This morning I head to Kansas, greeted by the news that Southwest is raising drink fees for the holidays. Has the “Let’s circle back after the holidays” season officially begun in your office or in your meetings with vendors? Chortles aside, one of the discussion topics in KC will certainly be the impending move in credit prices as lenders everywhere move toward charging borrowers up front. Whether the cost change is driven by Fair Isacc or the credit bureaus, and then being passed along by the CRAs, it doesn’t matter. It’s coming, and the jungle drums are saying the price changes will impact soft credit pulls, which (or course) many lenders implemented to reduce their costs with the amount of credit reports run as it’s cheaper than the full hard credit pull. Some lenders may use Freddie or Fannie AUS. (Today’s podcast can be found here, sponsored by LoanCare, the mortgage subservicer known for delivering superior customer experience thr
“I dance like people wish they weren't watching.” Someone sure is watching, and counting, empty houses. Lack of available housing inventory has helped keep housing costs high throughout many of the nation’s big cities, but nearly 5.5 million homes sit vacant across the nation’s 50 largest metropolitan areas. The average vacancy rate across these 50 metros is 7.22 percent, with New Orleans (13.9 percent), Miami (12.7 percent), and Tampa (12.2 percent) having the highest vacancy rates. Vacancy rates are lowest in Minneapolis, Austin, and Washington, D.C., the only metros in the study with vacancy rates below 5 percent. Just because an area has a high vacancy rate doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s something wrong with its housing market. Roughly one-quarter of vacancies are due to being empty for rent, one-fifth because they're only used part time, and one-twelfth because they're being repaired or renovated. (Today
Yesterday I listened to the CFPB’s Rohit Chopra discuss home loans. Today I head from Nashville to Chicago, both known all over the world. Here, the United States has everything: mountains, forests, plains, rivers, swamps, tropical jungles, glaciers, beaches… I could go on. But apparently there is a certain attraction for some in Italy, Mexico, Costa Rica, Portugal for U.S. citizens, and those are the top countries for Americans buying real estate abroad. Back in the U.S. of A, the subject of a lack of inventory continues to be discussed from coast to coast. What if the “big companies” sold their holdings? Well, Invitation Homes is the largest single owner of single-family rental homes in the United States, managing more than 80,000 homes. But why should they, or any other corporate homeowner? Speaking of big numbers, among unmarried people ages 18 and over who have never been married, widowed or divorced, regardless of their sexual orientation, the odds of