May Advisory News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

A general discussion topic of those here at the MMLA conference in Michigan is the ups and downs we’re all facing. While mortgage applications drift down, and industry headcounts go down, and towns on Maui like Lahaina burn down, here’s something that isn’t going down: credit card debt. Talk to any underwriter or loan officer and they will tell you that loans have become more difficult, in part because of borrower debt loads, and sure enough credit card balances hit $1.03 trillion in the second quarter. And it ain’t going down. The number is up 4.6 percent from $986...

“If they raise the interest rates one more time, you're going to hear Janet Yellen.” Much of the talk in the hallways here at the California Association of Mortgage Professionals event near San Francisco revolves around the Federal Reserve likely raising short term rates on July 26th due to the need to raise interest rates further to bring down inflation that is still too high. But the end to its current monetary policy tightening cycle is close. Compliance may be the new focus. “Tawny Johnson gave me the best mortgage I’ve ever had!” We’ve all...

My notes from the MBA’s conference this week continue, including talk about new home sales being +4.1 percent for the month (+11 percent year over year, bringing a smile to builders everywhere). Although most of the focus of the conference was on the secondary markets (although let’s face it, there isn’t a plethora of new investors or products), the primary markets continue to be a discussion topic. Some lenders have seen LOs move into the broker world, some have seen them come back. The transition to being a broker is not always “rainbows and unicorns.&#x...

Born in Ukraine, Golda Meir said, “Old age is like a plane flying through a storm. Once you are aboard there is nothing you can do about it." (Doubtful anyone called her Goldy.) Her time as the Prime Minister of Israel ended in 1974, and since that time oldsters in our biz have seen the yield curve invert ten times, give or take. Bond traders are no longer fully convinced that the Federal Reserve will do one more quarter-point interest-rate hike, given the nervousness about First Republic and fear of an economic downturn; recessions have tended to lag yield curve inversions by ...

Fun with numbers! 1: the number of Chinese surveillance balloons over Montana. (That we know of.) Did you know that the last day of 2023 is 123123? (You heard it here first!) While we’re on random numbers, Atlanta has almost 25 thousand surveillance cameras, grabbing the honors as the most heavily surveilled city in the U.S. with 50 CCTV cameras for every 1,000 inhabitants. (“The research also suggests that there is little correlation between higher camera figures and lower crime indexes.”) Shifting to mortgage-related numbers, given the Fed news this week, overnight inter...