Disclosure: The following is a sponsored review. It is not a site/product endorsement.

FHA information is a handy thing to have. Though often maligned, the FHA loan program has for decades helped many people purchase a home. With the recent sub-prime collapse, FHA loans may be seeing a surge in use, and with that comes a need for consumer related information. 

The Mortgage Loan Place offers a free 20 page guide titled, "A Complete Guide to FHA Loans" (PDF download). Anything that has "Complete" in the title will cause me to raise an eyebrow. I'm on the retentive side, and "complete" to me means COMPLETE. And really, by definition, a "guide" can hardly ever truly be deemed complete.

That said, this guide is well structured and contains a significant amount of information for the real estate consumer considering financing options, including FHA refinance loans. 

As a guide of this sort should have, it contains sections on the whats, whys and hows of FHA loans. It even delves into various types of loan products such as option ARMs, interest only loans and fixed rates. A nice addition are sections on possible changes to the FHA program, HUD owned homes and the HUD "Good Neighbor Next Door" Program. The guide is well written, at a basic level that is easily understood by non-real estate professionals — it's obvious intended target.

One thing I appreciate about the guide is that clearly it is not a platform for shameless self-promotion by the Mortgage Loan Place. There is no, "use us for your FHA loans, we're the obvious choice" type of stuff. In fact, they encourage people to speak with different lenders. Other than non-intrusive "Mortgage Loan Place" text in the page footers, there is no other mention of the author/sponsor — not even a contact number or embedded link. It's pretty darn transparent information.

I really only have two points of minor criticism: 1) the document is not dated. Perhaps that is done so it is never "out of date", but undated documents that contain timely information that can change tends to bug the old semiconductor engineer in me. The use of terms like "testified recently" and "passed by the House last year" just begs for us to know when the document was written. 2) There a frequent references to the FHA loan limits. I can understand not putting in limit table, as they vary by metro area and county and any table could swiftly be rendered out of date. But why not embed a link to HUD's FHA Limits page? A real estate professional should know where to find the limits, and yes, the average consumer is more than capable of searching for them, but why not make it simple and embed the link.

The Complete Guide to FHA Loans is a document with a lot of pertinent information. Good for the consumer, and a decent refresher for a real estate agent who hasn't had to recently deal with an FHA buyer.

 

 

 

Disclosure: The following is a paid review. It is not a site/product endorsement. More on this at the bottom of the post. Please take the poll!

Overview: MyMovingQuote.com is a web site designed for two main purposes. It provides tips and information on moving — from a local to an international move — and it provides a venue to get quotes from up to 10 moving companies delivered to you via email and/or telephone.

MyMovingQuote has multiple sections for various types of movers — local,  long distance, international and office movers. It also includes info and quotes for auto shipping and local self storage options.

Information: The information pages are organized in a left column menu and include what you would expect — moving tips, packing tips, moving with kids and pets, choosing a mover, etc. The tips aren’t earth shattering, but would probably prove useful for someone that hadn’t moved using a moving company before. The moving glossary was relatively short, but could prove quite useful in decoding some “movers speak”.

Moving Quotes: The big draw of the site is the proposed ease of obtaining up to 10 quotes from movers specializing in the various flavors of moves. Although I felt bad about sending a “fake” request out, it didn’t seem right to review a site like this without fully testing the main event.

I chose a local move within my zip code as a test vehicle. Getting to the form was easy enough. It’s the focal point of the home page and hard to miss. You select the type of move you want and the date of the move from drop down menus. Easy enough. You also have to select the “Shipment size” from a drop down, and here it gets a little confusing. The options are broken down by number of bedrooms, which I can handle, but I had two choices — “4 bedroom, 9800” pounds or “4 bedroom, 10990 pounds”.  I have no idea how much my stuff weighs. I suspect there is more that 10,990 pounds of crap piled in the garage. I just picked one and decided to see what would happen. The next screen asks only for a zip code (tip for MyMovingQuote — put the zip on the first form). Once I had that in, I was taken a list of companies that serviced my particular area and need (2 in my case) and to a standard name, address, phone type of form. I was a little confused why I was also presented with check boxes for storage, auto transport and corporate relocation for a local move. I assume this form is used for all varieties of move and they need that info for a long distance move.

So I complete the form (literally in seconds), click submit and kick back to see what happens. I must admit that I was pleasantly surprised when less than an hour later I had an email from a local mover. They didn’t really give me a quote, it was more of a guestimate based the information I provided. Understandable as no mover is going to give you an exact quote until they can physically see how much crap you’ve got shoved in the garage….

About an hour and a half later, I got a phone call from a different company (despite me listing my contact preference as via email — but that’s not that big a deal and out of the control of MyMovingQuote). The young lady was very pleasant and also provided an estimate that was within 2% of the previous company. She was more aggressive in trying to get out for an actual quote than the email was.

I promptly thanked both companies, and explained that I was reviewing MyMovingQuote.com and wouldn’t be needing their services. Both responded positively and actually thanked me for making the effort.

The Ugly Stuff: many (probably all) of the “directory pages” are very poorly written. Here’s an example:

Moving Companies Phoenix AZ:

Remember, with proper planning and a great moving companies phoenix az, your move can be hassle free! Just avail of our services for your moving companies phoenix az needs and you’ll know the difference with Mymovingquote.com. With our moving companies phoenix az, you get provided with the best moving service you could ever ask for. (their emphasis)

It actually degrades from there.

You may “get the best moving service”, but you sure don’t get the best writing! This page was obviously written in an attempt to get good organic placement for the search term “moving companies phoenix az”. It’s very difficult to read, and provides no benefit to the site user. And it doesn’t work that well from a search engine perspective either as the site ranks #14 in Google for that term, #18 in MSN/Live and it’s not in the first 150 results for Yahoo.

Conclusion: Getting quotes from multiple movers worked well. Granted, it was only one trial. I’m sure the success rate depends on the individual moving company, but obviously MyMovingQuotes “back end” for getting the quote request to the movers works. The information provided on the site is secondary, you can get similar info on dozens of web sites — including many real estate sites. Finally, they really need to consider losing the pages written strictly for SEO purposes (or hire a new SEO guy…) as they are ineffective and irritating.

If I needed a moving quote, I’d probably give it a whirl.

Disclosure part deux: I tried to present a fair and balanced review and I feel that a site related to moving and moving companies fits into a real estate blog and may be of interest to some readers. I registered at ReviewMe.com a couple of weeks ago, mainly on a whim. Trust me, I won’t be retiring on review money any time soon! I know that monetizing blogs and paid reviews are the subject of some controversy. Personally, as long as it’s fully disclosed and relevant to the blog, I don’t have a problem with paid reviews. But I’d love to hear your opinion, oh avid readers. So let me have it!

[tags]MyMovingQuote.com, paid reviews[/tags]