“Who closes the door when the bus driver gets off? The world is full of questions. “Why have all the predictions of lower rates been wrong?” Yesterday I was in the SF Bay Area giving a speech to a group of LOs and management and was asked, “Rob, are you hearing that lenders are requesting clients pay for the credit report(s) up front?” Absolutely I am. Lenders have grown weary of paying for the credit reports of loans that don’t fund and heaping those rising costs on the loans that do. “Rob, are mergers and acquisitions going to pick up?” Yes. We had one recent depository bank deal (Mississippi’s Guaranty Capital Corporation will acquire Lafayette Bancorp, Inc.), but we can expect continued deals in an 8 percent mortgage rate world as lenders and vendors, big and small, re-evaluate either their position in the market or even if they want to continue to exist. (Today’s podcast can be found here: Sponsored by nCino, ma
Yes, it’s already Tuesday. Are we at the top of the market? A pair of Goldman Sachs-backed ventures gobbled up an entire rental home community in Florida last month for $45 million, according to reports. Lenders everywhere keep one eye on housing trends, and every Friday at 3PM ET I do a Zoom show with Rich Swerbinsky for The Mortgage Collaborative discussing current events in finance and housing. I try to have fun backgrounds. In Friday’s show, however, at the 6-minute mark the wild horse in the hills above Reno decided he was done with the filming. And then there was the lunging horned toad at 32:30; fortunately, I outweighed it. Speaking of weak segues, “Demand continues to outweigh supply, with the number of potential buyers currently 61% higher than the five-year average. Meanwhile, the level of homes for sale is 37% lower than normal. But the number of properties being put up for sale is beginning to increase. The number of new listings in the four weeks to 2