Casa Latino Real Estate Headquarters Relocates

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:



Casa Latino Real Estate Headquarters Relocates



Celebration, FL – January 1, 2009Casa Latino Franchise Corporation, the country’s largest network of Hispanic and minority owned real estate offices has selected Celebration, Florida as its new corporate headquarters.



Speaking from Connecticut, Casa Latino CEO Robb Heering announced that the company was relocating its headquarters and national franchise sales operations to a new facility in Celebration, Florida, roughly one mile from Disney World.



“We have systematically grown our company and our expansion is increasing at a rapid pace. We needed to make some decisions regarding office space sooner than later as we need to immediately increase our ability to host franchise owners and prospects and house additional corporate staff. We decided to expand the bounds of our office search outside of our current location in Southbury, Connecticut.



Our new location in central Florida is a global destination. Celebration is a town that was designed by the Walt Disney Company and it’s a far cry from the snow and ice of the northeast. The new office space can accommodate our needs to have training and conference facilities and allows for expansion for additional staff. The new state of the art building known as Palm Plaza was constructed and is managed by La Rosa Development Corporation. Joe La Rosa, a principal at La Rosa Development is also a Casa Latino franchise owner and a major area developer for Casa Latino in several markets.



Our cramped Connecticut office has been vacated and our move to Celebration has been accomplished in time to kick off 2009. We will grow our brand presence in many additional markets in 2009 here in the US and in Latin America and the new venue will serve our needs well.



Casa Latino’s new headquarters office is located at 1420 Celebration Boulevard, Suite 200, Celebration, FL 34747.



Press Contact: William Arce, VP, Casa Latino Franchise CorporationBillArce@CasaLatino.com (904) 415-2755

Casa Latino Real Estate Expand its Operation To New York

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

New York Real Estate Power Players Join Casa Latino Real Estate

Southbury, CT - December 09, 2008 The Metro New York market will soon be home to dozens of Casa Latino Real Estate offices. The national leader in the Hispanic and multi-cultural real estate market has awarded a large multi-unit area development franchise to one of New York's preeminent power players.

Speaking from his Connecticut headquarters, Casa Latino CEO Robb Heering announced that a team led by Kevin McClarnon has acquired exclusive rights to open, operate, and broker the sale of Casa Latino real estate offices throughout metropolitan New York.

"Kevin McClarnon was one of the founders of Long Island's National Homefinders Signature Properties, which was acquired in 2003 by NRT, Incorporated to operate under the Coldwell Banker banner. Kevin is a highly respected real estate professional who continues to influence the greater New York real estate market. We have been searching for a quality, competent, and professional team to lead our New York operations since our company began in 2005. Kevin and his growing team will give our national brand tremendous credibility and reach in the Metro New York market."

McClarnon and his team have executed an exclusive territorial rights and area development agreement for, Kings, Bronx, New York, Richmond, Queens, Nassau, Suffolk Westchester and Rockland Counties.

About Casa Latino Franchise Corporation

Casa Latino was created in 2005 based upon the premise that Hispanic home buyers and sellers have unique needs based upon cultural differences and lifestyles, bolstered by the fact that those needs are not being effectively served by any other national brand. While the company serves everyone, regardless of heritage, the company's model is designed to provide superior service to a multicultural market. The company offers franchisees unprecedented culturally specific and significant back office support, training, marketing tools, advertising, coaching, and much more to ensure their success. The franchise model encourages a variety of agent compensation programs which dramatically enhance a broker's ability to recruit agents. The low franchise fee and an exceptionally low transaction based royalty structure make Casa Latino an extremely attractive opportunity. Casa Latino has awarded franchises in 14 states and is executing an aggressive growth plan in the USA and several other countries.

Press Contact:

Bill Arce, VP, Casa Latino Franchise Corporation

BillArce@CasaLatino.com

(904) 415-2755

Subprime Mortgages And Civil Rights

Subprime Mortgages And Civil Rights

by Adam Doster on December 05, 2008 - 4:32pm

The manner with which mortgage companies peddled subprime loans to low-income people of color has been called reverse redlining, an inversion of the racially discriminatory real estate practices prevalent in urban America through the better part of the 1960s. And just like 40 years ago, an organization of community groups is charging that financial institutions violated civil rights in their quest to generate wealth. This time, the target is two bond rating agencies that assuaged investor concerns about the tenuous mortgages bundled and sold around the world as mortgage-backed securities. Via the Los Angeles Times:

You Can Read The Whole Article Here: http://progressillinois.com/2008/12/05/subprime-mortgages-civil-rights

CASA LATINO REAL ESTATE ENLISTS HISPANIC MARKETING EXECUTIVE VETERAN AS FRANCHISEE AND AREA DEVELOPER

For More Information Contact: William ArceBillArce@CasaLatino.com(904) 415-2755

Mercy Lugo-Struthers to head brand and business expansion in Northern Virginia, DC and Maryland

Danbury, CT, December 2, 2008 – Casa Latino Franchise Corporation today announced the addition of Mercy Lugo-Struthers, former Director of US Hispanic Marketing for AOL Latino and DirectTV Más, and real estate investor, to their rapidly expanding Casa Latino family. With this announcement Casa Latino Real Estate enters the coveted US Capitol Metro area backed by a professional that clearly understands what it takes to effectively reach and service the US Hispanic market.

