The Five Star Professional is a designation that is accorded to real estate agents that are identified as achieving the strongest standards in overall satisfaction in their local market.

If you choose a Five Star Professional, you have selected an individual who has the highest overall satisfaction scores in their industry.

Conducted through independent research, the Five Star Program is the only one of its kind that bases its criteria on both the clients and the industry professionals. As such, only 7% of real estate professionals achieve this award.

Agents are rated both by their customers and industry professionals on criteria that includes customer service, integrity, knowledge of the market, communication skills, negotiating skills, finding their clients the right home, preparation for closing, marketing the seller’s home, and an overall satisfaction rating.

As a part of the program, 20 to 50 thousand recent home buyers and readers of the magazine (depending on market size) as well as 250 Mortgage and Title Companies are surveyed and asked to identify those agents with whom they have dealt with directly.

Subscribers and home buyers can evaluate and rate up to two agents. Mortgage and Title companies may rate three agents.

In addition to the surveys, the input from local industry experts are also used as a part of the overall evaluation process and subsequent rating.

The culmination of this entire process results in less than 7% of local agents that attain the highest overall across the board satisfaction ratings.

Sherry is a Five Star Professional located in Ormond Beach Florida and serving the entire Daytona Beach area.

By the close of 2011, foreclosures within Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (which provider for somewhere around 90% of all of the mortgages in the U.S.) must follow precisely the same processes.

In other words, loan servicers within the two (Fannie and Freddie) are going to be compensated if they work and punished if they do not.

These new regulations will direct servicers to get to individuals early on, relate more frequently and clearly, and offer relief.

Here is a brief review of the changes under the new guidelines:

* Loan servicers can never assist homeowners on their loans while on the other hand moving forward with a foreclosure, called a “dual track” by FHFA.

* Loan servicers will need to get in touch with homeowners immediately after they become delinquent and focus completely on remediating that delinquency. Providing the borrower and servicer are involved in a good-faith effort to eliminate the delinquency, a foreclosure can not proceed.

* The servicer must officially evaluate each instance prior to taking any measures to consider the homeowner for any foreclosure options.

* Loan servicers will be compensated for swiftness. If a loan is changed by some means within four months, as an example, the servicer receives $1,600. If it requires beyond seven months, however, the servicer gets only $400.

* Even if the home foreclosure activity has now commenced, loan servicers will be paid a financial incentive as long as they continually assist the homeowners to find an alternative choice to foreclosure.

* There will be a lot fewer documents to submit hence simplifiing the process. It will supply the borrowers 1 application to submit along with the servicers 1 application to examine for all Freddie Mac loan modifications and foreclosure alternatives.

Along with helping at-risk homeowners, the new guidelines will reduce taxpayer losses by making sure (Fannie and Freddie) loans are maintained efficiently and reasonably.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will give out thorough guidelines to their servicers in the second and third quarters of 2011.