*There comes a time when you must stand alone.
*You must feel confident enough within yourself to follow your own dreams.

*You must be willing to make sacrifices.

*You must be capable of changing and rearranging your priorities so that your final goal can be achieved.

*Sometimes, familiarity and comfort need to be challenged.
*There are times when you must take a few extra chances and create your own realities.

*Be strong enough to at least try to make your life better.
*Be confident enough that you won't settle for a compromise just to get by.

*Appreciate yourself by allowing yourself the opportunities to grow, develop, and find your true sense of purpose in this life.

*Don't stand in someone else's shadow when it's your sunlight that should lead the way.

*Work hard at what you like to do and try to overcome all obstacles
*Laugh at your mistakes and praise yourself for learning from them
*Pick some flowers and appreciate the beauty of nature

*Say hello to strangers and enjoy the people you know

*Don't be afraid to show your emotions laughing and crying make you feel better

*Love your friends and family with your entire being they are the most important part of your life

*Feel the calmness on a quiet sunny day

*Find a rainbow and live your world of dreams always remember life is better than it seems

Look for reasons to be grateful.

Gratitude is in itself PROSPERITY!

All we're truly seeking when we want anything is a feeling of fulfillment and well being, that we are loved, cared for and blessed.

That feeling can be ours in any moment when we stop and reflect on all we already have..

Remember that what goes around, comes around.

"At the deepest level of Being, you are one with all that is"

"As far as inner transformation is concerned, there is nothing you can do about it. You cannot transform yourself, and you certainly cannot transform your partner or anybody else.

All you can do is create a space for transformation to happen, for grace and love to enter"

"Author Unknown"

There was a young woman who had been diagnosed

with a terminal illness and had been given three

months to live. So as she was getting her things 'in

order,' she contacted her Pastor and had him come

to her house to discuss certain aspects of her final

wishes.

She told him which songs she wanted sung at the

service, what scriptures she would like read, and

what outfit she wanted to be buried in.

they always want to open their hearts to us.

For you never know when it may be their time to 'Keep your fork.'

Cherish the time you have, and the memories you

share... being friends with someone is not an

opportunity but a sweet responsibility.

And keep your fork.

XOOXOXOXO

By CHRIS BAGLEY - Staff Writer | Saturday, March 22, 2008 10:04 PM PDT ∞

A pair of recent FBI raids in Murrieta illustrates caseloads that are growing as homeowners allege recent ---- and not-so-recent --- incidents of real estate fraud, law-enforcement officials said in interviews this month.

It has been a year or more since Southern California's most recent real estate wave began to ebb, and court dockets are still filling up with allegations of fraud from the boom. And reports of identity theft and bogus reverse mortgages continue to roll in.

The numbers of investigations, prosecutions and convictions are rising across the nation as home sales fall and foreclosures increase.

Nationwide, lenders and other financial institutions filed 46,717 reports of attempted or suspected mortgage fraud to authorities between September 2006 and October 2007, up 32 percent from the 2005-06 fiscal year and nearly seven times as many as in the 2002-03 fiscal year, according to records compiled by the U.S. Treasury Department.

The California Department of Real Estate, reported investigating about 9,100 complaints against real estate agents and mortgage brokers in its 2007 fiscal year. That number has risen steadily for four years.

And the FBI tallied 260 convictions on mortgage-related crimes in the year through October, more than double the 123 convictions in 2005-06, according to a bureau spokesman.

Barry Minkow, a former white-collar convict who runs the Fraud Discovery Institute in San Diego, said the combination of modest stock appreciation on Wall Street and skyrocketing home prices in Southern California made 2004 and 2005 "a perfect fraud storm" in real estate.

San Diego County Deputy District Attorney Michael Groch, who oversees real estate fraud prosecutions, said his caseload has increased markedly since then. The real estate division launched 64 investigations and obtained nine convictions last year, he said; many of those incidents date to 2006 or earlier, when allegedly crooked real estate professionals attempted to squeeze equity out of buyers and owners who put too much faith in rising prices. A spokeswoman for the Riverside County district attorney's office said she wasn't able to provide comparable figures.

"There's a lot of fraud when the market is good that people don't report," Groch said. "It's when the market goes down that these things are exposed."

Boom's dark side

Among mortgages that originated in 2005, California ranked 18th among U.S. states in frequency of fraud by borrowers, according to an analysis published earlier this month by the Mortgage Asset Research Institute. The state peaked at No. 2 in 2006 and then fell back to fourth last year, according to the analysis.

The FBI's two raids in Murrieta, in late February, sought records from transactions that former clients and other government agencies allege to have occurred between late 2004 and summer 2006.

Authorities in San Bernardino and Los Angeles counties arrested at least seven mortgage agents and financial consultants last week on suspicion of defrauding hundreds of investors over the course of 2006 and 2007. Prosecutors say the group arranged for inflated home appraisals to qualify homeowners for excessive loans. In some cases, the group allegedly pressured the clients to sign. In other cases, prosecutors say, the group simply forged and photocopied signatures.

