A real eye-opener, especially for first-time mortgage loan applicants.
A mortgage broker exposes and explains the inner workings of mortgage loans.
One of the more frustrating and sometimes perplexing financial experiences is applying for a mortgage loan. It is often a painful rite of passage for many homeowners and a typically unpleasant chore for those who wish to refinance their mortgages. While Rudie’s debut can’t promise to make getting a mortgage loan any easier, it does the next best thing: It thoroughly explains the process so an applicant can be forearmed with authoritative information as well as expert guidance. As an experienced mortgage loan professional (she worked for large firms before starting her own business), Rudie is exceptionally qualified to discuss the process. In addition, Rudie is a licensed real estate broker, so she can give the perspectives of both provider and applicant. At first, this book may appear intimidating, with its 37 chapters and more than 300 pages, but Rudie manages to dress up a topic she readily admits can be boring by adding plenty of humor and interesting anecdotes. The opening chapter, which offers a solid overview of the entire mortgage loan process, is written as if the reader were one of Rudie’s clients. This serves to establish a personal, me-to-you relationship with the reader. Still, it is a comprehensive walk-through of the various loan application requirements with helpful caveats, such as: “Please include all pages, even if the last one is blank…the lender’s auditor will hold up funding on this.” Subsequent chapters go into considerable but useful detail.
Rudie covers the individuals and institutions typically involved in preparing, approving, and executing mortgage loans—useful in making sense of the bewildering number of players in mortgage transactions. Types of loans, lines of credit, and credit scores are discussed, as are such real estate activities as appraisals, home inspections, and title insurance. Readers who consider mortgaging a mobile/manufactured home will find authoritative advice, such as how to evaluate the best home/land loan and private financing options. A chapter on deals that “blow up” details six client stories illustrating some intriguing reasons why mortgage loans fall through. Rudie also includes mention of the potential effect of the coronavirus pandemic on the mortgage market. This handbook is likely to be as comprehensive a resource on mortgage loans as any. It covers the basics with flair and provides sensible advice along the way. Rudie’s conversational writing style and jocularity are engaging enough to ward off dullness and boredom; for example, “Yep, you guessed it! That last magic person in the loan process is actually the county clerk.” Perhaps one of the strongest aspects of the work is the author’s ability to weave in relevant client stories, some of which are very amusing while others are sad and even tragic. Rudie’s candor in selecting stories that reflect on her own errors is particularly refreshing. Most of the stories demonstrate that the process must be followed, no matter how absurd it may seem, and no mortgage loan is guaranteed until the final approval is granted.
A real eye-opener, especially for first-time mortgage loan applicants. (appendix)Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-09831-239-8
Page Count: 342
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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