Mark Weber sends, “Can I take my 2.5 percent loan to another property? Remember the portable loan idea? When will we see real estate agents advertising, ‘This home for sale has an assumable FHA/VA loan!’?” Ask any LO (loan originator, or officer, depending on what you want the “O” to stand for) and they can tell you stories about lenders either fumbling the servicing handoff or a myriad of borrower woes. There is a good reason that it has become a lightning rod for CFPB examinations. J.D. Power released its U.S. Mortgage Servicer Satisfaction Study, which measures customer satisfaction with the mortgage servicing experience in six factors (in order of importance): level of trust, makes it easy to do business with, keeps me informed and educated, people, resolving problems or questions, and digital channels. “The latest results show an ugly situation for the industry. Overall satisfaction is down… there’s been an increased r
“Yesterday I completed a chore I’ve been putting off for four months. It took me 20 minutes. I will learn nothing from this.” That sums up a lot of my tasks. But that was then, and today I head to Austin, the capital of Texas and where they just voted to approve a wide-ranging property tax reduction bill. Which is good, as Texas residents will need the money for air conditioning in the 106-degree heat forecast for today. What if you’re the owner of an office building with few tenants, absorbing that AC cost yourself? Say what you will about slow times in residential lending, commercial lenders are very anxious. Rumor has it there is 1 billion (with a “b”) square feet of empty space. That’s 4.44 million 15x15 square foot offices. Word has it that landlords are very concerned about when the leases are due in commercial real estate around the nation, and world, as some percentage of people have shifted from office to WFH (working from home)
“I am part of the 4 percent who want to ban the teaching of math. We are a quarter of the country, and we will not be ignored! And that number is growing; soon we will be a fifth of the country!” While we’re being quantitative… Everyone knows that there are 50 stars on the United States Flag. In 1945 there were 48, before Alaska and Hawai’i were granted statehood. Someone should have told the folks who filmed or fact checked “Oppenheimer.” Continuing with numbers, the South or Midwest, which also boast the highest U.S. homeownership rates, are also the regions that have the highest rental vacancies in the nation, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Housing Vacancies and Homeownership data. The Midwest had the nation’s highest homeownership rate (70 percent) in the first quarter of 2023, followed by the South (67), Northeast (63) and West (62 percent). A bigger share of homeowners (41.6 percent) than renters (28.7 percent)