This morning it’s off to Missoula, Montana, for me to spend some time with the folks at MAMP. (Few states have as many different species of mammals as Montana: nearly 120 out of a total of 490 in the wild in North America.) Going through the airport there were few signs of Halloween, although across the country, lenders’ employees are asking, “Which area of our office has the best leftover Halloween candy, underwriting or accounting? Or perhaps it is near the front desk… a Kit Kat bar after lunch won’t hurt anything!” I bet the folks at NAR could use something sweet: In a case where the appeal was nearly filed before the verdict, the National Association of REALTORS (NAR), Keller Williams, and HomeServices of America were found guilty of conspiring to inflate commissions and ordered to pay damages totaling $1.78 billion, a jury in Missouri ruled Tuesday. Good loan officers and real estate agents are masters at gauging customer psychology and se
“Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.” Corporate changes are the name of the game. Atlanta’s Crescent Mortgage’s bank owner is aligning all mortgage facets of the enterprise and moving to “retail only” and eliminating third party. Rather than wind down, Colorado’s Universal Lending is inking an agreement with Lower LLC in a partnership setting up Universal Home Loans being in the same markets as a division of Lower LLC and improve its competitive position. Every discussion that I’ve had with real estate agents lately involves a) thousands of agents leaving the business due to the lack of… business, and b) how 8 percent mortgage rates have absolutely ground transactions, and even interest in looking at properties, to a halt. Meanwhile, I’m having similar conversations with loan originators as a) NMLS licenses are declining, and b) 8 percent mortgage rates have ground activity to a halt. From a broker-d
While we had news today of the British Prime Minister resigning, yesterday my doctor asked if anyone in my family suffers from mental illness. I replied, "No, we all seem to enjoy it." Suffering from a lack of liquidity is the death knell for lenders and certainly nothing to joke about. Want to know the quickest way to shut your business down? Don’t return your warehouse bank’s phone call. In the secondary markets, if no one is interested in buying the products we’re manufacturing, that isn’t good news. So headlines of stories in the Wall Street Journal like, “Recession Fears Hit Risky Mortgage Debt Amid Default Concerns” are a real problem. (Subscription needed.) Housing and lending, “upstream” and “downstream,” is our focus, and economist Elliot Eisenberg summed things up. “With 30-year mortgage rates steadily climbing and now at 7 percent, it is unsurprising the NAHB Housing Market Index f
Camping: “where you spend a small fortune to live like a homeless person.” Lenders have done a remarkable job in the last few years trying to reduce homelessness in an indirect way, namely putting credit-worthy borrowers in well-collateralized properties in a compliant manner despite COVID. But let me get right to the point. It’s not good out there now for residential lenders, or their counterparties. After a remarkable, record-setting 2020 and 2021, the industry is now suffering, and companies are adjusting. (The current STRATMOR blog is, “Mergers and Acquisitions Continue On.”) We all knew the good times wouldn’t last forever, but the degree to which things have plummeted has been surprising. First the corporations were hit, then branches, and now mortgage loan officers (MLOs) are feeling the pain of a) very little business, and b) higher rates. Do IMB originators think that their 100 or 150 basis point commissions are untouchable, especially