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Here’s what happened when a company relied on forecasts and rate predictions during late 2022 for its business in 2023. You’d have a come-apart! Speaking of losing one’s cool, how do you think IMBs feel about this Bloomberg story about how mortgage fees at banks are less than at non-banks? In STRATMOR Group’s December Insights Report, STRATMOR provides key takeaways that will help lenders think outside the box, evaluate new strategies, take risks and survive the downturn that is likely to continue into the first quarter of 2024. Lenders are looking at rising credit costs, asking if there alternative financing strategies versus traditional warehouse lines, is there a “best” technology underwriter, and how are lenders handling HPML loans, like sharing the cost between a branch and corporate? Today’s podcast can be found here, and this week’s is sponsored by Lender Toolkit’s AI-powered AI Underwriter and Prism borrower income ....
Everyone’s above average, right? This morning I head to Chicago where residents have the dubious honor of being the worst when it comes to estimating home values. Homes are expensive… Who knew? Apparently not the vast majority of Americans, which reminds me of the saying, “Never underestimate the intelligence of the average person.” All Star Home surveyed Americans in the most populous U.S. cities, prompting them to guess home prices in their communities to determine where people have the best and worst home value intuition, and 86 percent of people were surprised at how high home prices are in their area. Boomers (91 percent) are most surprised by high home prices, followed by millennials (87 percent), Gen X (85 percent), and Gen Z (84 percent). San Francisco locals excel in home price intuition, but Chicago residents fare the worst. (Today’s podcast can be found here, and this week’s is sponsored by Richey May, a recognized leader in providin ....
“Someone asked me to name two structures that hold water. I was like, well, damn.” As the storms continue to hit us in Northern California and Nevada, not only is my cat Myrtle ticked off, but we are reminded that it is either feast or famine in the Golden State. Take your pick, forest fires or biblical rain: Over 20 trillion gallons of water are supposed to fall on California in a two-week span. Yes, that’s with a “t.” Ratcheting back several decimal places, new estimates from the Census Bureau found that the U.S. population grew by only 0.38 percent from July 2021 to July 2022, which was the second-lowest growth on record behind just the 0.16 percent growth registered during the first year of the pandemic. The main thing increasing it was an increase in net immigration. To find comparably low rates one has to go back to the worst of the Great Depression, when growth was still a comparably robust 0.6 percent. All told, for those who don’t beli ....
Happy Hanukkah (or Chanukah), which began yesterday. Others are looking ahead to Christmas, with some companies closed Friday the 23rd and some closed Monday the 26th. (The Federal Reserve and the stock market are closed Monday the 26th and then Monday the 2nd.) I am in Chicago where the weather could be termed as “brisk.” There’s a different term that the residents of Fairbanks, Alaska, and my Navy vet father, for that matter, would use to describe their weather, expected to have a high of -35 degrees F today! (To be blunt, which I can be since I’m not reporting to anyone, he’d probably say, “That would freeze the balls off a pool table!”) Weather like that does much more than cause goosebumps, although anyone who knows this song often has them at the 3:08 mark. Plenty of lenders are feeling trapped by current margins and volumes, which probably aren’t going to shoot up in the near future, and some have shifted a portion of their ....