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a la mode news & marketing tips — posted July 11, 2005

Overcome language barriers between you and your clients

In 2002, President Bush challenged the Office of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to create 5.5 million new minority homeowners by the end of the decade.  The office reported on June 18 that it is already halfway to that goal.

But despite such an aggressive initiative, there are still factors keeping minorities from owning their own home.  Lack of understanding and information about the home buying process remains one of the biggest barriers to minority homeownership especially for families for whom English is a second language.  Today nearly one in five people speak a language other than English at home.

Because the minority mortgage market particularly the Hispanic market has become so prevalent, many mortgage brokers have begun looking for ways to incorporate other languages into their marketing and communications.  You're ahead of the game in this area because your XSite comes with more than 60 content pages that can be switched into Spanish with just one click.  The pages were translated by hand by people who actually speak the language so we know they're correct.

To set up the Spanish option on your site, go to Step 6 in your XSite's Wizard and scroll to the bottom of the page where you can check the box to enable the Spanish language option.  Then, visitors can click on the "Choose your language" link on your XSite and your web pages will translate into Spanish for them.

In addition to your XSite, there are other tools that can help break down the language barrier between you and your clients. There are a number of free translation websites such as www.freetranslation.com and www.worldlingo.com that can help you translate documents to and from various languages.  World Lingo even offers translation services for Microsoft Office XP, which provides translations for single words, phrases and entire documents.  It should be noted that many free services use a machine to translate documents, which isn't as accurate as having a human translator.  However, some companies do offer human translation services for an extra fee.

Google.com also has a language translation tool that allows you to search for specific pages in another language and translates text and websites into different languages.  You can also set your Google homepage, messages, and buttons to display in another language even Klingon! 

Today's minority groups are projected to comprise nearly one-half of the increase in homeowners between 2000 and 2020 and Hispanic households are expected to be the fastest growing minority group.  Language tools that can help your Hispanic clients better understand the home buying process will result in more knowledgeable clients, and of course, more homeowners!

We want to know your business inside and out

As you know, to be successful in any business you need to know your customers and anticipate their needs.  There are many technology companies out there that sell websites and tools for real estate agents, but really don't know your business.  We wanted to raise the bar and truly understand how you work and what technology matters most to you and your clients.

That's why we decided more than 20 years ago that to truly provide you with the best tools in the business, we needed become involved in the business ourselves.  In addition to the comprehensive industry training every employee must go through just to work here, many members of our sales and executive teams have also taken classes and training to become mortgage brokers, appraisers and REALTORS®

Having licensed professionals from all the markets we serve in our office allows us to better understand the everyday experiences you face and develop products to help solve those issues.  We also consult with them on all of our product development to make sure we're always working towards our goal of providing the best software and technology for real estate professionals.
 
Chris McAtee is a licensed loan officer in the Oklahoma City area and a member of our Mortgage XSites sales team.  "Doing loans part time has really had a major impact on my insight of our mortgage technology.  Because I can see it from the broker's point of view, we're able to make a more practical product for our customers in the mortgage business," he said.

Briefly Speaking


New 90-day policy on XSites Network affects you
Since 1999, we've delivered millions of appraisal orders for our customers through the XSites Network (formerly the Mercury Network).  We're currently averaging 20 million per year.  That means we've had to store all those files and data sent through the XSites Network related to every report and order.  As you can imagine, because of this massive growth, it's just not practical to store those files indefinitely.

As a result, we've issued a new policy for appraisal orders that may affect you in the future.  We'll be deleting files associated with any appraisal orders on the XSites Network that are older than 90 days.

We are not deleting the original order from the system.  It will still permanently reside in our database, along with related status messages, so that the appraiser can search any and all of your past order information. 

But we are deleting what we call the ORD file, which is the online version of the order file, and the PDF associated with that file.  The deleted ORD file will not affect any kind of data you might need to make any sort of credit or underwriting decision for a client. However, if you want to hang on to those files, please make sure you save the older PDF attachments of the appraisal orders you've places either through your own XSite or an appraiser's XSite.

If this applies to you, you will receive a notice with a list of files scheduled for deletion in your e-mail.  Be on the lookout!

Miss the June 20 edition?
In the last Mortgage e-newsletter we explained several ways your XSite keeps your clients informed of every step of their loan process so you don’t have to spend your day answering those "What's going on with my loan" calls and e-mails.  We also gave you some tips on writing your e-mail marketing subject lines so they get through your clients' spam filters, and much more.  Read the June 20 edition here.

Contact Us


For questions about this newsletter, contact the editor: Amanda@alamode.com

For sales inquiries, contact sales@alamode.com or call
1-800-ALAMODE. 

If you have an idea, tip or feedback on any of our products, we'd love to hear from you!  Please e-mail us at info@alamode.com.

 

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