Tue, Feb 26 2019, 9:01 AM
We all learn something every day. For example, did you know that the grocery chain Trader Joe’s is owned by a huge German supermarket chain? Yup. How ...
Mon, Feb 25 2019, 8:57 AM
When you hear “Midwest” what comes to mind? Missouri? Illinois? What about “Mideast?” Some place a long way from Missouri! “Rob, have you heard that t...
Fri, Feb 22 2019, 8:53 AM
In the good news category, we can all knock “lumber prices” off the list as a hindrance to builders. Prices are down 25% in the last year. Is it “easi...
Thu, Feb 21 2019, 8:58 AM
“Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” A clever quote about differences which reminded me that there are differences between the na...
Wed, Feb 20 2019, 8:24 AM
Watch out for spam emails asking for your phone number. Seems like they are trying to get past the two-factor authentication that sends a six-digit co...
Fri, Feb 15 2019, 9:04 AM
Huh? Radian was recently in takeover talks ? I only know what I read in the newspapers! Sometimes I wonder if everyone isn’t in M&A talks to one degre...
Wed, Feb 13 2019, 9:17 AM
Amazon accounts for nearly 50% of the ecommerce activity in the United States. With that kind of delivery service, it isn’t hard to see why malls are ...
Tue, Feb 12 2019, 8:56 AM
From Twitter: “When self-driving cars become mainstream, dead old people will occasionally just arrive places.” Morbid humor aside, will it really hel...
Mon, Feb 11 2019, 8:57 AM
When I grow up, I want to live…next to the airport? Usually, airports are there before people move in around them, and then the residents all complain...
Fri, Feb 8 2019, 9:11 AM
Here’s some trivia for today’s potluck in the Shipping Department: Las Vegas has 150,000 hotel rooms and spending a night in each would take you 411 y...
Thu, Feb 7 2019, 9:25 AM
Guys – here’s your one-week warning for Valentine’s Day. In related news, countless scientific studies have proven that a male human being is incapabl...
Wed, Feb 6 2019, 9:03 AM
Fun with numbers! Here’s something interesting in the finance world: The number of public companies in the U.S. has decreased by almost 50% from 1996 ...
Tue, Feb 5 2019, 8:55 AM
The other day I was on a Southwest flight and I noticed someone on the aisle seat crumple up a couple of unused tissues and put them on the empty midd...
Mon, Feb 4 2019, 9:04 AM
“All mushrooms are edible. Some are only edible once.” I am positive there are families in the U.S. that only buy or sell a house once in their life, ...
Fri, Feb 1 2019, 9:02 AM
I can tell it’s almost Valentine’s day since Costco just put out the Halloween decorations. Speaking of Costco, its minimum wage is now $14 per hour. ...
Thu, Jan 31 2019, 8:55 AM
Rumors of a cancelled President’s Club award event in a mortgage division of a bank in the Northwest have tongues wagging about acquisition rumors by ...
Wed, Jan 30 2019, 9:07 AM
Here’s something for senior management to do some time. Casually ask someone under the age of 30, who is not in the business, like your server at The ...
Tue, Jan 29 2019, 9:16 AM
Think you have trouble finding good talent in the mortgage biz? The L.A. Times writes that President Trump signed an order to hire 15,000 new border a...
Mon, Jan 28 2019, 9:02 AM
Another 5-day work week. Sigh. To some it’ll seem “longer than a CVS receipt.” To others it will fly by. What is also flying is the market in Boise, I...
Fri, Jan 25 2019, 8:29 AM
For me last week included Orange County and Connecticut, this week Memphis and So Cal, and next week Atlanta. I find it curious when a flight attendan...
Thu, Jan 24 2019, 8:54 AM
I think that keeping my personal information and passwords on my yellow note pad is safer than putting it “in the cloud.” More than 24 million financi...
Wed, Jan 23 2019, 10:03 AM
The wholesale pricing wars continue, the latest salvo from Freedom Mortgage in the FHA & VA stadium (see below). Fans of FHA lending, who tend to bris...
Fri, Jan 18 2019, 9:11 AM
For the first time in history, the six biggest banks — JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley — mad...
Thu, Jan 17 2019, 9:41 AM
Time has a way of slipping by. For example, I’ve really been meaning to transfer a bunch of Lotus 1-2-3 and Quattro Pro spreadsheets I have off of som...
Wed, Jan 16 2019, 11:12 AM
As pricing battles rage in the wholesale channel, there has been plenty of news of layoffs in residential lending over the last six months industry-wi...