New varieties

More recently, Groch said, homeowners are reporting bogus schemes to "rescue" them from foreclosure. The homeowners are easy targets because notices associated with the foreclosure process are available ---- sometimes by the thousand ---- through a wide range of subscription services.

The growing number of reports prompted the district attorney's real estate division to hire a fourth investigator last year, he said.

One typical foreclosure scam is to persuade the residents to deed their house to the con artist under the pretext that he'll make payments on it until they straighten out their finances, Groch said. But then he sells the house without their knowledge and walks away with the money.

A group of investment managers in Murrieta allegedly tried to pull this trick on a group of houses they had helped a couple buy just a couple of years earlier, according to a series of lawsuits filed last year by residents of North County and southwestern Riverside County. The couple and other investors in the group ended up losing more than 100 properties to foreclosure since late 2006.

The couple later withdrew the lawsuit; the FBI is continuing to investigate.

Poway real estate appraiser Todd Lackner said he's beginning to notice new patterns of unethical buying and selling behavior taking the place of large cases of outright fraud.

One scenario involves a homeowner who is "underwater" ---- owing, for example, $700,000 on a house that she could sell for only $500,000. She wants to remain a homeowner in the same neighborhood, so she buys a comparable house down the street for $500,000 and moves into it. The lender typically doesn't care ---- or even know ---- that she's underwater on the first house, as long as she's current on payments.

After moving, she stops paying off the mortgage on the first house. The resulting foreclosure ruins her credit score for the next few years, but she doesn't worry because she doesn't plan to buy a house anytime soon.

Red flags

Recent unethical or fraudulent transactions are small compared with what was going on from 2004 to 2006, Lackner said. Since he began combing through records of home listings and sales a couple of years ago, he said, he has discovered several dozen transactions in North County that appeared to involve some sort of fraud, and 500 more in Riverside County.

The fact that so many turn up in a simple search of title records indicates that many lenders were lax in screening buyers for their ability and intention to repay, he said.

And those numbers don't even include stated-income mortgage applications, which didn't require borrowers to provide proof of income. A 2006 study by the Mortgage Asset Research Institute found that 95 percent of stated-income borrowers overstated their incomes by more than 5 percent; 60 percent of the borrowers in the study exaggerated their incomes by more than half. The statistics underscored nicknames such as "liar loans" and "overstated income loans" that the product had taken on.

"That was almost its intention," Lackner said.

Federal officials have estimated that such loans accounted for 30 percent of all loans in some recent years, and more than half of the loans issued in California.

"Liar loans" aside, a frequent red flag near the end of the boom involved last-minute changes to asking prices in the listing database. Lackner said his reviews of listing and transaction records have turned up hundreds of cases in which a house sat on the market for several months, then suddenly had its list price raised by $10,000 or more, and immediately went into escrow: That's a potential sign that the buyer's agent conspired to collect an oversized and undeserved commission on the property.

Another red flag goes up when Lackner notices an individual who bought multiple houses with 90 percent to 100 percent mortgages within a couple of weeks of each other. Hundreds of buyers may have used the tactic to apply as owner-occupants on multiple loans, allowing them lower interest rates and smaller down payments without giving lenders the chance to turn up earlier loans made on similar terms, Lackner said.

Two large groups of recently foreclosed homes in Murrieta, including the one under investigation by the FBI, have fit this pattern, according to Realist, a database of property records used by real estate agents.

Still, Lackner said, schemes along those lines have recently become smaller in scale and less numerous, partly because of increased attention from law enforcement agencies. That's partly because most houses' lower equity ratios make them less desirable targets for equity theft than in 2004 and 2005, when many inexperienced homeowners were suddenly finding themselves with $200,000 in equity.

Many of the buyers and sellers of those houses have recently reported the transactions to authorities, but Lackner said statutes of limitations, typically two or three years, could prevent some from being prosecuted.

"My only concern is that the statutes are going to run out," he said.

Contact staff writer Chris Bagley at 760-740-5444 or cbagley@nctimes.com. Comment at www.nctimes.com.

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2008/03/23/business/0bf81c65dc6988078825740b0...

Two Bay Area men who ran mortgage scheme sentenced to prison

By: Associated Press | Thursday, March 20, 2008 9:06 PM PDT ∞

SAN FRANCISCO -- The two founders of a Bay Area company that prosecutors say victimized thousands of people in a mortgage scheme will be spending a long time behind bars.

Kurt Johnson of Sunnyvale was sentenced Tuesday to 25 years in prison, while Dale Heineman of Union City was sentenced to nearly 22 years after both were convicted of multiple counts of fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud.

Federal prosecutors say through their Union City-based Dorean Group, the 45-year-old Johnson and the 48-year-old Heineman promised customers -- for a fee -- that they could eliminate their mortgages.

