Mark Teteris News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

This morning (as I head to Chicago) and every morning, I keep myself sharp by regularly asking myself the tough questions like, “What happened yesterday?” and “What was I planning on doing just now?” Looking forward, as some attendees of last week’s conference made note of the MBA Annual’s dates in Denver for next year butting up against Halloween, successful salespeople will tell you that many of their best business meetings last week, or at any conference, contained very little business and didn’t take place in a meeting room. I’ve seen...

“I dance like people wish they weren't watching.” Someone sure is watching, and counting, empty houses. Lack of available housing inventory has helped keep housing costs high throughout many of the nation’s big cities, but nearly 5.5 million homes sit vacant across the nation’s 50 largest metropolitan areas. The average vacancy rate across these 50 metros is 7.22 percent, with New Orleans (13.9 percent), Miami (12.7 percent), and Tampa (12.2 percent) having the highest vacancy rates. Vacancy rates are lowest in Minneapolis, Austin, and Washington, D.C., the ...

This morning I head to Dallas, Texas, where, if you ask Redfin, prices are up 5 percent for the year. Or Zillow will tell you prices are down 2 percent. Can’t we all agree on something? Certainly, we can all agree that inflation is simply too many dollars chasing too few goods. How about when too many houses are chasing too few insurance companies? No insurance company wants to be the last one standing. (Today’s “Mortgage Matters: The Weekly Roundup” at 11AM PT, 2PM ET, focuses on how LOs and brokers are dealing with the homeowners insurance nightmare.) In Californi...

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 new developments within the Phoenix area. It’s hard to build large affordable housing develop...

A friend of mine who lives in her own unit in a mobile home park was telling me that her rent is about to go up by a huge amount, and said that, “That Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are behind it.” Correct or not, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae don’t need this kind of publicity and the public to have that impression, but sure enough, a quick news search turns up: “'Trapped': How Federally Backed Financing is Making Mobile Homes Less Affordable.” The world has always had its population broken down in different classes. The average income for middle-cla...