“If you know someone who has an intense fear of store Santas, would you say they were suffering from Claus-trophobia?” For individuals or companies, do you have a fear of being hacked? Under the heading of “It’s not if, but when…” First American “has experienced a cybersecurity incident. In response, we’ve taken certain systems offline [like the main website above] and working to return to normal business operations as soon as possible.” First American owns First American Title and also owns ACI, one of the largest appraisal software providers. This outage stopped appraisers using ACI from having the ability to upload appraisal reports to FLS. Some lenders acted quickly. Fairway Independent, for example, stated that if a Fairway borrower’s closing was negatively impacted, corporate would cover any hotel, meal, or storage expenses incurred by their clients. (Today’s podcast can be found here, and this week
Here in Chicago, there are several restaurants that are “the place” to have afternoon tea. Tomorrow is the 250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party. (And no, I was not working on a trading desk slinging MBS back then.) In those days, news traveled via word of mouth, rare newspapers, sermons, personal letters, or broadsides. People had time to think about things and contemplate. Nowadays, there are plenty of places from which to glean financial news. Unfortunately, the press is not one for putting good news in the headlines, and Navy Fed finds itself in the crosshairs of CNN breaking news of data on black and white borrower approval rates. Can regulators be far behind on this one? Industry vet Brian B. asks, “How much wealth was not created for minorities because of these actions? How did they treat other groups, i.e., single females, or Hispanics?” Lenders everywhere are interested in passing more costs on to borrowers regardless of race, and if so which co
“People would learn more from their mistakes if they weren’t so busy denying them.” Here’s a little trivia for the compliance folks in the coffee room: The CFPB handles 20,000 consumer complaints per week, and given that financing a home, and then servicing the loan, is the largest financial transaction most individuals go through, you gotta figure a chunk of the 20,000 involve mortgages. While we’re on the CFPB, Director Chopra addressed issues related to refinancing in a hearing on Capitol Hill last Thursday. But the headlines have been grabbed by interest rate improvements in our free market economy, and the economics calendar this week will be highlighted by the U.S. jobs report on Friday, arriving just five days before the Federal Reserve's December 13 meeting. (Expect payrolls growth will rise to 200K in November from 150k job additions in October, and the unemployment rate to stay steady at 3.9 percent.) Today’s podcast can be fo
Talk can be humorous. "That lowdown scoundrel deserves to be kicked to death by a jackass, and I'm just the one to do it." (Attributed to a congressional candidate in Texas.) Here in Dallas, mortgage talk is certainly wide-ranging and varied as there’s a lot going on out there as we head toward Thanksgiving week, including cost cutting, M&A, and Fair Lending. Today’s Rundown features Feliks Viner, VP of Capital Markets with First World Mortgage discussing rate volatility at 3PM ET. We have the Wall Street Journal story about the union between hoops and loans: “Mortgage King Wants the NBA Crown, Too.” Some housing industry observers may only think it was “only a flesh wound,” but the Realtors™ antitrust case decision in Missouri, coupled with other recent settlements and an onslaught of new cases, likely portend real changes for how homes are bought and sold in the US with the assistance of real estat
My cat Myrtle is enthralled with Artificial Intelligence (AI). Okay, I made that up. She’s only interested to the extent that it impacts the supply of Icelandic Sea Trout into her bowl. AI is a hot topic these days, and in fact today’s Mortgage Collaborative’s “Rundown” at noon PT, 3PM ET, features David Karandish, the CEO of Capacity, discussing that and other trends in mortgage tech. A trend continuing to rifle through the ranks is mergers and/or acquisitions as a handful of well-known residential lending companies crisscross the country in search of small institutions that fit their business models and are ready for a change. Sometimes discretion is the better part of valor in terms of staying in business: Unfortunately, yet another trend is a lack of profitability, especially among small and mid-sized lenders who have gone through their 2020/2021 savings and sold their servicing. Lastly, volume trends aren’t good either: According to Curino