Nothing is simple or easy in this world. Take pine nuts. Simple, easy, right? Nope. A staple of pesto, and some salads and desserts, those in the United States don’t come from the United States. They come from China, Russia, and Afghanistan! Our allies? Lenders handling volumes expected to drop more than 40 percent in 2022 isn’t easy. Our housing market isn’t simple. Plenty of attention-grabbing headlines have appeared, saying the U.S. housing market is in bad shape, even plummeting. Like this “U.S. Housing in Much Worse Shape Than Fed Admits.” Remember that millions of households have solid balance sheets, lots of equity, decent credit, and jobs, and there are plenty of millennials that want to own their own place. But the current housing market prompted one West Coast broker to write saying, “Nothing is easy anymore. The Federal Reserve will destroy housing. For some reason, the FOMC will not change the ancient method of containing inflation,
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With the yield on the risk-free 10-year Treasury note hitting 3 percent for the first time since 2018, you deserve some cutting-edge humor. Two hats were hanging on a hat rack in the hallway. One hat said to the other, “You stay here; I'll go on ahead.” In our lending biz, some companies are thinking it is best to “go on ahead” with someone else. Garth Graham, Senior Partner at STRATMOR, fresh off the Planet Home Lending Home Point deal, fired off this note to me. “In a market like this, we expect to see industry consolidation. Planet Home Lending is being opportunistic as being one of the first to seize scale benefits in the TPO space. Planet could double its market share in correspondent, and likely be a top 5 or top 10 player this year. Management is taking advantage of the market dynamics in a way I expect to see others follow. The M&A market is very hot, similar to the numbers from 2018. In 2018, there were 33 deals, then it s
I happen to be visiting Manhattan this week. Besides the news about the subway shooting, the overall “hum” of this place being unmistakable and I mention this for two specific reasons. First, the bartender trainee at the restaurant last night was from Turkey. It was her first night on the job, and she had graduated from law school in Turkey but this newly minted attorney had decided to come to the U.S. and earn money! Second, in speaking to the manager of Javelina (which I’d recommend, although the habanero queso has quite a bite), the lion’s share of its revenue comes from delivery service business, and she is thinking about shutting down the expensive actual brick & mortar restaurant and strictly doing takeout and delivery. I found both tidbits interesting from an economics perspective since a) The U.S. continues to be land of opportunity, and b) the changes brought on by the pandemic will continue to change the business landscape. Speaking of
I received this from a loan officer in Michigan. “Forget the Serenity Prayer! Grant me coffee to change the things I can, and wine to accept those that I cannot.” There are tens of thousands of loan originators around the United States, primarily changing things for the better for their clients but recently some of them were caught taking a fraudulent continuing education class. Unrelatedly, one (former) Ohio Mayor claimed that ice fishing can lead to prostitution. Attorney Brian Levy somehow brings it all together in his Mortgage Musings about the slippery slope and what might happen to those LOs when they return from their 90-day suspensions. Fraud, including kickbacks, unfortunately, is on its way higher according to off-the-record chats with LOs, sometimes making the headlines (for example, a Georgia real estate agent ran afoul of the Department of Justice in committing mortgage fraud). And a quick note before we jump into the commentary: yesterday I published news ab