I flew into San Diego yesterday for the MCT Exchange, and it is hard not to notice the number of boats in the harbor. For some quick “fun with numbers” on recreational boating: The U.S. state of Florida has the highest number of registered recreational boating vessels in 2020, with almost 959 thousand, closely followed by California. Hawai’i has half as many as Wyoming. In contrast, the District of Columbia had the smallest number of registered boating vessels, with just over two thousand in 2020. Keeping with the “numbers” theme, I receive my share of questions regarding mortgage-backed security statistics. Anyone doing research on them should check out FINRA’s Reporting of Mortgage and Asset Backed Securities (Securitized Products), a little dry but packed with information. I mention this because, as we know, soon the Fed is scheduled to stop buying MBS every week, and for those of you who like graphs, here is the link to the Federal Reserve&
I could tell that my cat Myrtle was miffed, and this time it didn’t have anything to do with the CFPB. (Nor me heading to Salt Lake City today for the SimpleNexus User Group Conference.) She was upset because she had missed out, once again, on the coveted Chrisman LLC Employee of the Month award which includes a parking spot near the front door of the massive office complex we occupy in the downtown of a large city. On top of that, she had recently fallen for an email scam that began, “My beloved, I trust that you are well, but I have become hard times and am in need of many funds…” Okay, Myrtle didn’t fall prey to the phishing, but our industry is where the money is, and subject to constant attempted scams, like wire fraud. Do you think title insurance is a scam? You’re not alone. One thing that isn’t a scam is property values continuing higher, although it is area dependent. Economist Elliot Eisenberg, Ph.D., observed, “Over t