A Chilling Look Behind the Mortgage Crisis…
UPDATE: Thanks Andy for the heads up on the podcast link not working. It looks like they changed the link on me over the weekend… but I hunted down the new link and updated the links below w/ the correct link. Enjoy.
I’m not even sure how I came across this podcast … but I did… and I listened to it.
As you know, I had a brief stint in the mortgage industry just before the $hit hit the fan. I was there (not a broker… I was a marketing consultant for a mortgage company) when the first few wholesale lenders closed their doors (a couple years back). It was crazy for me because it seemed like every week there for a while another email popped in my inbox saying, "Tomorrow x mortgage company will be ceasing operations as a result of… blah… blah… blah". Crazy stuff.
The mortgage shop that I marketed for was one of the more ethical shops around. I didn’t see the huge No Income Verification loans going through where the broker knew the borrower had no chance in heck to pay the loan back (that kind of stuff happened everyday w/ unethical brokers).
Anyhow, a week back I came across this podcast that puts you behind the scenes in the mortgage industry from the words of people at ALL LEVELS of the mortgage crisis.
All the way from a low level broker, to a small wholesale mortgage company, to a boiler room like mortgage factory (for lack of a better word), to the wall street investment firms who bought and sold the mortgage backed securities, to the global investors who bought the securities…
… and last but not least… a few of the borrowers who got caught up in the "free money" train and found themselves getting home equity lines to pay off their mortgage lates. I mean… I knew it was and is ugly… but this podcast is a real eye opener for anyone involved in real estate or the mortgage industry.
Anyhow, the podcast is pretty long and VERY VERY well done. It’s actually an investigative reporter at an NPR station in Chicago… and this is a must listen.
Once you’re done with this podcast… you’ll have no questions at all why and how we are where we are today… I learned a ton of stuff I had no clue about and I was in the industry for almost a year.
Here is the link . Let me know your thoughts.
==> Listen To The Podcast
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Hey, my name is Trevor and I'm the founder of The REI Brain and a real estate investor since the age of 21. Right now, my focus in real estate investing is multi-family income properties and I have plans on moving more into the commercial real estate investment world in 2008 and beyond. 
The link to the podcast appears to be invalid (or is it just me?)
Hey Andy,
Thanks for the heads up. I wrote this article on Thursday and they must have changed the podcast link over the weekend.
Anyhow, I found the new link and updated the post w/ the correct link. I tested it out and it works great now.
Thanks again! By the way… I didn’t think I was going to listen to the whole hour podcast when I started it… but it was so damn interesting that I sat through the whole thing… very very revealing and astonishing facts revealed here… and it really clears up what’s causing this mess.
- Trevor