“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),
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
If you’re staying here in Manhattan, space is at a premium. I don’t recall the last time my room had a bathroom where one could turn the shower on, flush the toilet, and brush their teeth in the sink, all for a nightly tariff that would more than cover the monthly rent in many places around the world. Although this conference is about all things capital markets, like screaming buybacks from the Agencies, especially Freddie Mac, the primary markets are also a source of conversation. “Good originators don’t always make good branch managers.” “Many LOs have high emotional IQs, so it is very difficult for them to let an LOA or processor go. If LOs were doing 20 loans a month, an LOA makes sense, but when they’re doing five?” “Forget volume: A roughly 67 percent drop in units in two years… How are lenders handling that?” Stay tuned for more topics from the hallways at the National Secondary! (Today’s podcast
If I had a dollar for every time someone called me a boring nerd, I'd have a mean daily income of $5.64 with a standard deviation of $1.25. Turning “boring” into “interesting” is something to be proud of. How about a hand-held miniature chainsaw or a shopping cart with a magnifying glass attached for reading labels? For loan originators, new and old, who think creativity has vanished from residential lending, maybe they should focus on the basics. This eBook has been recommended to me: “The Ultimate Borrower Communications Strategy for Mortgage Lenders.” I recently received this note from a successful loan officer. “Rob, my commissions in 2020 and 2021 were over $500k each year. In 2022 they dropped about 50 percent to about $250k. 2023 promises to be even lower, and I’ll be lucky to make $200k. Are you seeing this everywhere?” Yes, I am. But keep things in perspective. In the U.S., and certainly in the world, $200k
Amidst the seemingly week mass shootings and violence, individual deaths stand out. Heartfelt condolences go out to Jennifer and Dan Gilbert, of Rocket Mortgage, over the death of their 26 year old son Nick. No parent should have to deal with the death of their child and going through the grieving process. Meanwhile, UWM’s Mat Ishbia was involved in a play during the NBA playoffs. When I was a kid, my grandmother (Edna, and the source of several of my passwords) came to live with us. When you’re 10, sharing a bathroom with an 80-year-old is, uh, memorable, for lack of a better term. But I survived, and so did she (for several years, at least) after the arrangement had ended and she moved to a retirement home. Now, many years later, the dynamics of multigenerational households are shifting. “Historically, these households entailed young adults moving back in with their parents, or aging parents moving in with their adult children. Now, a growing number of parents ar