Think your job has its ups and downs… How’d you like to be a lipstick tester? (You should see the rest of him!) For me it is off to Birmingham tomorrow, where no lipstick testing is on the agenda, but I am sure that one of the topics at the MBA of Alabama Conference will be how best to lend in an era of constrained supply of houses to buy. But that may be changing: Florida is seeing its inventory of homes for sale skyrocket and price growth stagnate, largely due to homebuilders rushing to accommodate a flood of newcomers. Because we’ve done such a great job keeping building costs on land down, while at the same time not polluting our oceans, let’s build a floating city for 20,000. (Sarcasm font required.) Whether it is real estate, beer cans, or the value of companies, values are determined by supply and demand, so here’s something interesting: Berkshire Hathaway’s cash pile has hit a record as Warren Buffett cut its stake in Apple, a company t
McDonald’s taking 9 years to eliminate its self-serve soda pop machines. (Couldn’t they take 5 hours and just move the machines behind the counter?) In other non-mortgage news, arguably more interesting to talk about than the continued decline in mortgage applications and IMBs concerned about CRA requirements (STRATMOR’s current blog is titled, “Knowing CRA Developments is Critical”), remember when it was Ford, GM, and Chrysler? The third largest automaker in the world is VinFast, a Vietnamese electric vehicle manufacturer that was founded in 2017 and listed on the Nasdaq this month with a market cap of $191 billion! This is behind only Tesla ($760 billion) and Toyota ($270 billion), and well ahead of Chinese car maker BYD ($90 billion) and Volkswagen ($70 billion). VinFast, which entered the electric vehicle market last year, is planning to build a factory in North Carolina. Oh, and Ford is at $49 billion, GM $46 billion. Yes, rankings of all industr
For anyone attending the California MBA’s Western Secondary starting this weekend, here’s a challenge too good for any tennis players to pass up. Augie Del Rio, CEO of Gallus Insights, and I will play doubles against anyone Sunday afternoon from 2-4PM across the street from the Waldorf. The loser of 2 out of 3 sets pays $500, the winner gets to decide the charity. First two to email Augie snags the opportunity. (I don’t know Augie’s skill level, but I am old… it’ll be like shooting fish in a barrel.) Speaking of the Western Secondary Market Conference, the California MBA uses the financial resources derived from this to support advocacy efforts in Sacramento. No “lobby rats!” If you’re going, sign up. Support the organization! (Today’s podcast can be found here and this week’s is sponsored by Richey May, a recognized leader in providing specialized advisory, audit, tax, technology and other services to the mor
There’s a definite shift going on in banks as continued layoff rumors in jumbo and portfolio divisions are rampant. At the other end of the job chain, people’s circumstances about how they entered our business are often fortuitous, or interesting. A good conversation topic at mortgage gatherings is how someone got into the business. Santa Rosa’s Brian Goulding, for example, has a solid accounting background which morphed into being a loan officer. I was a food science major. Another good conversation topic is how LOs use rent, and rent increases, to prompt buyers. Since 2009 rent prices have grown by 60 percent or more in seven U.S. cities: San Jose (85 percent), Denver, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Nashville, and Austin (60 percent). Rent prices are also rising faster than incomes, which forces tenants to shell out a greater share of their wages on rent. At 28.5 percent, Miami has the highest rent-to-income ratio of the 50 largest U.S. cities, while Cincinnat