Lender Programs News Today

“My dad always said to me, ‘Work until your bank account looks like a phone number’ so I did. Account balance: $9.11.” You can work harder, or you can work smarter. (I have severe doubts about the validity of this clip; it gave me the willies watching it.) Swimming is certainly a competitive sport. Do you have competitors? Most businesses do. Which is a reason that hotels offer free ice, thanks to a hotel chain that began in Memphis, TN. If the Mortgage Bankers Associ...

“Affordable” means many things. There are residential lending industry jokes about making a loan on anything with axles or a license plate. (Like “don’t.”) Being “permanently affixed” is usually in the underwriting guidelines, which makes this story about someone having their driveway stolen very interesting. (In this clip a builder explains how the scam works.) There are plenty of trends in the builder world, one of which is “build for ren...

Susan Toste writes to Ira Selwin who sends me (see how these things work?), “Can you believe it is 364 days until Christmas and people already have their lights up?” Goldman Sachs asks interviewees, "How many square feet of pizza are eaten in the U.S. each year?" (The trick is to work through the logic, not necessarily come up with the right answer.) Learning math is something that everyone does, to one degree or another, and doesn’t typically go onto a res...

Did you receive any SM under the tree this weekend? Call it snail mucus, or snail mucin, it’s all the same to me, which, as a kid, represented a trail to something I could direct the sun’s rays on using my magnifying glass. (Sorry, when you’re a kid on a very limited budget, this counts as amusement.) But times change and now it’s a beauty product? “Next level!” Really? SM aside, Depth’s Kerri Milam reminded me that the key difference between init...

“The officer said, ‘You drinking?’ I said, ‘You buying?’ We just laughed and laughed.... It’s Friday morning and I need bail money.” No one ever struck it rich by keeping their money in a savings account, although American Express National Bank is offering a yield of 1.5 percent on deposits. Do you work for a residential lender making money? If so, good for you! The Mortgage Bankers Association tells us, in its Quarterly Mortgage Bankers Performan...

Today is World Breast Cancer Research Day, a global recognition of the life-changing research (past, present, and future) to end breast cancer. That would be nice. What is also nice, so far, is the lack of named storms in the Southeast. Lenders, and servicers, and of course homeowners, in the Southeast dread “hurricane season.” Back in May, NOAA's outlook for the 2022 Atlantic hurricane season (June 1 to November 30) called for “above normal” storm activity. B...

In Florida there are approximately 3,000 lakes, not enough to make it onto the leader board of states with the most named lakes (Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Alaska are up there). (Here’s a bit of trivia: what is the only state without a naturally occurring body of water large enough to have a name?) Nebraska has the most rivers. I mention this, not to make you thirsty for a glass of clean, cold water, but to bring up that Nevada and Arizona may have their water allotment from the ...

“Common sense is not a gift. It's a punishment because you have to deal with everyone who doesn't have it.” This is a tough market, and common sense usually isn’t enough to get through it. Lenders have expressed the need for advice on how to stop the bleeding by employing effective revenue tactics and optimizing efficiencies in their back-office operations. Identifying key areas in which to focus via informed benchmark data is a critical component to designin...