Tue, Jan 15 2019, 8:55 AM
Are rates too high given where the U.S. economy is? Traders, investors, and the Fed think they’re where they need to be, given the information we have...
Mon, Jan 14 2019, 9:55 AM
My cat Myrtle has never flown coach. She doesn’t have the same complaint I have of airline workers who don’t seem to realize that “full” means full. F...
Thu, Jan 10 2019, 9:27 AM
Let’s see… How much does it cost you to produce a residential loan? Pizza for the shippers, underwriter bonuses, copy paper, HP-12C batteries – it all...
Wed, Jan 9 2019, 9:28 AM
The co-founder and former CEO of Southwest Airlines, Herb Kelleher, died last week. I mention this because I read his obituary and the article noted h...
Tue, Jan 8 2019, 9:13 AM
In HELOC news, “traditional” lenders know that online lender Prosper plans to offer home equity lines of credit this year. The threats to real estate ...
Mon, Jan 7 2019, 10:00 AM
Let’s start the first 5-day workweek of 2019 off with something entirely non-mortgage related, although “unintended consequences from revenue-based de...
Fri, Jan 4 2019, 9:19 AM
Some view the end of one year and the beginning of another as an artificial construct, created by human intervention. Others take careful note of what...
Thu, Jan 3 2019, 9:31 AM
According to the National Association of Realtors (NAR, not the NRA), Americans 36 and younger represented the largest share of home buyers (34%) in 2...
Wed, Jan 2 2019, 8:49 AM
Last week I noted a STRATMOR study that shows, pretty much year in and year out, that traditionally, 82% of residential production comes from 40% of t...
Mon, Dec 31 2018, 8:54 AM
How important is it for lock desk personnel to charge the correct fees for rate lock extensions? Very. Lock mistakes were included in Wells Fargo’s la...
Fri, Dec 28 2018, 9:31 AM
“Rob, should we be staffing up for another refi boom?” It seems like most lenders are pausing during the holidays to take stock of current staffing le...
Thu, Dec 27 2018, 8:54 AM
The US taxpayer has been bearing the credit risk of 90% of all new origination over the past 10 years. What about property/collateral risk? Yesterday ...
Wed, Dec 26 2018, 8:54 AM
This government shutdown is over 215 miles of fencing along a 2,000-mile border. Rate-wise, there is growing thought that the Fed has overshot rate ch...
Mon, Dec 24 2018, 9:03 AM
I’ve been in capital markets since the mid-1980s. No presidential administration has eliminated business cycles. Although stocks have given up their g...
Fri, Dec 21 2018, 9:06 AM
Welcome to the Winter Solstice with more daylight in the Northern Hemisphere every day for the next six months. Today is definitely greeted by residen...
Thu, Dec 20 2018, 9:06 AM
All kinds of things are being found. A woman in Missouri’s tiny house ” was found after being stolen. Then New York Times found more money to pay its ...
Wed, Dec 19 2018, 9:23 AM
There are lots of interesting questions out there. “Why didn’t Tarzan have a beard?” for example. Another is, “Do borrowers know about low down paymen...
Tue, Dec 18 2018, 9:10 AM
“Rob, I’m no stranger to bribes.” (I am not going to say which mortgage banking production manager jokingly made that tongue-in-cheek statement.) We t...
Fri, Dec 14 2018, 9:02 AM
Lots of folks in the mortgage biz like statistics and odds. They may not remember them, but they like them. (As Marcus L. writes, “People still play t...
Thu, Dec 13 2018, 9:23 AM
“Why do people pay to go up tall buildings and then put money in binoculars to look at things on the ground?” It turns out that, in terms of grabbing ...
Wed, Dec 12 2018, 9:09 AM
Who among us has pushed for abolishing the mortgage-interest deduction, supported getting rid of government subsidies for the 30-year fixed-rate mortg...
Tue, Dec 11 2018, 9:25 AM
I’m a capital markets guy. “Bespoke luxury” isn’t in my vocabulary. First-time home buyer prices and floorplans aren’t in the cards at the new Aston M...
Mon, Dec 10 2018, 9:08 AM
The focus is on the holidays but there is plenty of 2019 wedding planning occurring. Despite that, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, adults are inc...
Fri, Dec 7 2018, 9:17 AM
The year has sped along, and here we are at Pearl Harbor Day already. Although mortgage rates have lagged, what has pushed Treasury rates down? Releas...
Thu, Dec 6 2018, 8:58 AM
I still receive questions about HMDA. It’s good to know about the 2018 edition of A Guide to HMDA Reporting: Getting it Right! (the Guide). Developed ...
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