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
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 their client at a competitive rate. (Today MortgagePros411’s Audrey B. and Kevin C. – both LOs - and I have, for lack of a better term, a freewheeling conversation today at 2PM ET about what is happening in the mortgage biz and what loan officers are seeing.) Senior management is working on making sure their origination staff has software to help LOs do their job, or products that LOs were too busy in the last couple years to attend training on and are now saying, “Huh? We have
Remember: April is National Procrastination Month! I could tell that my cat Myrtle was displeased the other morning. She’s very secretive about her finances, but my guess is that she’s “long” residential lender stocks and procrastinated selling them. Nearly every lender’s stock price is near all-time lows, making the sellers of these companies during the last few years look like timing geniuses. Earning notes on UWM and Rocket are below, but loanDepot shares have lost about 43.8% since the beginning of the year versus the S&P 500's decline of -16.3%. Finance of America, which had a management shakeup in mid-March and moving President Bill Dallas to an advisory role, reported a net loss for the quarter of $64 million, but improving from a $1.33 billion loss in the previous quarter. (FOA acquired Parkside last year.) Guild Mortgage saw only $32 million Adjusted Net Income, and its stock is trading near an all-time low. Retail, wholes
Happy 420 Day. (Tomorrow, by the way, is Happy Surprise Drug Test Day.) Another day, another layoff story from Better.com. The human tragedy in Ukraine continues, but the world financial markets seem to be concentrated on the mounting inflation numbers. Our Federal Reserve is viewed as playing catch up, and we are reminded of its mandate of “maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates.” Here in Atlanta, in the MBA and STRATMOR Peer Group Roundtable meetings, much of the conversation revolves around bank and non-bank lending. Banks and credit unions are interested in shifting to HELOCs, construction lending issues, and more portfolio lending due to excess cash and deposits, all the while trying to keep trained staff on board. For independent mortgage bankers, the attention is on reducing costs, adjusting staff levels, and how to work preapprovals and enable cash buyers. Indeed, IMBs need to hunker down to outlast their competitors. The human el
I happen to be visiting Manhattan this week. Besides the news about the subway shooting, the overall “hum” of this place being unmistakable and I mention this for two specific reasons. First, the bartender trainee at the restaurant last night was from Turkey. It was her first night on the job, and she had graduated from law school in Turkey but this newly minted attorney had decided to come to the U.S. and earn money! Second, in speaking to the manager of Javelina (which I’d recommend, although the habanero queso has quite a bite), the lion’s share of its revenue comes from delivery service business, and she is thinking about shutting down the expensive actual brick & mortar restaurant and strictly doing takeout and delivery. I found both tidbits interesting from an economics perspective since a) The U.S. continues to be land of opportunity, and b) the changes brought on by the pandemic will continue to change the business landscape. Speaking of