“My mother used to say that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. Wonderful woman, lousy surgeon.” There is some great food in various parts of the nation, and today I will head from Dallas, TX to Jackson, MS, for the Mississippi MBA annual conference. Dallas is certainly home to its share of real estate owned by people outside of the country. But it turns out that annual foreign investment in U.S. existing-home sales declined 9.6 percent to $53.3 billion over the past year and the number of existing homes bought by international buyers declined to 84.6k, the fewest since 2009 and down 14.2 percent from the prior year. The average ($639k) and median ($396k) purchase prices for international buyers were the highest ever recorded by NAR. For those who like lists, China, Mexico, Canada, India, and Colombia were the top five countries of origin by number of U.S. existing homes purchased. The top U.S. destinations for foreign buyers were Florida (23 percent),
Succeeding as a woman exec ‘comes with a lot of sacrifice and a lot of hard work’, but the boss of the JSE-listed Reit says it’s rewarding being part of the group developing a new city in Gauteng.
Lending continues to be intertwined with legal and compliance issues. Here’s a story from overnight that is catching a lot of attention: “Equifax stock falls after saying it received a CID from the CFPB.” The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) agreed to drop its challenge to Intercontinental Exchange Inc.’s (ICE) proposed deal with Black Knight Inc. in a joint stipulation that allows them to work toward a settlement. Lender ToolKit is suing Celebrity Home Loans and MLD. and Meanwhile, lenders and vendors are doing what they can to increase business and tap into new markets, and with that in mind National MI is sponsoring a weekly podcast beginning today focused on offering mortgages to people in their 20s and 30s (Mortgages with Millennials). (Today’s podcast can be found here and is sponsored by SimpleNexus, an nCino Company, developer of mortgage technology uniting the people, systems, and stages of the mortgage process into one seamless, end-to-end sol
Competition is the mainstay of many businesses and individuals. How does UPS compete to hire drivers for their trucks? One way might be to offer air conditioning, which has been negotiated for the first time. Lenders and vendors are led by competitive people, and several own interests in major or minor league sports franchises, the latest being Stan Middleman & the Phillies. Competition in the food and beverage industry? SF’s Anchor Steam was scaling back, Tupperware is in rough straits, and now the owner of Pyrex and Insta Pot is filing for bankruptcy! How is the public expected to keep its leftovers!? Builders are out there competing for lots. Residential lenders don’t compete with real estate agents, but NAR is always discussing its lobbying efforts. This week the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) is hosting a national, industry-wide campaign to grow its free grassroots advocacy network, the Mortgage Action Alliance (MAA), a non-partisan and effective way
Well, what should we start with today? How about how California and Texas ranked highest on the United States Postal Service’s annual list of states with the most dog bites against its employees? Or how ‘bout Freedom Mortgage Corporation filing a notice of data breach after learning that confidential consumer data entrusted to the company was subject to unauthorized access, the result of a cybersecurity incident at one of the company’s vendors, Mortgage Industry Advisory Corporation (“MIAC”)? Data is critical in so many things, whether it is closing a branch, not caring if an LO heads to another company, or in determining that people can save money by buying books at Amazon instead of the local book shop. Along those lines, Saturday’s Commentary, noting the CFPB’s use of its funding to determine that different companies charge different prices, received, as you can imagine, a lot of responses. Think residential lenders have too many regu