Vishal Garg, CEO of Better.com In the span of three minutes, 900 Better.com employees were fired via Zoom by the company’s CEO Vishal Garg last week. “If you’re on this call, you are part of the unlucky group,” Garg said nonchalantly in a video that was leaked to the internet. “Your employment is terminated effective […]
98-year-old photographer Tony Vaccaro was a simple infantryman, but he unofficially photographed World War II for 272 days. Anna Nelson met with Vaccaro to talk about his role in documenting the war. Anna Rice narrates her story. details ⇒ BusinessMediaguide.Com portal received this content from this noted web source: VOANews.Com
Mortgage applications increased 2% for the week ending Dec. 3, driven by a surge in government refinancings according to the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) survey published on Wednesday. The increase was mainly driven by the refinance index up 9% from the previous week on a seasonally adjusted basis. Concurrently, the purchase index decreased 5% from the week prior. “Mortgage […]
Australia will stage a diplomatic boycott of the upcoming 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, mirroring a similar move by the United States. Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced the boycott Wednesday in Canberra, citing a range of issues including accusations of human rights abuses against China and Beijing’s refusal to hold bilateral talks to resolve lingering trade and […]
Record home price appreciation in recent years has pushed tappable home equity to new heights. According to a report published by data vendor Black Knight this week, the third quarter of 2021 saw a nearly $250 billion dollar increase in tappable equity—a record. In turn, Black Knight predicts that there will be an influx of […]
More than five million households failed to make their rent or mortgage payments in October, an increase compared to the same period of 2020, and a concern for mortgage servicers. According to the Mortgage Bankers Association‘s Research Institute for Housing America (RIHA), the number of households missing rent or mortgage payments increased from 5.33 million […]
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York later this week plans to sell up to $90 million in agency mortgage-backed securities (MBS) now held in portfolio, a small sale, but still an interesting move in the current economic climate. The MBS asset sale is not indicative of a change in monetary policy on the part […]
Today, the U.S. Department of Education (Department) announced the approval of Wisconsin’s American Rescue Plan Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ARP ESSER) plans and distributed remaining ARP ESSER funds to the state. Wisconsin’s plan details how the state is using and plans to use ARP ESSER funds to sustain the safe operation of schools […]
Stakeholders are divided over whether, in light of proposed changes to its capital rule, the Federal Housing Finance Agency should retool its agreement with the U.S. Treasury and remove policies some say never belonged there in the first place. Even if the mortgage industry were in agreement, there is little they could do about it. […]
U.S. news outlets say the Biden administration is expected to announce a diplomatic boycott of the upcoming 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games this week. A diplomatic boycott means no U.S. officials would attend any events of the Beijing 2022 Games, while still allowing athletes on Team USA to participate. That would avoid a repeat of 1980, when then-President Jimmy Carter kept U.S. […]
Allyship, an old noun made new again, is Dictionary.com’s word of the year. The look up site with 70 million monthly users took the unusual step of anointing a word it added just last month, though “allyship” first surfaced in the mid-1800s, said one of the company’s content overseers, John Kelly. “It might be a surprising choice […]
The Kennedy Center Honors is returning to tradition this year. The lifetime achievement awards for artistic excellence will be presented Sunday night in a gala at the Kennedy Center’s main opera house after the coronavirus pandemic forced delays and major changes to last year’s plans. Honorees include Motown Records creator Berry Gordy, “Saturday Night Live” […]
Somalia’s annual Mogadishu International Book Fair has resumed following the suspension of the event last year due to the coronavirus pandemic. Restrictions were applied to the invitation-only event this year in order to prevent the spread of COVID-19. The sixth edition of the Mogadishu book fair was a big distraction for residents of the capital, […]
Through clouds of billowing dust, two men circle each other warily before one plunges forward, grabbing his rival’s clothing and, after a brief struggle, deftly tackling him to the ground. The crowd, arrayed in a circle around them, some sitting on the ground, others standing or clambering onto the backs of rickshaws for a better […]
Art censorship in Hong Kong is “very much real,” an expert said after the city’s much-anticipated art gallery opened recently without showcasing some expected artworks by a Chinese dissident. The former British colony’s largest art museum, M+, opened Nov. 12 to great fanfare, but also heated debate because of its failure to exhibit two of […]
U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona issued the following statement on today’s Senate confirmation of Sandra Bruce as Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Education. details ⇒ BusinessMediaguide.Com portal received this content from this noted web source: Website of U.S. Department of Education
This week’s HW+ member spotlight features Reina Ramos, senior vice president, mortgage market leader at City National Bank of Florida. She joined CNBF after more than a decade with Seacoast Bank, where she served as senior vice president, residential lending production manager. Below, Ramos answers questions about the housing industry: HousingWire: To start off, what is […]
After decades of excavation efforts, Egypt has opened the ‘Avenue of Sphinxes,’ a 3,400-year-old walkway that connects Luxor’s main ancient temples. For VOA, Hamada Elrasam has this photo gallery with words by Elle Kurancid. details ⇒ BusinessMediaguide.Com portal received this content from this noted web source: VOANews.Com
Alec Baldwin Thursday denied responsibility for the fatal shooting of a cinematographer on the set of his Western movie “Rust,” saying he would have killed himself if he believed the shooting was his fault. In an emotional television interview, the actor said he did not pull the trigger on the gun he was holding during […]
A 29-year-old man has been arrested in the death of philanthropist Jacqueline Avant, who was fatally shot this week at the Beverly Hills home she shared with her husband, legendary music executive Clarence Avant, police said Thursday. Aariel Maynor, who was on parole, was taken into custody early Wednesday by Los Angeles police at a separate residence […]
On Tuesday, the Federal Housing Finance Agency revealed the much-anticipated conforming loan limits for 2022, with the baseline number jumping by 18% to $647,200. It’s the largest-ever annual increase in the size of loans eligible to be bought by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The figure, which is determined by a formula set by Congress, […]
Fannie Mae is once again back in the credit-risk transfer market with a $984 million note offering through its Connecticut Avenue Securities real estate mortgage investment conduit, or REMIC. The recent offering, CAS Series 2021-R02, was slated to close this week and involves transferring loan-portfolio risk to private investors via a $984 million note offering […]
The Duchess of Sussex on Thursday won the latest stage in her long-running privacy lawsuit against a British newspaper publisher over its publication of parts of a letter she wrote to her estranged father. The Court of Appeal in London upheld a High Court ruling that the publisher of The Mail on Sunday and MailOnline […]
Mortgage rates increased one basis point to 3.11% in the week ending Dec. 2, ignoring the volatility in the financial markets caused by the Omicron Covid variant, according to the latest Freddie Mac PMMS mortgage report. A year ago at this time, the average 30-year fixed-rate loan averaged just 2.71%, according to the report published on Thursday. […]
The mortgage industry is contending with a loan-underwriter shortage that has acted like a governor on an engine — slowing the pace of a fast-growing private-label securitization market. The shortage stems from the imbalance created by the robust demand for underwriters in the private-label market set against the relatively stagnant supply of available underwriters — […]
Alec Baldwin said he did not pull the trigger of the gun that killed a cinematographer on the movie set of “Rust,” while investigators in New Mexico zeroed in on how live ammunition may have found its way to the set. Baldwin, who was holding a gun he was told was safe when it went […]
Better.com founder and CEO Vishal Garg Digital mortgage lender Better.com is laying off 9% of its workforce ahead of a $750 million cash injection from financial backer SoftBank Group. Company officials say the moves will allow refi-heavy Better to increase its strength in a mortgage market that is increasingly becoming purchase-focused. The layoffs were announced […]
Jacqueline Avant, a Los Angeles philanthropist and the wife of music legend Clarence Avant, was fatally shot in Beverly Hills, California, early Wednesday, according to authorities and a Netflix spokeswoman. Netflix spokeswoman Emily Feingold confirmed that Jacqueline Avant was killed in the shooting. Avant’s daughter, Nicole, is married to Ted Sarandos, Netflix co-CEO and chief […]
Online real estate platform Clever has raised $8 million in a Series B funding round to expand its team and accelerate its mortgage efforts, the company said on Wednesday. The round was led by Cultivation Capital, along with a strategic investment from The Mortgage Collaborative (TMC) Emerging Technology Fund. Since its creation in 2017, the company has raised $13.5 […]
A federal judge ordered Ronald McCord, the founder of Oklahoma City-based lender and servicer First Mortgage Company, who was also once the president of the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA), to pay $51.8 million in restitution for mortgage fraud. United States District Judge Robin Cauthron ordered McCord also serve 8.5 years in prison — the maximum the […]