Ms. Lugo-Struthers has consistently combined her marketing talent and her passion to improve the lives of Latinos in America. During her nearly two decades of corporate marketing experience, she devoted her time and talent to empower Latinos to achieve their American dreams in a variety of ways. Whether it was developing programs to educate Latino’s about the importance of computers and the Internet in the Latino household, or advancing their TV viewing habits to include rich cultural and educational programming. More recently, inspired by the foreclosure crisis of Latinos in Prince William County, she designed a program to educate them about how to get back into responsible homeownership.

Robb Heering, Casa Latino Franchise Corporation Founder and CEO stated that, “We have been speaking with Mercy for several months regarding her career move from corporate marketing to residential real estate, an area she’s been immersed in during the past two years. Her passion and commitment to serving her community combined with her knowledge of the real estate business made her a perfect fit for our brand.”

“We have awarded a multi-unit area development contract to Mercy. Her team will expand the Casa Latino Real Estate brand throughout Northern Virginia, Washington DC and portions of Maryland. The first Metro DC office will open in Virginia this winter with others to follow throughout the region.”

Bill Arce, Vice President of New Business Development for Casa Latino added “Mercy Lugo-Struthers will help to level the playing field in a market where many consumers, not just Latino’s, have been hard hit by the current market. Years of abuse of consumers by unscrupulous mortgage and real estate practitioners have caused tremendous damage to this market. We expect Mercy to raise the bar and change all of that by delivering the sincere, honest, and ethical counsel, education, home buying and home selling services that the Casa Latino brand represents. We are very proud and humbled to welcome Mercy to the Casa Latino familia”.

About Casa Latino

Casa Latino was founded in 2005 in Connecticut by Lawyer and Real Estate Broker, Roberto “Robb” Heering. It is the fastest growing Latino real estate brand and the only Latino-focused agency with a national footprint. While other real estate franchise companies have stalled or downsized in the midst of the current financial crisis, Casa Latino has more than doubled its franchised offices from 20 to over 44 in 2008. Casa Latino offers franchisees unprecedented culturally specific and significant back office support, training, marketing tools, advertising, coaching, and much more to ensure their success. The franchise royalty model encourages a variety of agent compensation programs which dramatically enhances a broker’s ability to recruit agents. The low franchise fee and an exceptionally low transaction based royalty structure make Casa Latino an extremely attractive opportunity. The company will continue aggressive system expansion during 2009 throughout key US and international markets.

Federal Reserve, Treasury Take Steps to Boost Lending

The US Federal Reserve and Treasury Department on Tuesday announced two new programmes that will pump an additional 800 billion dollars into the struggling economy and unfreeze credit for consumers and small businesses.

This second stimulus follows the 700-billion-dollar rescue package already approved by Congress. Under one of the two new programmes, the Fed will use 600 billion dollars to buy mortgage-backed securities to reduce the cost of home mortgages.

The other programme, the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF), by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, will create a lending facility worth 200 billion dollars to holders of securities backed by consumer debt - credit card, student and auto loans. This will essentially make it easier for consumers to borrow money.

The New York Fed is headed by Timothy Geithner, named Monday by president-elect Barack Obama as his Treasury secretary. Geithner will be tasked with rescuing the financial industry from its worst crisis since the Great Depression when the new administration takes over on January 20.

The Treasury Department said it would provide 20 billion dollars of credit protection to the New York Fed for TALF, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson told a news conference Tuesday.

Consumer asset-backed securities (ABS) worth 240 billion dollars were issued in 2007. But the widening financial crisis this year ensured that banks and financial institutions have been reluctant to lend, with credit markets essentially coming to a halt in October.

"As a result, millions of Americans cannot find affordable financing for their basic credit needs. And credit card rates are climbing, making it more expensive for families to finance everyday purchases," Paulson said.

The lack of affordable consumer credit undermines spending and weakens the economy, he said.

Paulson's announcement came as the Commerce Department presented more bad economic news. The Gross Domestic Product for the US in the third quarter shrunk at an annualized rate of 0.5 per cent - the worst in seven years.

"Today's GDP report reaffirms the serious challenges in our economy," Commerce Secretary Carlos M Gutierrez said. White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said the third quarter figures show the need for swift government steps to prevent further damage.

"The numbers are what they are, which is they're troubling, and this is why we are having to act and take such bold actions that we are taking," she said.

Other economic news on Tuesday showed consumer confidence rose slightly in November from an all-time low a month earlier. The independent Conference Board's index rose to 44.9 up from 38.8 in October.

In the newly-outlined programme for the ailing housing market, the nation's central bank will buy up to 500 billion dollars in mortgage-
backed securities, which have been backed by government-sponsored mortgage finance firms Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae. The
Fed will buy an additional 100 billion dollars of direct debt obligations of these firms.

"This action is being taken to reduce the cost and increase the availability of credit for the purchase of houses, which in turn should support housing markets and foster improved conditions in financial markets more generally," the Fed said in a statement.

"Nothing is more important to getting through this housing correction than the availability of affordable mortgage finance," Paulson said.

"It will take time to work through the difficulties in our market and our economy, and new challenges will continue to arise," Paulson said, adding that the government was committed to stabilizing the financial markets and minimizing the spillover to the rest of the economy.

Source: Copyright 2008 dpa Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH