Denver’s airport has the longest runway in the U.S. at 16,000 feet (3 miles). As thousands of vendors, with some lenders thrown in for good measure, and me, head to Nashville for the MBA’s conference this weekend through next Wednesday, I am reminded of a bit of air travel trivia. Namely, if a commercial pilot seems to land quickly and taxi off the runway as soon as possible, generally that pilot’s background is Navy. If the pilot lands gently and taxis for a bit, that pilot was trained in the Air Force. The reasoning? Many Navy pilots were trained to land abruptly on carriers. The economic backdrop for this year’s event is not pretty. And in our biz, concerns about a potential recession and other issues are prompting some investors to sell mortgage securities known as credit-risk transfers that are packaged by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The trend has sent the securities' prices lower and widened the yield spread when compared with Treasury bonds. T
As rumors of correspondent, wholesale, and retail company cutbacks or closings continue to bounce around our biz, how about this non-mortgage tidbit. During his off hours in New York, Ira S. found yet another fun and fascinating website: a map of the U.S. that one can zoom in/out of, and it will list the resident looked up most on Wikipedia (they had to be born, lived in, or somehow connected to the city). Much less fun is the fact that Capital markets staffs have turned their attention, due to recent rate drops, to renegotiations in the primary markets with LOs and AEs. In the secondary markets, of course, Wall Street firms don’t renegotiate hedge positions. In other words, one can’t call up Morgan Stanley or BAML or Multi-Bank Securities and whine, “Uh, remember that MBS we sold you three weeks ago? Well, rates have moved, and we want a better price or else.” In fact, I’ve even heard nervousness from lenders about margin calls from broker-dealers, e
Yesterday in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, at the Indiana Mortgage Bankers Association’s annual conference, one of the non-mortgage conversations that I had was about TV. (Sometimes people talk about shows they’re “streaming.”) I don’t know what’s what: Hulu, Paramount, Paramount+, Dish, Amazon Prime, Disney, Disney Plus, Charter, Verizon, Comcast, You Tube TV, Peacock… can’t we just go back to cable? Maybe not: The number of Americans opting out of cable accelerated in the first quarter of 2022. In 2019 and 2020, a net of 1.1 million subscribers cancelled their cable or over-the-top streaming television, a figure that rose to 1.4 million in the first quarter of 2021 and has now hit 2.5 million cable cancellers in Q1 of this year. Comparing subscriptions in 2022 versus 2018, the only winners are Hulu + Live TV, up 3.1 million subscribers, and FuboTV, up 925,000 subscribers. The rest of the cable landscape? It’s bad: Comcast
Daylight Saving Time for much of the nation springs up Sunday morning, leading to plenty of grousing on Monday. What else is going on? “Please listen carefully, as our menu options have changed.” We’ve all heard that recording countless times when dialing a business. As an industry, our menu options have changed, or at least shifted. We all knew rates wouldn’t be in the 2’s forever and that refi burnout would take place. In our biz, lenders and MLOs continue to pivot to a purchase-centric focus. Independent mortgage bankers are warily watching CRA developments around the nation, which are spelled out in MCT’s Review, by Robbie Chrisman. Oh, and are we headed for an inverted yield curve? Due to the work from home (“WFH”) shift, a survey shows nearly 19 million more people want to move! The rise in oil prices and the flow of money is causing Texas laborers to move from building houses to working the oil rigs in the Permian Basin. We
W.C. Fields said, “Money will not buy happiness, but it will let you be unhappy in nice places.” Unfortunately, many people have much less of it, and here’s a quiz to start the week. What are -68 percent, -66 percent, -60 percent, -40 percent, -13 percent, and -2 percent? They are all the stock performance since their initial public offering, or SPAC merger, of well-known companies in the residential mortgage business. And the numbers aren’t even the decline from their price highs, which would look much worse. In order of a hit taken: Home Point, loanDepot, Finance of America, United Wholesale, Rocket, and Guild. (Thank you to California’s Jeff B. for sending.) Every deal was different, but many analysts are questioning the franchise value of pure TPO (broker and