The late American entertainer and civil rights activist Josephine Baker has become the first Black woman to be inducted into the Pantheon in Paris, the highest honor that France bestows. Legendary entertainer Josephine Baker famously sang that she had two loves — “J’ai Deux Amours” — my country and Paris. She was born in Saint Louis, […]
Today, the U.S. Department of Education and the National Security Agency announced the 2021 recipients of the Presidential Cybersecurity Education Award. Kristina L. Rice, of Spotsylvania High School in Spotsylvania, Virginia and Sergio de Alba, of Miano Elementary School in Los Banos, California, were selected for the award for instilling in their students the skills, […]
Mortgage applications declined 7.2% for the week ending Nov. 26, reflecting a lower appetite for refinances, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) survey published on Wednesday. The drop was mainly driven by the refinance index declining by 14.8% from the previous week, on a seasonally adjusted basis. Concurrently, the purchase index grew by 5.1% from the week prior. […]
Nonbank mortgage lenders regained their footing in the third quarter, upping their net profit by 28% to $2,594 on each loan originated, according to a quarterly report published by the Mortgage Bankers Association on Tuesday. But they would be wise to look at expenses, which climbed to the second-highest rate in recorded history. The results […]
Record-setting mortgage originations coupled with a resurgent private-label securitization market have created an expanding demand for loan underwriters at a time when they are in scarce supply. That demand-supply imbalance has led to hiring blitzes, lucrative salary offers and bonuses that may help individual firms attract talent, but it also tends to exacerbate the shortage […]
The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) today announced the baseline conforming loan limit for 2022 will be $647,200, an increase of 18%. The federal government will now back mortgage loans of nearly $1 million, with the new ceiling loan limit for one-unit properties in most high-cost areas now $970,800 — or 150% of $647,200. Special […]
A jury was seated Monday to hear the case against Jussie Smollett, who says he was the victim of a racist and homophobic assault in downtown Chicago that authorities say was a hoax concocted and staged by the former “Empire” actor. Two brothers, who worked with Smollett on the TV show, say he paid them […]
The supply-chain bottleneck afflicting the global economy has its own counterpart in the world of residential mortgage-backed securities, also referred to as RMBS. One group of industry players — loan underwriters — are the chief cause of the logjam. They are in high demand for each stage of the mortgage process, yet they are in […]
With an expanded definition to reflect the times, Merriam-Webster has declared an omnipresent truth as its 2021 word of the year: vaccine. “This was a word that was extremely high in our data every single day in 2021,” Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster’s editor-at-large, told The Associated Press ahead of Monday’s announcement. “It really represents two different […]
Virgil Abloh, fashion’s highest profile Black designer and the creative mind behind Louis Vuitton’s menswear collections, died on Sunday of cancer, Vuitton’s owner LVMH said. The French luxury goods giant said Abloh, 41, had been battling cancer privately for years. “Virgil was not only a genius designer, a visionary, he was also a man with […]
A documentary about pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong won a high-profile award Saturday in Taiwan at the Golden Horse Awards, the Chinese-speaking world’s version of the Oscars. Kiwi Chow’s “Revolution of Our Times” was named best documentary, prompting a long round of applause and shouts of support for Hong Kong from audience members at the […]
Life comes at you fast. During this Thanksgiving week, we went from higher yields and the first Fed rate hike storyline to a big drop in bond yields and scary headlines on a new COVID variant, Omicron. How do we make sense of all this? In this type of economic environment is it even possible […]
Most Americans don’t have oysters on their Thanksgiving table, but, for a time, the mollusks were a key ingredient on the White House holiday menu. “Oyster stuffing and various oyster elements were always included, especially in the later 19th century. Oysters were very popular,” says Lina Mann, a historian with the White House Historical Association. “I think that the location of […]
“NFT” is 2021’s “Word of the Year,” Collins Dictionary announced Wednesday. NFT is an abbreviation for non-fungible token, which according to the dictionary is “a unique digital certificate, registered in a blockchain, that is used to record ownership of an asset such as an artwork or a collectible.” Perhaps the most well-known example of an […]
This week’s HW+ member spotlight features American Pacific Mortgage CEO Bill Lowman. Joining the company in 2002, American Pacific Mortgage named him president in 2004, and in 2016 he became CEO. Leading one of the largest independent mortgage banks in the country, Lowman is active in the industry, serving as immediate past chairman/treasurer at the […]