“This commentary is only available while supplies last!” In the fall of 1621, the Pilgrims, working hard in Plymouth Colony after coming to North America with limited supplies in 1620, held a three-day feast to celebrate a bountiful harvest: the nation's first Thanksgiving. No football was involved. (During the Lincoln Administration it became a national holiday in 1863 to be observed on the fourth Thursday of November.) 300 miles to the southwest, New Jersey has spent $2.6 billion replenishing the Jersey Shore with sand since 1922 and given the inexorable march of climate change fueling beach erosion, the fear is that not even that will be enough to keep the beach alive. Per foot of shoreline, Jersey has been one of the most aggressive when it comes to shoring up the beach. There are other ways to stabilize the shoreline, like facilitating vegetation and building out hard structures like jetties and t-groins, but those haven't seen anywhere near the inves
My cat Myrtle is enthralled with Artificial Intelligence (AI). Okay, I made that up. She’s only interested to the extent that it impacts the supply of Icelandic Sea Trout into her bowl. AI is a hot topic these days, and in fact today’s Mortgage Collaborative’s “Rundown” at noon PT, 3PM ET, features David Karandish, the CEO of Capacity, discussing that and other trends in mortgage tech. A trend continuing to rifle through the ranks is mergers and/or acquisitions as a handful of well-known residential lending companies crisscross the country in search of small institutions that fit their business models and are ready for a change. Sometimes discretion is the better part of valor in terms of staying in business: Unfortunately, yet another trend is a lack of profitability, especially among small and mid-sized lenders who have gone through their 2020/2021 savings and sold their servicing. Lastly, volume trends aren’t good either: According to Curino
Some things in life are fleeting, like a frosty glass of rose, enemy troops singing Christmas carols in the trenches during WWI, or the time when lenders couldn’t hire people fast enough because rates were at 3 percent. I mention this because Krispy Kreme’s Strawberry Glazed Donuts, a flavor not seen in two years, is back today but only through Monday, in participating Krispy Kreme shops nationwide. Fleeting for donut aficionados. (Who says this commentary never has anything newsworthy?) Also fleeting are some astronomical events. Some will tell you that NASA doesn’t have much else going on besides coming up with the names of moons every month or two. Along those lines, thank you to Eric D. who pointed out that the common definition of a “blue moon” (the second full moon in any month) is wrong. It is the third full moon in a season that has four full moons per NASA. (Today’s podcast can be found here and this week’s is sponsored by Black
What color of front door “sells” the best? Some say black, although in a related topic red is the most popular. Doesn’t that mean red sells the best if there are more red front doors? Statistics are interesting things. LOs everywhere tell me that the deals are harder, and as an indication of both statistics and harder deals, a report by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) revealed that 11 percent of Americans have a "thin or stale" score file, and therefore it's impossible to generate a current, valid credit score for them. Another 11 percent are considered to be "credit invisible," meaning that they don't have a credit file with any of the three major credit bureaus. That's a total of 22 percent of the adult population of the United States, around 50 million, that doesn't have a credit score at all. As an investor or a lender, and one of these adults wants to buy a home, even with meag
Mark Weber sends, “Can I take my 2.5 percent loan to another property? Remember the portable loan idea? When will we see real estate agents advertising, ‘This home for sale has an assumable FHA/VA loan!’?” Ask any LO (loan originator, or officer, depending on what you want the “O” to stand for) and they can tell you stories about lenders either fumbling the servicing handoff or a myriad of borrower woes. There is a good reason that it has become a lightning rod for CFPB examinations. J.D. Power released its U.S. Mortgage Servicer Satisfaction Study, which measures customer satisfaction with the mortgage servicing experience in six factors (in order of importance): level of trust, makes it easy to do business with, keeps me informed and educated, people, resolving problems or questions, and digital channels. “The latest results show an ugly situation for the industry. Overall satisfaction is down… there’s been an increased r