in the searcher’s local area.
One Facebook friend of mine–a trained nuclear engineer–summed up the current job search frustration in a post a few weeks ago:
“Somebody hire me….” it said.
Comments on his post were as follows:
“Somebody hire me too…”
“I wanna get hired too!”
I could only comment, “I wish I could hire all of you!”
Are you searching for work, or have you been successful finding a job? What search methods worked for you?
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