Mortgage lenders going after their share of what’s expected to be a smaller home loan originations pie this year and next can always do what their competitors are doing — buy online leads and banner ads and optimize their Web sites to show up higher in search-engine results.

Or they can connect with borrowers at an earlier stage in the home-buying process by establishing a presence on Web sites that provide consumers the information they are looking for: listings and valuations. Lenders can also supply such content themselves, although few do.

Returns are ‘astonishing,’ so why don’t more borrowers take advantage?

“I read recently about a study that says that most people would not profit by paying points on a mortgage. Do you agree with that?”

No. The much-cited study by Yan Chang, senior economist at Freddie Mac, and Abdullah Yavas, research director of the Institute for Real Estate Studies at Penn State’s Smeal College of Business, claims that most borrowers don’t hold their mortgages long enough to make paying points a good investment. The study based its conclusion on the life of fixed-rate mortgages (FRMs) that were originated and terminated during the period from 1996-2003. But almost two-thirds of the loans in their sample were still in existence at the end of the period, and they are bound to have a longer life than those that were paid off. Further, the study did not cover adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs), which in today’s market provide the most attractive opportunities for paying points.

SIMI VALLEY, CA-An exchange buyer based in Agoura Hills has acquired a newly completed shopping center for $15.9 million in one of two new retail deals totaling more than $27 million, according to Faris Lee and Grubb & Ellis. The second sale was a neighborhood center in Walnut.

Rich Walter, president of Irvine-based Faris Lee, says that the pre-sale of the Simi Valley property, the 24,466-sf Shops at Simi Valley Town Center, marks more than $82 million in pre-sales of retail centers that the firm has completed in the past year. He says the firm has lined up more than $100 million of new pre-sale projects over the next six months.

NEW CONDOS IN Center City and Manayunk are nothing new. It is new, however, to find this trendy product in West Mount Airy. It’s even more of an oddity on Germantown Avenue.

Mt. Airy USA held an open house at Winston Commons (http://www.winstoncommons.com), on Germantown Avenue at Phil Elena Street, recently to show off the buildings - five two-bedroom, two-bath and a single one-bedroom, one-bath unit - for the first time.

The condo project has been at least four years in the making. It’s no easy feat for a non-profit community development corporation to round up $4 million in financing for a purely market-rate project.

 Grand Rapids real estate agents are fighting for the location, location, location of their real estate signs in the city.

The city’s planning commission passed a recommendation to the city council for a revised real estate sign ordinance that does not allow for directional signs in the city limits. The signs, which typically feature an arrow in the direction, were usually placed on street corners along major thoroughfares through the city.

But after a wayward sign along Highway 169 erected by a developer of a new neighborhood drew the ire of some residents, city officials have taken a hard look at its ordinance.