There’s a lot going on, and not only jawboning about a potential Fed rate increase next week. We have the smoke drifting down from Canada and slowing or stopping flights in the Northeast. The Wall Street Journal reports that China and Cuba have signed an agreement for a Chinese eavesdropping station in Cuba. For rate watchers, Trepp has come out with a report showing interest rates sensitivity with commercial loans, cousin to our residential loans and their sensitivity to refinancing given interest rates. Yes, interest rates impact everything to do with borrowing and lending. New data revealed real estate investors purchased 48.6% fewer homes in Q1 of 2023 than they did a year earlier, according to the latest market report from Redfin. That’s the largest annual decline on record and outpaced the 41 percent drop in overall home purchases in the 40 major metros analyzed. Investor purchases fell 16 percent on a quarter-over-quarter basis, comparable with the 15 percent quart
“My landlord told me that she would like to have a chat with me about the house's sky-high heating bills this winter. I told her, ‘Sure thing, whenever you want. My door is always open.’” A key selling point for originators, in talking to potential clients on the fence about buying a home, is rent. Rents have been increasing, and there’s no sense of permanency, but if you can’t pay your rent, qualifying for a home loan is going to tough. LendingTree found that more than 8 million U.S. adults live in a household not caught up on rent payments. About 3.6 million adults are also living in households that are not being charged rent, primarily in Mississippi, West Virginia, Alaska, Arkansas, and Alabama. There are plenty of rent disputes in the courts, just as there are disputes and cases involving mortgage bankers. I bring this up because convicted former MBA Chairman Ron McCord and his Oklahoma-based company settled CapLoc's allega
Hey, why wouldn’t you want to join the Mortgage Action Alliance? It doesn’t cost you a penny, and there’s strength in numbers. Signing up takes about 90 seconds. And the information you receive is much more reliable than mine! The U.S. Census Bureau produces some reliable information, unless you’re some conspiracy theory nut, and they have information that loan officers love: where most owners are free and clear of any home loan. And 30-year rates, which probably won’t be down to 2.75 percent again in our lifetimes, are less expensive than credit card debt, so there is business to be had. California has 2.4 million households free-and-clear of mortgage debt, the third-highest count among the states. There’s Texas at 2.9 million, and Florida at 2.5 million. After California comes New York at 1.7 million and Pennsylvania at 1.5 million. West Virginia has the largest share of free-and-clear owners at 53%, followed by Mississippi at 51%, North Dako
“Someone asked me to name two structures that hold water. I was like, well, damn.” As the storms continue to hit us in Northern California and Nevada, not only is my cat Myrtle ticked off, but we are reminded that it is either feast or famine in the Golden State. Take your pick, forest fires or biblical rain: Over 20 trillion gallons of water are supposed to fall on California in a two-week span. Yes, that’s with a “t.” Ratcheting back several decimal places, new estimates from the Census Bureau found that the U.S. population grew by only 0.38 percent from July 2021 to July 2022, which was the second-lowest growth on record behind just the 0.16 percent growth registered during the first year of the pandemic. The main thing increasing it was an increase in net immigration. To find comparably low rates one has to go back to the worst of the Great Depression, when growth was still a comparably robust 0.6 percent. All told, for those who don’t beli
While California girds its loins for an “atmospheric river and bomb cyclone”, readers should know that I sometimes ask myself, “Why can I remember the order of songs from an album 25 years ago, but I can’t remember why I went into the kitchen?” Yesterday I forgot that it was Ohio’s Union Home bought Michigan’s Amerifirst, not Guild. I apologize for the mistake… It’s all those “stable, multi-state, non-depository, residential lenders with strong management teams”… There certainly are a lot of rumors making the rounds. But also concrete news, about lenders and vendors are making the rounds, perhaps the latest being United Wholesale’s $37.35 credit report. Obviously this puts more pressure on the CRA world (as detailed in the Commentary a few weeks back). There will obviously be pressure on lenders to keep reigning in overhead. For example, the tendency allowing LOs to hang around in down markets is