When Ashleigh Rulle’s doctor told her that her pregnancy had a strong chance of not making it to full term, Ashleigh and her family choose to trust God for their miracle baby.
Many youngsters don’t know the “Shave and a haircut? Two bits!” knock, or musical notes. Some things are timeless, like British Prime Ministers coming and going, and like what happens to certain lenders and investors when rates go up and credit spreads widen out. And we were reminded, in the cases of FHA, VA, Fannie, and Freddie, why some level of government interaction is good as “Sprout is out” was making the rounds yesterday. Sprout, which made a name for itself in non-Agency TPO activity in correspondent, wholesale, and retail channels, shut down. Unfortunately, it is not the first, won’t be the last. In this case, Sprout President Shea Pallante held a companywide phone call. (Word has it that Sprout’s entire correspondent team was let go and moved over to Oaktree Funding Corp. Those impacted can always post their resume for free here, and anyone can view them for several months for a nominal fee.) One industry vet wrote to me saying
This morning, at the beginning of the third quarter of 2022, I learned about this morsel: The most common national holiday around the world is independence from the British! That aside, this morning I decided to start the 2nd half of 2022 with a healthy, low-cal breakfast: oatmeal. So I found the Quaker Oats, and began boiling. Then I gathered up the butter, pecans, chocolate chips, milk, maple syrup, banana, shredded coconut… where was I going with this? Oh yeah, food and learning. Real estate agent relationships are vital in the mortgage industry, especially for purchase-heavy shops. In hot markets, agents tend to already have established relationships with brokers or lenders, so some LOs are using food and learning. They are offering either breakfast treats with a baker, or happy hour wine tasting with a local wine expert, to local real estate agents, financial planners, contractors, divorce attorneys, whoever, with 20-30 minutes of mingling and then a 10–15-minute pre
You can rest assured that no animals were harmed in the making of this commentary! But the harm felt by stockholders during the last several months has not been trivial, and not only confined to lenders. As has been discussed in this Commentary, just because the open market can see their stock prices fall doesn’t mean those companies are faring any worse, or better, than non-public companies. And other companies in related industries have not fared much better. For example, Redfin (a full-service real estate brokerage that owns lender Bay Equity) hit a high of over $95 a share and hit a low a few weeks ago of $7.13. Put another way, if you had sunk your life savings of $1 million into Redfin stock in February of 2021 your life savings would stand at $75,000. Ouch. The speed and magnitude of the rate move in 2022 has hurt many, but to keep things in perspective remember that the highest interest rates were in October 1981, a whopping 18.45 percent. Fortunately, no one is talking
One topic of conversation at the MBAH conference is the quote making the rounds, “Marry the house, date the rate,” a nightmare for capital markets and servicing groups engineering hedging programs. On a larger scale, no central bank wants to engineer a recession, of course, but the press seems consumed with the idea of a recession in 2023 or 2024… which would mean a) we’ll hear about it for another year or two while many lenders are just trying to survive, and b) it would probably lead to lower rates. Household balance sheets are currently still in fine shape. Corporate balance sheets are as well since many companies that issue debt regularly refinanced their outstanding debt during the last few years, lowering their obligations. just like millions of homeowners did around the nation. What isn’t as good is the daily operating budgets, especially for companies whose only income is residential lending. The implied year-end Fed funds target is now around