There are a lot of topics being covered here at the MBA’s IMB conference. One of them is hedging, and if you want a primer on how lenders are protecting themselves from interest rate risk, here you go. Yesterday the MBA’s Marina Walsh observed what lenders are doing now to survive. In no order: reducing the cost of sales, revisiting existing office leases, taking advantage of predictive analytics, critically examining their business lines, ramping up new products or looking at geographic expansion, retaining servicing, further staffing adjustments, and reducing middle management. Take your pick, or do them all, but every lender is doing something as the days of raising margins to slow volume are long gone. In fact, many lenders who have retained servicing are selling it to maintain their cash flows, despite servicing income being a huge part of whatever profits were to be had in 2022. The mortgage servicing rights (MSR) market has opened 2023 with billions of dollars on t
“Wet” January is going well for me. Wait… did I get that wrong? If food news is more to your liking, Krispy Kreme has rolled out donuts covered in Biscoff cookies through the end of January. More calories per bite, right? In other non-mortgage stories, the oldest person in the world has died at 118. Contrary to what LOs say, this photo is not her praying for stated income, stated asset loans to return with no consideration of credit. Speaking of which, the latest credit reporting news involving brokers comes from the UK. Layoffs aren’t happening only in residential lending, the latest example being 10,000 from Microsoft. (It had approximately 221,000 full-time employees globally as of June 30, 2022.) Yes, parts of the economy, especially high tech (how many new phones or laptops does one need?) are slowing. But in 2023 positive labor but slowing inflation and certain economic numbers, have sparked a rally in fixed-income prices, including securities backed b
SAN DIEGO, Calif., Jan. 12, 2023 (SEND2PRESS NEWSWIRE) — The Mortgage Collaborative (TMC), the nation’s largest independent cooperative network serving the mortgage industry, announced today that the TMC Emerging Technology
I am very happy that my life is perfect. Isn’t yours? When I order scrambled eggs at the diner, the waitress says, “Perfect.” When I pay with a credit card at the car wash, the attendant replies with, “Perfect.” I tell the dry cleaner I’d like my shirts not wrapped in plastic. “Perfect.” Watch out for those “perfects” out there. One thing that was definitely not perfect was the ending of 2022 for residential lenders and their vendors. Just because the calendar turned a day or two doesn’t mean rates have done much, nor margins, nor revenue. Ready for a repeat of the 4th quarter of 2022 in the 1st quarter of 2023? Have vendors and lenders made the necessary cuts, in sales and operations, to keep pace with industry volumes being down 50 percent from a few years ago? How’s your “tech spend” as you enter 2023? (Let’s ask Southwest Airlines how its low tech spend worked out. Speaking of S
As Wells Fargo was smacked upside the head with a $3.7 billion fine by the CFPB, sports news included Mat Ishbia and the Phoenix Suns, and the Senate passed the Improving Access to the VA Home Loan Benefit Act of 2022, and the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) Office of Inspector General released a report with a really long name because that is what bureaucrats do (FHFA Could Further Combat Appraisal Bias by Ensuring That Complaints Are Filed with State Authorities and Ensuring the Enterprises Use Appraisals That Comply with Federal Law), the industry is grappling with continued higher rates. Not that lower rates would release the unicorns from their pens and spread rainbows through the industry, mind you, but they might help. The economists from Redfin (who have seen their stock plunge 94 percent in less than two years) believe that there is a decent chance rates gradually going down to 5.7% by the end of next year. Q1 will be ugly. Seems like after a year of losses in 2022 next y