That's right... you can now offset your Charter Jet Service!  WOW! ... and I'll bet there are some folks who are reading this scratching their head and asking "WHAT?"

Welcome to the new green world.  Welcome to the world of Carbon Offsets.  Welcome to a new set of three R's.. Recycle, Reuse, and Renew! What's a Carbon Offset?  In very basic terms - it's a charitable contribution, whereby the charity uses a majority of your donation to subsidize "green" initiatives (that would normally be more expensive and might not get done).

At the American Express Luxury Summit in April they found that, "  While other tiers of the green market seem to be about compromise and perhaps restraint, luxury consumers want green and fabulous in the same package.Five years ago, green still meant "fringe" or perhaps "crunchy" but now green is everyone and everyone wants to be green."  WOW!  I love that quote..."Green is Everyone and Everyone wants to be Green!" 

What has this got to do with mortgages???  In the last several months we've been rationalizing and moving thorugh MOUNTAINS of red-tape in an effort to create a "paperless" mortgage.  We calculated that under the "traditional mortgage process" for every loan file, we had roughly 2500 pieces of paper and 3 overnights.  That's a pretty big footprint for a loan file.  We anticipate having the details of the Meridian Green Mortgage program for the folks in the Triangle later this month!