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Real estate agents love it when loan officers give them referrals. That’s not always easy. Is giving a real estate agent a book on becoming a productive and well-respected real estate agent a RESPA violation? How about an all-expense paid trip? Attorney Brian Levy points out in his latest Mortgage Musings (chock full of Rolling Stone song references) how it matters whether the “thing of value” is offered in return for referrals or is just ordinary business promotional activity. LOs know that working with real estate agents is a numbers game. (How many loan officers contact the listing agent when a property goes on the market to ask for a referral?) Did you know that on any given day there are about 61,000 people in airplanes above the United States? (I think that number is light.) I mention this because Heathrow Airport in London is taking the unconventional step of capping the daily number of passengers at 100,000 per day for the rest of the summer. Heathrow was h
Notes to start off the week?! First off, there are some darned clever people around, and this ditty (thank you to John H. for sending) sung to “American Pie” and lamenting the loss of the refi biz, ranks right up there for quality! (“… I can’t remember if I cried, when I read my client’s DTI, now considered too damn high…”) Second, lumber prices have dropped as the mortgage market has slowed. Lumber now comes in at $829 per 1,000 board feet, down 39 percent from its 2022 high of $1,357 in March. (To keep your perspective, today’s price is still nowhere near pre-pandemic levels of $300 – $500; One can always increase timber cutting on Federal land or reduce tariffs on Canadian lumber.) For bad news, last week investors focused on inflation with Treasury yields climbing higher, and back-to-back inflation reports showed prices posting record advances. On Thursday, the benchmark risk-free 10-year U.S. Treasury yield ramp
While the bond market is watching the world define a Ukrainian “invasion,” do you know why you should respect people who wear glasses? They paid good money to see you! What are operations people seeing out there? A recent STRATMOR workshop, led by Senior Partner Jim Cameron, indicated that there is a continued focus on automation & process, automated verifications, and keeping employees engaged. As the pandemic subsides, managers are grappling with a workforce that may have been hired far away from any offices, and how does a company work with key, valued employees in this segment? Meanwhile, originators are battling institutional buyers, all-cash buyers, and a pool of potential buyers who have been priced out of the market. We all know that not everyone deserves to, or can, buy a home, but this stat is an eye-opener: Roughly 69% of American households cannot afford a median-priced home, according to research from the National Association of Homebuilders.
Overheard in the hallway: “My email got hacked again. That’s now the third time I’ve had to rename the cat.” But there’s a lot of other conversation and session topics here in the hallways at the IMB in Nashville. Discussion about the rapidity of the Federal Reserve’s moves in attempting to combat inflation, and how might those moves actually eventually push rates back down if they dampen the economy. How volume and margin projections for 2022 are changing the minds of lenders, potentially turning them into sellers. The impact of Experian Go: a free, first-of-its-kind program designed to help credit invisibles begin building credit on their own terms. The continuing shift by employees, and the mangers managing them, in hybrid work-from-home arrangements. Trends in signing and retention bonuses. (The STRATMOR Group has a compensation survey, as does the MBA’s Compensation Survey.) Conventional servicing multiples up to 5x1! Conventional f