One topic of conversation at the MBAH conference is the quote making the rounds, “Marry the house, date the rate,” a nightmare for capital markets and servicing groups engineering hedging programs. On a larger scale, no central bank wants to engineer a recession, of course, but the press seems consumed with the idea of a recession in 2023 or 2024… which would mean a) we’ll hear about it for another year or two while many lenders are just trying to survive, and b) it would probably lead to lower rates. Household balance sheets are currently still in fine shape. Corporate balance sheets are as well since many companies that issue debt regularly refinanced their outstanding debt during the last few years, lowering their obligations. just like millions of homeowners did around the nation. What isn’t as good is the daily operating budgets, especially for companies whose only income is residential lending. The implied year-end Fed funds target is now around
Here in Honolulu, talk among those gathered for the MBA Hawai’i annual conference includes the rise in adjustable-rate mortgage lending by depositories, and the impact of inflation, and the Federal Reserve fighting it, on home loan rates and interest rates in general. Inflation is everywhere. Here’s your tip-of-the-day: go buy some Forever Stamps from the Post office as postage prices are going up in early July. If you think that you have it bad, on a year-over-year basis, freight and building materials prices increase in May means they were up 36.3% for the year! These price increases certainly argue for doing things more efficiently. Ever heard of modular housing developer TopHat? Me neither, perhaps because it does business in the United Kingdom. But the Goldman Sachs-backed housebuilder is going to build Europe’s largest home factory in the U.K. and be able to produce 4,000 homes a year. (Recall that Goldman also bought an entire community in Florida.) Yes, the
Yesterday I visited Sacramento to speak to an audience of real estate agents and originators in a joint MGIC/Golden 1 Credit Union event. The mood was good, and much of the discussion was about rent (give or take a little, 50 percent the U.S. is paying 50 percent of their income in rent) and products offered by depositories and portfolio lenders. Attendees also remarked how fast 2022 is moving. We’re fast approaching Memorial Day, marking the unofficial start of summer. Radio stations start playing summer-themed songs (“I thought I knew what love was, what did I know? Those days are gone forever, I should just let them go…”) Time does indeed fly, and it is important to keep things in perspective. Fairway Independent’s Jennifer S. sent over this tweet from Congress. “The median annual pay during the Great Depression was 22 percent of the cost of an average home. Today it’s 14 percent. That means that pay relative to home cost made it easi
“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
As the MBA’s Secondary Marketing Conference wraps up in Manhattan, and the 1,200 or so registered head home and face post-conference life, Rob B. asks, “What was the mood of the attendees: Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, or acceptance?” The talk in the hallways revolved around constructive things like ARM investors and pricing, outlets for investment and second homes, lock and shop programs, extended locks, all-cash programs, and the various vendor offerings. On a larger scale, the FHFA, acting through Fannie and Freddie, has a lot going on. The Agencies continue to retain earnings and are doing credit risk transfers while the FHFA is in constant contact with U.S. Treasury. Both are striving to serve the underserved, and the actions must be sustainable. Progress has been made in terms of solar panels, green bond program, affordable housing programs, green specified pools, protecting borrower information, and addressing climate-related losses due to storms an