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“A fine is a tax for doing wrong. A tax is a fine for doing well.” Lenders sometimes grapple with the former, always deal with the latter. In my travels around the nation visiting with residential lenders, what else has their attention? Loan officer recruitment, the area with fabled signing bonuses over the last year or so, is heating up. After two great years and a reduction in pipelines, some MLOs are searching for new homes or at least taking phone calls from recruiters, testing their worth in the open marketplace. Home equity lending is surging. This is an advantage that banks and credit unions are trying to push, and this lending product internally helps banks as they can shift staff from mortgage to HELOC lending (usually less complex). And STRATMOR’s current blog is about how “Lenders Continue to Pivot” in a shift to a purchase-centric focus. (Today’s audio version of the commentary is available here and this week’s is sponsored b ....
While Omicron continues to grab headlines, and economists, investors, and Congress grow increasingly wary of the immense U.S. fiscal expansion as evidenced by rates heading higher, here’s a grabber: Inefficiency is not rewarded. This applies to mortgage originations, or… baths? Who wants to monkey around with taking the time and effort to fill it up at the right depth and temperature when, for $2,700 for the technology, you could verbally tell Kohler’s computer to do it while you’re pulling into your driveway? I’ll take the manual route. (Or if you have $8,000 burning a hole in your pocket, how about the “Stillness Bath” inspired by Japanese forest bathing? I’ll take the American forest bathing experience, thank you very much.) In the technology vein, in Moscow, despite privacy concerns, you can use your face as a ticket to ride the metro. What about technology creating edible weed tickets? Technology is certainly allowing more pe ....