Food For Bay Area Families
Run Date: December 23, 2009
KPIX/CBS 5
Kristine Gilmore, Office Manager at EMC Creative, tells CBS 5 News how she and the agency creatively raised and donated more than $1,000 during the 2009 holiday season to the Contra Costa Food Bank.
Financial expert sheds light on new era in mortgage business
Run Date: December 12, 2009
by Linnea Smith Jessup
Contra Costa Times
It’s been a year when the very word “mortgage” has triggered fearful thoughts and anxiety on the part of homeowners, potential homeowners and all the real estate professionals and the affiliate folks who serve consumers. Yet beyond the hubbub are those in the mortgage industry who are committed to realistic mortgage eligibility requirements and continue to work closely with home buyers.
Chris George, CEO of CMG Mortgage based in San Ramon, describes the current mortgage climate as a “Renaissance of reasonableness.” Discussing his company as well as the industry, he lauded the taking “a sensible view of people’s finances today… it’s different than I’ve seen in my 27 years” in the mortgage business, he said.
There’s a new emphasis on careful evaluation of people’s financial strength and stability. Of consumers, he observes, “we want to get out of debt, and not do things outside of our abilities. Homeownership is not a right. It’s a privilege for which one has to work.”
He continued, “Yes [home buyers] need a job, good credit, savings.” In the past, he said, “It got absurd, it became far too easy to get a loan,” with devastating results for multitudes of
home owners.
As the home mortgage industry collapsed, “There was nothing we could say as things fell apart,” he said. “But now we are in repair and rebuild mode. We can move forward.”
George, currently secretary of the California Mortgage Bankers Association, noted that early on, the attitude of the industry was to “fix it,” and indeed a lot of loans were securitized, “but now, it’s ‘let’s get back to work,’ learn from the industry’s mistakes and move forward firmly grounded in sound financial and lending practices.”
The mortgage industry today, he summarized, is characterized by four H-words. “We are filled with humility. We are honest, more than ever; we have the direct conversation [with the client] and we have to work hard for everything today, not like the late ‘90’s into 2006, “when it sometimes seemed like financial companies couldn’t approve mortgages fast enough.
He added, “we also have to have humor — we have to get through dark, hard times with humor.”
The result: “Today, we’re starting with a blank palette. It’s like when you see scorched earth, then slowly small green sprouts of growth come up… I believe something good is coming out of this,” he said.
What this means for consumers is that they need to be pro-active in any loan process. “A potential buyer must be actively involved” in the process of learning about and applying for a loan. The industry “isn’t buyer beware’, he explained, and clients need to do their own independent research on how mortgage products and pricing work.
“Study and learn,” he encouraged. “Don’t rely on your bank, your bank officer or a loan officer,” he pointed out, adding that sometimes “people take more time to evaluate which car they want to buy than to select a home mortgage.”
The process is, he added, “financial planning, not just home buying.”
George is gratified, however, to see that many more customers today than in the past are educated about mortgages. “An informed customer is a great customer.”
And of his industry as well as of consumers, he said, ”If you make a mistake, learn from it, fix it and don’t repeat the mistake. Learn from each mistake and remember those lessons.”
George commented, “As an industry, if we don’t learn from this, we’ll repeat this situation in 79 more years…” and compared the possible scenario to the Depression. “We can’t forget these lessons,” he said.
Today’s mortgage customer averages age 36 to 39, with an average credit score of 700 and a debt to income level of not more than 40 percent. A big change in the new area of obtaining mortgages is the average buyer still has an average savings after down payment of $30,000. “It’s financial planning, not just home buying,” noted George of the process.
How should someone pick a mortgage company? Most loan choices are nearly identical from company to company, with each offering the same product at nearly the same price. He suggests that prospective buyers call a couple mortgage companies or research a few online. “Usually buyers pick a mortgage company by word of mouth, “but it’s wise to also investigate other companies.
“Compare the capabilities and customer service of your potential loan officer,” he advised. And, “Trust [a company], but verify,”
he advised.
KFBK Real Estate Show Interviews Dan O’Brien
Podcast: | Download
Run Date: December 6, 2009
Newstalk KFBK 1530 AM
Terry Knight of the KFBK Real Estate talks with Dan O’Brien of Trilogy Area President for Shea Homes about the history and success of Shea Homes and the specialized communities of Trilogy.
Trilogy club gets hands-on lessons, thanks to active-adult community’s vineyards
Run Date: December 4, 2009
Contra Costa Times
BRENTWOOD – In a dark garage somewhere in Brentwood, five barrels of nature’s bounty slowly sweetens as time works its magic.
The just-harvested table wine is the handiwork of a few Brentwood residents who came together this summer for hands-on lessons in winemaking.
“I wanted to learn more about all the subtleties and vagaries that are involved in making a good wine,” said Gordon Carville, a resident of Trilogy at The Vineyards and president of the active adult community’s home winemaking club.
He and dozens of others joined the fledgling group after hearing that the builder had agreed to donate the first harvest of the development’s 32 acres of vineyards for processing.
“Everybody jumped on it right away,” Carville said.
Although for years he had belonged to a wine club on the Peninsula in which members met each month to taste and rate different varietals and labels, Carville wanted to know more about the steps of getting grapes from vine to bottle.
“It isn’t just crushing them, sticking them in a barrel and fermenting them,” he said.
And so one day in early October a team of professionals picked about two tons of Aglianico and Mourvè dre — two of the vineyard’s five varieties of grapes — and club members got to work.
Under the supervision of a local vineyard manager, they stripped off the stems and separated those from the juice, seeds and skins.
Adding yeast to ensure the complete conversion of the fruit’s sugar into alcohol, participants then poured the pulpy mixture into plastic fermentation bins.
Over the next week, they took turns stirring the unfermented juice three times a day to extract the flavor and color as well as tannin, the substances that make wine tart.
Then it was time to separate out the skins and seeds and let the juice ferment for 10 days.
At the suggestion of a St. Helena laboratory that analyzed samples from each varietal, the amateur winemakers blended the two to get the right alcohol content and bring the pH down to a level that would reduce the chances of bacteria spoiling the wine.
After that, club members transferred the approximately 300 gallons of wine into French oak barrels to age until it’s bottled in August or September.
The complexity of the process surprised Dan O’Brien, Trilogy area president for Shea Homes who, as a resident himself, joined the club to learn more about wine in a setting that didn’t require members to be connoisseurs already.
“There’s an awful lot of science,” he said, referring to the chemistry involved in changing fruit juice to delicately flavored alcohol.
Vineyard manager Randy Taylor is predicting the club will end up with about 125 cases of red table wine, enough for its approximately 55 members to have a couple dozen bottles each.
“It was better than I thought,” Carville said of his reaction upon tasting the product early in its metamorphosis.
And he really enjoys what it’s becoming — a dark red, full-bodied wine with a soupçon of black cherries and currants.
At the start of the undertaking, Fredo Gouveia was among those whose experience with wine was limited to uncorking a bottle and pouring.
“It was an eye opener. I didn’t realize there was so much to it,” he said.
Carville was struck by the marked differences between the Aglianico and Mourvè dre varietals in acidity, the amount of juice they produced, and how easily they could be separated from the stems.
“We kind of thought grapes are grapes,” he said.
After holding a contest for the best label design, club members plan to serve some of the first batch at Trilogy functions and hope eventually to sell wine to the clubhouse’s restaurant.
As far as Carville is concerned, however, the fruits of his labor are staying right at home to enjoy.
“There’s no question about that!” he said.
