Here in Honolulu, talk among those gathered for the MBA Hawai’i annual conference includes the rise in adjustable-rate mortgage lending by depositories, and the impact of inflation, and the Federal Reserve fighting it, on home loan rates and interest rates in general. Inflation is everywhere. Here’s your tip-of-the-day: go buy some Forever Stamps from the Post office as postage prices are going up in early July. If you think that you have it bad, on a year-over-year basis, freight and building materials prices increase in May means they were up 36.3% for the year! These price increases certainly argue for doing things more efficiently. Ever heard of modular housing developer TopHat? Me neither, perhaps because it does business in the United Kingdom. But the Goldman Sachs-backed housebuilder is going to build Europe’s largest home factory in the U.K. and be able to produce 4,000 homes a year. (Recall that Goldman also bought an entire community in Florida.) Yes, the
As servicing rights continue to be sold, and residential lender layoffs are rampant, here’s a quick reminder that anyone displaced can post their resume for free here; employers can view all resumes for a flat $75 for several months. Today I am passing through Chicago to the Indiana MBA conference. Unfortunately Chicago has the dubious distinction of being on the List of Top 10 Metro Areas where home prices are down the most. (Toledo, Rochester, and Detroit make up the top three.) Did you know that in 2020, there were the most first-time home buyers ever in history at 2.38 million? Interestingly the average age for a first-time homebuyer is 36 years old. What kind of customer experience are lenders offering these borrowers? In turbulent times like these, employees’ eyes and ears are tuned into what their leadership says and does. Research consistently shows that a focus on the employee experience (EX) and employee engagement results in higher revenues and productivity, be
All the stories that could be told, and so many that have yet to happen. And now 19 that never will be. It is very hard to go about one’s day, whether one has children or not, or a teacher in their family as I do, or not, given what happened in Uvalde, Texas, yesterday. Or to imagine what being in that classroom was like. And just like after every other mass shooting in the United States, fingers are pointed, lines are drawn, and rhetoric that we’ve all heard before is repeated until it happens again. Ban guns? Better background checks? Create fortresses out of elementary schools? Improve mental health care? We’ll go around and around on the reason(s) and the cure(s). Far be it from a daily commentary on residential lending to adequately address the evil that we witnessed yesterday. But we all do what we can. (Today’s podcast is available here and this week’s is sponsored by Matchbox LLC, igniting ideas for the mortgage industry. Expertise in assistin
As the MBA’s Secondary Marketing Conference wraps up in Manhattan, and the 1,200 or so registered head home and face post-conference life, Rob B. asks, “What was the mood of the attendees: Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, or acceptance?” The talk in the hallways revolved around constructive things like ARM investors and pricing, outlets for investment and second homes, lock and shop programs, extended locks, all-cash programs, and the various vendor offerings. On a larger scale, the FHFA, acting through Fannie and Freddie, has a lot going on. The Agencies continue to retain earnings and are doing credit risk transfers while the FHFA is in constant contact with U.S. Treasury. Both are striving to serve the underserved, and the actions must be sustainable. Progress has been made in terms of solar panels, green bond program, affordable housing programs, green specified pools, protecting borrower information, and addressing climate-related losses due to storms an
Keeping things in perspective, last Thursday the White House announced a raft of measures to alleviate the ongoing baby formula shortage, which has worsened in recent weeks because of a major product recall and supply chain problems. Here in Manhattan at the MBA’s Secondary conference, participants learned that the CFPB certainly won’t be “resting on its laurels” any time soon. Not only will it not be discouraging states from creating their own CFPB-like bureaus, but we can expect the CFPB to continue to broaden its range of enforcement activities. (And servicers took note of the CFPB’s servicing bulletin yesterday.) Fortunately, most lenders and vendors are doing a very good job with compliance! Partnering with the Agencies is on the agenda, as is the ARM market, climate change (and its impact on mortgage pricing and reps & warrants), cybercrimes, and hedging. A full slate! (Today’s podcast is available here and this week’s