Page 4 - Fee Chaser News Today

As the MBA’s conference in Nashville wraps up, lenders and vendors are in an interesting mindset. Optimists are saying, “There’s a lot of opportunity out there” and, “Rates will come back down and refis will give us some oomph.” The pessimists are saying, “Why do I care about multi-year Agency goals when I’ll be lucky to make it through the next two quarters. We’re just trying to cut costs fast enough, including LO comp, and outlast ...

As Florida’s homeowners, insurance companies, and companies that service loans in Hurricane Ian’s path, brace for the storm, lenders nationwide continue to grapple with a very, very difficult environment. Everyone wants a decent HELOC. Servicing sales have dropped. Buydown loans are back in vogue. (Ask your investor if they buy them, but Planet Home, AmeriHome, and Northpointe jump to mind.) Everyone wants a viable ARM product, at a fixed rate program with some points back. There a...

We have witnessed a change in our work environment. From the Central Coast of California, Jeff O. sent, “Yesterday I had convened a zoom meeting of major national programs that took two months to set up. I was disappointed when one of the key program leaders was missing. He appeared 25 mins into the meeting and apologized for being late, saying that a sink hole had appeared in his backyard and needed to wait for help to arrive before jumping on the call. It is the most unique excuse I hav...

“Looking out at the road rushing under my wheels… Looking back at the years gone by like so many summer fields.” Yes, at the end of today we’re halfway through with 2022 (already). Time passes, hair styles, relationships, people, pandemics, and companies come and go. (Today’s joke has to do with the passing of time.) History is made and remembered. Woody Williams, the last surviving WWII Medal of Honor recipient (Iwo Jima), died yesterday at 98, as did Hells An...

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 w...

Here in Honolulu, talk among those gathered for the MBA Hawai’i annual conference includes the rise in adjustable-rate mortgage lending by depositories, and the impact of inflation, and the Federal Reserve fighting it, on home loan rates and interest rates in general. Inflation is everywhere. Here’s your tip-of-the-day: go buy some Forever Stamps from the Post office as postage prices are going up in early July. If you think that you have it bad, on a year-over-year basis, freight ...

Yesterday in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, at the Indiana Mortgage Bankers Association’s annual conference, one of the non-mortgage conversations that I had was about TV. (Sometimes people talk about shows they’re “streaming.”) I don’t know what’s what: Hulu, Paramount, Paramount+, Dish, Amazon Prime, Disney, Disney Plus, Charter, Verizon, Comcast, You Tube TV, Peacock… can’t we just go back to cable? Maybe not: The number of Americans opting ou...

Yesterday I visited Sacramento to speak to an audience of real estate agents and originators in a joint MGIC/Golden 1 Credit Union event. The mood was good, and much of the discussion was about rent (give or take a little, 50 percent the U.S. is paying 50 percent of their income in rent) and products offered by depositories and portfolio lenders. Attendees also remarked how fast 2022 is moving. We’re fast approaching Memorial Day, marking the unofficial start of summer. Radio stations sta...

The last pay phone was removed from New York City yesterday. (Heck, growing up I financed my baseball card purchases by looking for loose change in those and newspaper vending machines.) Communication is certainly always changing, and successful loan officers and managers are adept at knowing the best way to communicate with others. Communication aside, loan officers have a lot on their plates. On a micro level, every loan is a hard deal, and LOs are focused on providing the best program for the...

“I’d listen to their forecasts about as much as I’d listen to Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler dispense advice on monogamy.” Regardless of who this LO was talking about, predictions are dicey business. Thank you to Julie W. who sent, “Why So Many COVID Predictions Were Wrong.” We all knew rates would move higher, but not at this pace. And companies have reacted. Layoffs, reductions in force, cutbacks, whatever the politically correct term is these days, a...