The old joke, “Why don’t the Phillies have a website? Because they can’t string three W’s together!” is no longer true. The Phillies are doing just fine, and the MBA Annual is underway. Talk in the hallways includes the Community Home Lenders of America, National Association of Realtors, and Independent Community Bankers of America sending a letter calling on the administration to reduce the historically high, long-term mortgage rates relative to long-term Treasury bonds, and the supposed UMortgage financials (showing loans held for sale, typically the sign of a mortgage banker not a broker, but really, financials on Reddit?). For many IMBs, their goals by going to the MBA Annual here in Philadelphia include searching for the reason for the wide bid/ask spreads in MBS trading, the reason for the increased Agency buybacks (increased inspection rates and not taking chances on seller servicers not being around in the future, are usually mentioned as the
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