The risk-free 2-year Treasury began 2022 yielding .73 and is now at 2.52 percent! Does your company offer 2-1 buydown loans? Do your LOs even know what a 2-1 buydown loan is? (If they don’t, bring them up to speed internally or through a program like XINNIX.) Things are changing. My gauge is very unofficial, but the number of emails saying, “Hey Rob, I am retiring but love your Commentary so can you change my email to…” is picking up. And I received this note from a mortgage vet. “Well, with the rates going up, looks like the mortgage industry is heading for another purge. We’ll start seeing the LOs that only had refi business slowly migrate away. Loss of ops staff still continuing. Like we haven’t heard this song before.” Lending aside, what do we make of these recent headlines? Investors place inflation bet on US farmland. Prices for prime Midwest ground climbed by up to a third in the past year as world food prices hit records.
Another day of travel, heading to California and its Central Coast. The state has seen its share of house price appreciation, as has the nation, and in terms of actual sales there are some who are predicting a steep decline in sales activity despite heading into the traditional summer buying season. (And there are stories about home “buyer’s remorse” which to me sound like whining.) Yes, as prospectors said starting in 1849, “there’s still gold in them thar hills.” There’s gold in startups also: Of course the co-founders are beaming in the photo from Tomo, a startup founded by former Zillow execs that aims to speed up the mortgage approval process, raised a $40 million Series A round at a $640 million valuation, doubling the company’s value after it raised a $70 million seed round last year. But there’s less gold in lending. Independent mortgage banks (IMBs) and mortgage subsidiaries of chartered banks reported a net gain