Financial Statement Presentation Description of Operations   NovaStar Financial, Inc. and its subsidiaries ( NFI  or the  Company ) own 93% of StreetLinks LLC ( StreetLinks ), a national residential appraisal and mortgage real estate valuation management services company. The Company owned 88% of StreetLinks as of December 31, 2011. See below for a discussion of the Company's recent acquisition of approximately 5% additional equity interest of StreetLinks. StreetLinks charges a fee for services which is collected from lenders and borrowers. The majority of StreetLinks' business is generated from the management of the appraisal process for its customers. Most of the fee is paid to independent residential appraisers. StreetLinks retains a portion of the fee to cover its costs of managing the process of fulfilling the appraisal order and performing a quality control review of all appraisals. StreetLinks also provides other real estate valuation management services, such as field reviews and value validation. The Company owns 78% of Advent Financial Services LLC ( Advent ). Advent, along with its distribution partners, provides financial settlement services, mainly for income tax preparation businesses, and also provides access to tailored banking accounts, small dollar banking products and related services to meet the needs of low and moderate income level individuals. Advent is not a bank, but it acts as an intermediary for banking products on behalf of other banking institutions. A primary distribution channel of Advent's bank products is through settlement services to electronic income tax return originators. Advent provides a process for the originators to collect refunds from the Internal Revenue Service, distribute fees to various service providers and deliver the net refund to individuals. Individuals may elect to have the net refund dollars deposited to a banking account offered through Advent (developed on a prepaid debit card platform). Individuals also have the option to have the net refund dollars paid b