For me, yesterday involved a trip from Connecticut to Northern California, with talk of a lack of inventory, relatively high mortgage rates, and loan level price adjustments still echoing in my head from the CMBA conference. There isn’t much one can do about rates or homes for sale, but one can always let the FHFA know what you think about pricing. Meanwhile, lenders are doing what they can to help borrowers. Credit unions, for example, are being creative. Last year, per Zillow, about 45 percent of mortgage borrowers around the nation used points to buy down the mortgage rate. LOs are watching demographic trends. America was once extremely mobile, with people often moving between states for work. From 1986 to 1997, 29 percent of job seekers relocated for a new position, a figure that fell to 17.8 percent over the period from 1998 to 2007 and seemed to crater out during the pandemic at just 4.1 percent in 2021. In the first quarter of 2023 just 1.6 percent of people relocated to
Did you know that cows snooze laying down for the four hours of sleep they need a day? Did you know that horses sleep standing up? These tidbits may come in handy for me this week as I head to Cody, Wyoming for the WMLA annual conference. Or they may not. Here’s a question not so trivial: what has 250,000 customers and a $37 billion unpaid principal balance? Answer: Rushmore Loan Management Services’ residential mortgage servicing platform, being sold to Mr. Cooper Group this year. Recall that Mr. Cooper agreed to acquire Roosevelt Management Company, LLC, Rushmore's parent company, to serve as the platform for its mortgage servicing rights fund asset management strategy. Lenders of all shapes and sizes have been selling their MSRs for various reasons, not the least of which is to raise cash in tough times, and it appears that “tough” times will be with our industry for a while. For many lenders, servicing is the only asset worth anything. Depository