What is it about this week? Since arriving home from a long weekend camping in Maine, I've been inundated with Mortgage 'spam', muc more than usual.

It started when I opened the accumulated snailmail. Half a dozen different banks and mortgage companies offering me 'pre-approved mortgages with unbeatable rates', (none of which incidentally were better than our current rate).

And then I check the email this morning to discover that some spammer is mailbombing me with a mortgage spam.

An just to top it off...the phone rang just now,
"Hi, this is Simon from N.E.S. We're..."
"From Where?"
"From N.E.S. we're offering qualified homeowners"
Click. I hung up.

What's with this? I'm used to the occasional mortgage-related spam, but this is crazy.

i get all that stuff and i've never even applied for a mortgage or any home related loan. !

Where did you go camping?

Oh, and the spam gets worse when you've got a mortgage already. You get it on the phone, in the mail, etc. Savages.

And if you buy a house in a new community the door-to-door compounds the problem. I don't know how many water softener/vacuum/pest control/magazine/meat sales people I've had to turn down, some by pretty much closing the doors in their faces because they wouldn't take "no" for an answer.

Yeah what's up with these people with the "extra meat I can sell you very cheap"? Does Texas have that much extra beef laying around?

When one of the TV network news magazines replied to one of the mortgage spams, they found out that there were something like 5 of the major US mortgage companies behind the one solicitation they replied to. It's the big companies providing the incentive for spammers with the finders fees.

I wonder if picking up a shotgun from behind the door, then slowly putting shells into it, all while whistling Helter Skelter would get them to leave? Would it be illegal if you didn't specifically threaten them with it?

Yuck, I'm about to move into a new house in a month, and my only phone number is my cell phone. Right now it's sacred, if it rings, it's somebody I know. Soon I'm sure that won't be true since I have no other phone number to put down on anything. Well, except my work number and that would be even worse.

It's already illegal to place telemarketing calls to cell phones (in the US; I'm too lazy to see it that's where you are).

As long as you are on the country wide do not call list you are supposed to be safer.
My phone spam has dropped off dramatically since then.

I have gotten almost no spam calls after getting vonage. I am guessing the local phone company was selling the numbers and vonage doesn't

My favorite (NOT) mortgage company of the moment must be ABN-AMRO or www.mortgage.com
My mortgage got sold to these shower of losers, they even use phone autospam to give you account information. I have yet to speak to a human being.
Wonderful.

My homeowner's policy agent says they suck to deal with. Oddly I've had no problems whatsoever with them.

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My favorite (NOT) mortgage company of the moment must be ABN-AMRO or www.mortgage.com

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Ahh. You get the wonderful Dutch customer support experience.

I have add the vonage to the list of best buys as well. Although in that last week I have been getting weird voicemai problems. I am just happy to be able to give SBC the finger

Ah, forgot to answer you...

Camp Eaton on the coastal road in York Harbor. Despite being in a real tourist-trap area, the site seems to have the right idea - good essentials, few luxury trappings and a relaxed attitude. We camped in the shade of a massive old oak tree, with music provided by Atlantic Ocean waves breaking across the rocks.
I celebrated my birthday by watching dawn across the Atlantic. My wife had watched the sun rise a couple of days earlier, and apparantly it had been spectacular. I must have upset somebody upstairs because it was foggy. And I got shredded by the mosquitoes. Maybe I had too many lay-ins last year!

Part of the problem with mortgage spam is the financial structure of the mortgage industry. Third-party mortgage brokers make thousands of dollars hooking buyer up with seller, while doing relatively little actual work themselves beyond coordinating all of your paperwork.

If consumers could directly approach banks and get mortgages with those kick-back fees deducted from the costs, the mortgage broker industry would collapse. Instead, when you directly approach a bank, they keep that fee for themselves. You'd think that the intense competition of the banking industry, like the airline industry, would push the middle-men out of the business, but it doesn't seem to be working that way.

Oh well.

This is exactly why I got rid of my home phone and got a cool cel (ends up being cheaper per month, and no telemarketers) and I've enforced a strict policy of only opening the front door if the person knocks/rings more then once usually twice. But I still get swamped with the mortgage junk mail... But I actually get more credit card offers then anything now. I didn't check my mail for a week, opened the box and had over 100 pieces of mail 4 of which happened to be legitimate bills... the rest spam... it's agitating.

I envy those of you who have good enough mobile phone service to consider getting rid of land lines. Around here it's totally hit-or-miss. And this is in the middle of the capital of North Carolina, which has a major Interstate running through it.

In Finland, where I come from, the only reason to get a land line these days is ADSL. Here in Holland, the cellular charges are still too high for that to happen.

OK, someone please explain how the cellular charges in a country with 16 million people in a very small, flat space can be much higher than in a geographically vast and challenged country with only 5 million people....

I got rid of my landline, but only replaced it with the vonage internet phone service.
Most of our phone calls are international rather than long distance, so getting 5c a minute to the UK is a heck of a deal better than the 9c from SBC.
Obviously it does require the extra expense of broadband internet, but even factoring that in - it still works out cheaper for us that SBC.

You'd think that the intense competition of the banking industry, like the airline industry, would push the middle-men out of the business, but it doesn't seem to be working that way.

Since this very business provides for half of the livelihood of my household, I think I can comment on why this is the case.

Banks suck at doing mortgages. Everyone I know who's gone straight to their bank for the mortgage (including us) has all sorts of complaints about how poorly the process was handled and how the bank messed it up completely.

There's so much complexity and bureaucracy surrounding the process that it requires a diligent person to shepherd a loan through the maze. That's a full time job. It's not like, "I can open your checking account for you, make change, help you remember your lost ATM code, deal with unruly teller window customers, AND it just so happens I can also get you a mortgage when I have a minute."

Yeah, some banks have dedicated mortgage officers. But at that point, that person is just duplicating what the middle-man mortgage broker business would be doing anyway, and that person has to get paid just like the independent mortgage broker does, and so it's no different. In fact, in most cases, those mortgage officers at the bank are usually independent contractors that get paid on commission anyway, meaning that they really ARE exactly the same as an independent mortgage broker.

I still can't get past having to pay for incoming calls of my cell phone.

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I still can't get past having to pay for incoming calls of my cell phone.

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Even worse would be to have to pay for somebody else's redirection to Bahamas....