“I dance like people wish they weren't watching.” Someone sure is watching, and counting, empty houses. Lack of available housing inventory has helped keep housing costs high throughout many of the nation’s big cities, but nearly 5.5 million homes sit vacant across the nation’s 50 largest metropolitan areas. The average vacancy rate across these 50 metros is 7.22 percent, with New Orleans (13.9 percent), Miami (12.7 percent), and Tampa (12.2 percent) having the highest vacancy rates. Vacancy rates are lowest in Minneapolis, Austin, and Washington, D.C., the only metros in the study with vacancy rates below 5 percent. Just because an area has a high vacancy rate doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s something wrong with its housing market. Roughly one-quarter of vacancies are due to being empty for rent, one-fifth because they're only used part time, and one-twelfth because they're being repaired or renovated. (Today
I knew it was going to be a rough morning today when my alarm went off and I found my cat Myrtle staring at the computer screen watching Social D’s “Don’t Drag Me Down.” (Excuse the language.) There was this email: “Rob, I’m thinking about leaving my company because it doesn’t offer 180- or 270-day rate locks. What do you think? We have trouble competing even with shorter term pricing. My current employer is allowing me to lock in a 60-day rate at 1 percent higher than the 10-day lock price, but my competition has stronger pricing than ours, and a few of the banks trounce everyone’s pricing.” 270-day rate locks? The longer the lock, the greater the risk. I am going to simplify this a little, but they’re light a light switch: figure either 0 percent will fund at that price, or 100 percent. Think of the lenders that offered that program at the beginning of 2020: none of those loans closed at those rates. Think of the l