Prosecutors say as many as 3,500 homeowners and at least 20 lenders in 35 states were victimized.

A hearing for to determine how much restitution the two men will have to pay is scheduled for June.

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2008/03/21/news/state/16_29_473_20_08.txt

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RISMEDIA, March 24, 2008–Do you know how to avoid ‘toxic’ people? Or even what signs to look for to recognize them? This is just one insight among many this week from Dr. Maya Bailey, Ph.D., who tells real estate professionals how to remain positive against an onslaught of negative press surrounding today’s real estate market.

Q. Dear Dr. Maya: With so much negativity from the media and people around me, how can I possibly stay positive?

A. Excellent question. I get asked that a lot so I created eight ways that you can create and maintain a positive mental attitude in today’s market.

1. Avoid toxic people

What does this mean? Who are the toxic people?

Toxic people can be well-meaning people but when they talk to you, they are coming from a negative attitude about money, finances, and especially about the current real estate situation.

2. If you’ve tried everything and exhausted always to avoid toxic people, then you may have to set an internal boundary.

You can do this very simply by having your own inner conversation if someone is saying something negative to you on the outside.

A great example of an inner conversation when someone is complaining about their business or about the marketplace, is to say to yourself, “that may be true for you but it’s not true for me.” This can become your inner mantra.

3. Avoid the media

Why? Remember that the intention of the media is to sell newspapers and magazines. The more they can paint a negative and fearful picture, the more their sales go up.

In fact there is a saying in the newspaper business, “If it bleeds, it reads.” That may seem harsh, but pick up any newspaper and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

In fact there is a saying in the newspaper business, “If it bleeds, it reads.” That may seem harsh, but pick up any newspaper and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

Why subject yourself to slanted, negative spins on the economy when you can find just as much information to point to the positive?

4. Successful real estate professionals do well in any market

Were you aware of that? Knowing that fact, none of us can continue to use the excuse about the market being bad.

In fact, I am coaching several clients right now who in the last six months have doubled and tripled their incomes.

In addition to the right marketing strategies and regular lead generation activities, you could help yourself with this empowered belief:

“I now draw to me clients who are ready, willing and able to make a transaction in the next 30 days.”

5. Look for the opportunity in today’s marketplace

There are many opportunities in today’s market and successful real estate professionals are taking advantage of them.

Did you know that Donald Trump is buying up as much property as he can? Why do you think that is? He is a smart businessman, to say the least, and knows that this is the best time to buy.

Let your prospective clients know this and then say to them, “Let’s get you a deal.” Few could resist this invitation.

6. Remember that your success depends on your mindset, not on the outer conditions of the market.

“If you believe you can or you can’t, either way you are right,” Henry Ford.

What mindset do you choose to nurture inside yourself? Do you want to believe, “I can” or “I can’t?” Your beliefs create your reality so whatever you choose to believe will become true for you.

7. Remember to engage the Law of Attraction as one of your most powerful tools

The law of attraction states that you get what you focus your attention on. Furthermore, your beliefs create your reality so choose your beliefs carefully.

Here’s a tip: instead of saying “I can’t possibly succeed in today’s market,” choose instead to focus one of these beliefs:

“I achieve whatever I set my mind to.”

“I am a money market in any situation.”

“I attract clients who appreciate and respect my expertise.”

“My success depends on my attitude, not on any outer circumstances.”

8. Be proactive

In any marketplace there are always people wanting to buy and sell homes. They need your help and they need your expertise.

Your job is to become visible to them. In today’s market, they are not likely to fall in your lap.

However with a good system of lead generation, you can contact them and use your intention to attract your ideal clients.

Clear out any self limiting beliefs that inhibit your ability to pick up the phone.

Follow the suggestions mentioned above and you’ll be happy to notice that are only are you staying more positive, but also your income is increasing as well.

About the author: for more information on powerful marketing tips and tools, please visit Dr. Maya’s website: http://www.90daystomoreclients.com while you are there, get your Free Audio mentoring session and Free Report, “7 simple strategies to more clients in 90 days” or call Dr. Maya at 707 799-5412.

E-mail your questions about the Law of Attraction, reprogramming of self-limiting beliefs, confidence-building and marketing communication to, Dr. Maya at drmaya@90daystomoreclients.com and we may include them in this weekly column.

RISMedia welcomes your questions and comments. Send your e-mail to: realestatemagazinefeedback@rsmedia.com

http://rismedia.com/wp/2008-03-21/ask-dr-maya-how-to-stay-positive-in-the-wak...

Empowered beliefs that will help you create the income you want:

• I do deserve an abundance of prosperity
• It’s okay for me to be grateful for what I have and still want more
• Money is neutral and can be used for good or evil
• Money can’t buy me happiness, but I can create a better life for myself and people around me by being prosperous
• Some people are honest and some are not. It has no relationship to whether or not they have money

- Dr. Maya Bailey, Ph.D

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our Light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.

PEACE, LOVE & LIGHT