Yesterday in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, at the Indiana Mortgage Bankers Association’s annual conference, one of the non-mortgage conversations that I had was about TV. (Sometimes people talk about shows they’re “streaming.”) I don’t know what’s what: Hulu, Paramount, Paramount+, Dish, Amazon Prime, Disney, Disney Plus, Charter, Verizon, Comcast, You Tube TV, Peacock… can’t we just go back to cable? Maybe not: The number of Americans opting out of cable accelerated in the first quarter of 2022. In 2019 and 2020, a net of 1.1 million subscribers cancelled their cable or over-the-top streaming television, a figure that rose to 1.4 million in the first quarter of 2021 and has now hit 2.5 million cable cancellers in Q1 of this year. Comparing subscriptions in 2022 versus 2018, the only winners are Hulu + Live TV, up 3.1 million subscribers, and FuboTV, up 925,000 subscribers. The rest of the cable landscape? It’s bad: Comcast
If you see me talking to myself, just move along. I'm self-employed, and we're having a staff meeting. Self-employed borrowers are certainly a target of non-QM lenders around the nation. Non-bank lenders continue to grapple with 2nd mortgage program availability and the HELOC edge that some portfolio lenders have, everyone is watching the housing market. And even traditional depository lenders are trying to adapt… like this headline about Wells Fargo possibly scaling back its mortgage business. (No, I don’t have a subscription.) All real estate is local, of course, but the rate of appreciation we’ve seen is unsustainable. “For sale” listings are up; eBuyers are on the run. The FHFA, whose numbers are used for conforming loan limits, tells us that U.S. house prices rose 18.7 percent over the last year, and up 4.6 percent from the fourth quarter. Certainly, the increase in mortgage rates have had an impact and changed buyer behavior. Las
All the stories that could be told, and so many that have yet to happen. And now 19 that never will be. It is very hard to go about one’s day, whether one has children or not, or a teacher in their family as I do, or not, given what happened in Uvalde, Texas, yesterday. Or to imagine what being in that classroom was like. And just like after every other mass shooting in the United States, fingers are pointed, lines are drawn, and rhetoric that we’ve all heard before is repeated until it happens again. Ban guns? Better background checks? Create fortresses out of elementary schools? Improve mental health care? We’ll go around and around on the reason(s) and the cure(s). Far be it from a daily commentary on residential lending to adequately address the evil that we witnessed yesterday. But we all do what we can. (Today’s podcast is available here and this week’s is sponsored by Matchbox LLC, igniting ideas for the mortgage industry. Expertise in assistin
“One minute you're young and having fun. The next, you're turning down the car stereo to see better.” Gone are the days when all loan officers wanted to see from their company was decent pricing on FHA, VA, Fannie, and Freddie programs, and fast processing. Now, in an effort to do the harder deals (and they’re all harder now, right?), LOs want to see some adjustable-rate programs with decent pricing, non-QM offerings, “green” products, and affordable housing products. On a larger scale, we’re all watching the Fed try to make up lost ground in fighting inflation (+8.3 percent through April for the last 12 months), raising rates but not causing a recession. Look for the term “neutral rate” to gain some press: the point at which interest rates neither boost nor hinder economic growth. Recession? "The underlying strength of the U.S. economy is really good right now. The U.S. economy is strong, the labor m
Remember: April is National Procrastination Month! I could tell that my cat Myrtle was displeased the other morning. She’s very secretive about her finances, but my guess is that she’s “long” residential lender stocks and procrastinated selling them. Nearly every lender’s stock price is near all-time lows, making the sellers of these companies during the last few years look like timing geniuses. Earning notes on UWM and Rocket are below, but loanDepot shares have lost about 43.8% since the beginning of the year versus the S&P 500's decline of -16.3%. Finance of America, which had a management shakeup in mid-March and moving President Bill Dallas to an advisory role, reported a net loss for the quarter of $64 million, but improving from a $1.33 billion loss in the previous quarter. (FOA acquired Parkside last year.) Guild Mortgage saw only $32 million Adjusted Net Income, and its stock is trading near an all-time low. Retail, wholes