Servicer Guide News Today

There is always non-mortgage financial news. Mark Cuban is both selling his share in the Dallas Mavericks and leaving Shark Tank. Berkshire Hathaway’s Vice Chairman Charlie Munger has died. When I want something bougie to give as a Christmas present, I go to… Alabama? U.S. airlines lose 2 million suitcases a year, and they all go here along with the contents up for sale. Will Rogers came up with, “Things will get better… Despite our efforts to improve them.” Th...

Shutdown or no shutdown, the National Park Service’s Fat Bear Week is approaching, focused on how these behemoths tip the scale. Here’s your tip of the day: Having books in your Zoom background makes you seem more trustworthy. What if one of them is “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Mortgages”? Maybe put some gold bars on the shelf instead? You can buy them now at Costco. Owning a home is a great way to build wealth, although mortgage rates are at 23-year high and...

As if lenders and vendors don’t have enough other stuff to worry about, the budgetary standoff in the U.S. doesn't look like it will abate soon, raising the likelihood of the first government shutdown since 2019. Current funding for federal operations will end on October 1 unless a deal is reached or the proverbial can kicked down the road. Thousands of federal workers might be furloughed without pay. Sure it will be temporary, and its wider impact will likely be limited, but stil...

Today is 092023 and I head to Savannah, GA for the SECUREN (credit union) conference. Did you know that the last day of 2023 is 123123? In other “fun with numbers,” as a stockholder in a lender, how’d you like $5 million because your company couldn’t keep its costs down? The median sale price per square foot in Savannah is $197, up 13 percent since last year, if you believe Redfin. Want to build wealth? The median sale price per square foot for new single-family homes...

A year after the GSEs announced new appraisal modernization solutions, as they’re more widely adopted, questions arise. How do the solutions work?

Effective August 2, 2023, the ACE + PDR valuation offering has been added to the Single-Family Seller/Servicer Guide (Guide).

Jordan Peele met his famous comedy partner Keegan-Michael Key around 2002 at Second City in Chicago, and eventually performed this classic routine that every air traveler should see. This morning I head to Chicago, and from there to the MMLA event in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan. Given my time with originators last week, the email traffic over the weekend, lenders are very concerned about overcapacity and therefore overhead. On a micro level, staff that may have been held onto “just in case&#x2...

Today's Fed meeting announcement is the last one until September 20. Mortgage rates, of course, are prone to moving around even without the Fed’s direction. Meanwhile, the second quarter earnings from lenders are of great interest to warehouse banks and investors (including Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae). Those counterparties are contractually limited as to what they can do with companies that are not making money and have seen their net worth erode over the months and quarters. Ther...

Overloaded with debt, with maintenance and repairs cut back to the bone, tenants are being bled dry to make millions for speculators—with a crucial assist from the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation.

It isn’t as if building or lending products, or ways of doing business, were handed down by Trappist monks. Change is always afoot, for better or worse. What is old is new again. Teachers are moving to oral exams to counteract AI and ChatGPT, similar to ancient Greek and Roman times. In the West and Southwest, adequate water rights and supplies have always been contentious but have resurfaced (get it?) with news that may impact other cities and towns: Arizona began limiting approvals for ...