U.S. rhythm and blues singer Mary Wilson, who rose to fame as a member of the legendary female singing trio The Supremes in the 1960s, has died at the age of 76. Her friend, publicist Jay Schwartz, said Wilson died suddenly Monday at her home in Las Vegas, Nevada. Wilson founded The […]
The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board meets Tuesday to vote on a probable cause for the helicopter crash that killed basketball superstar Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna, and seven others in California last year. The NTSB has said there was no sign of mechanical failure on the helicopter, and that the crash is believed to be an […]
Summary List Placement Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia indicated during an interview on Capitol Hill that he favors keeping the same income thresholds for a wave of $1,4o0 stimulus checks and not tightening eligibility around them. “I think people making $75,000 in Georgia are struggling in many instances,” he told Insider. “I am committed to […]
Summary List Placement Congressional Democrats are starting to encourage people to file their taxes early this year so they qualify for more generous federal relief under President Joe Biden’s stimulus package. Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, chair of the Senate Finance Committee, tweeted that tax-filing season starts this week on February 12. He encouraged people […]
Summary List Placement The House Committee on Education and Labor released a draft of its budget bill on Monday, detailing key components of the pandemic relief package. It includes a gradual federal minimum wage increase, funding for reopening K-12 schools, and additional pandemic benefits. Led by Education and Labor Chair Bobby Scott, the draft bill […]
The U.S forbearance rate is falling, though not as quickly as it once was. Data released on Monday by the Mortgage Bankers Association showed that the share of servicers’ portfolio volume in forbearance fell 3 basis points to 5.35% last week. For the third month in a row, the MBA estimated 2.7 million homeowners are […]
Summary List Placement Raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025 will lift 900,000 people out of poverty, while increasing the country’s budget deficit by $54 billion over the 2021-2031 time period, according to a report from the Congressional Budget Office. Introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and other top Democrats […]
Roughly 5 million households did not make their rent or mortgage payments in December, and 3.5 million renters and homeowners feel at risk of losing their home, according to new research from the Mortgage Bankers Association. There are some bright spots, however. The 5 million households who missed a payment in December was down from […]
In 2021, a lingering symptom of the economic sickness we suffered in 2020 is forbearance. Not the forbearance plans themselves, which allowed mortgage holders to delay their payments for many months, but the fact that 2.72 million homes remain in forbearance and can therefore be considered at risk. Forbearance will have to end at some […]
Summary List Placement Beneel Babaei described getting into Columbia Law School as “an act in perfectionism.” “There is very little wiggle room for any part of your application to be lacking,” Babaei, who graduated from Columbia Law in 2019, told Insider. That’s because according to US News & World Report’s 2021 Best Law Schools ranking, […]
Summary List Placement The $15-per-hour minimum wage sought by Democrats may be too lofty a goal, economists at Goldman Sachs said Monday. President Joe Biden and Congressional Democrats are pushing to gradually lift the federal minimum wage over the next four years. The nominal wage was last increased in 2007 to its current level of […]
Summary List Placement The former head of a St. Louis charter school was sentenced to 12 months and one day in prison for his role in a $2.4 million fraud education fraud scheme, according to the Department of Justice. Michael Malone, 42, pleaded guilty in August in the Eastern District of Missouri to three counts […]
Summary List Placement Two of the largest school systems in the US are planning to open schools for in-person learning this month. New York City Public Schools will reopen middle schools to some students for in-person learning by the end of February, while public schools in Chicago are nearing a deal with teachers that would […]
Summary List Placement Over 50 House Democrats sent a letter to President Joe Biden on Friday requesting that the income threshold for the next round of stimulus payments remain at $75,000, ensuring families who need the payments are not left out. When Congress approved the $600 stimulus payments in December, the payments began to phase […]
Weeks before United Wholesale Mortgage (UWM) went public in a SPAC deal that valued the lender at $16.1 billion, its president and CEO Mat Ishbia said observers shouldn’t expect a different United Wholesale Mortgage or a different Mat. He proved it in his first earnings call. On Thursday morning, Ishbia, in his characteristic fast-talking bravado, […]
Summary List Placement Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said US workers earning up to $60,000 should get direct payments. The question of who should receive payments under Biden’s relief package is a key debate in Congress. If Biden’s $1.9 trillion package is passed, the US would return to full employment by 2022, Yellen said. Sign up […]
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers defeated the Kansas City Chiefs 31-9 Sunday to win a Super Bowl title and complete the National Football League’s season without any games being canceled amid the coronavirus pandemic. The usual spectacle surrounding one of the most watched television events of the year was toned down, and the site of the […]
Summary List Placement Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Sunday regulators are still examining whether new policies are needed to address recent market volatility spurred by retail investors in forums like Reddit’s Wall Street Bets. The crowd of casual investors took the stock market by storm in January by bidding up highly shorted stocks like […]
Summary List Placement Sen. Pat Toomey on Sunday said it would be “inappropriate” if Congress passed another stimulus package because the US economy is bouncing back from the coronavirus pandemic. “The economy has come roaring back. Disposable income is at record high levels,” Toomey, a Republican from Pennsylvania, said in an interview on CNN’s “State […]
Summary List Placement Democrats are currently trying to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025. While it’s a measure that’s facing an uphill battle, some Democrats — including President Joe Biden — have continued to emphasize its importance. That increase would more than double the current federal minimum wage of $7.25. It […]
Summary List Placement Harvard University has over through the e-learning platform edX. Below is a list of the 30 most interesting free Harvard online courses, spanning topics like computer science, public health, history, and poetry. . You can pay a fee (typically $50-$200 per course) if you’ want unlimited access to the course and […]
To help safely reopen America’s schools and promote educational equity, the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) at the U.S. Department of Education today announced the largest representative and highest-quality effort yet to gather vital data on the impact of COVID-19 on students and the status of in-person learning. Currently, there is not enough data to […]
Summary List Placement President Joe Biden gave one of the strongest indications yet on Friday that he is prepared to pass his $1.9 trillion emergency spending package with only Democratic votes. While delivering remarks at the White House, Biden said he wanted to “act fast” and emphasized his large plan was designed to address the […]
Christopher Plummer, the dashing, award-winning actor who played Captain von Trapp in the film The Sound of Music and at 82 became the oldest Academy Award acting winner in history, has died. He was 91. Plummer died Friday morning at his home in Connecticut with his wife, Elaine Taylor, by his side, said Lou Pitt, his […]
Summary List Placement The latest job report showed little improvement to job gains as the pandemic continues. Only 49,000 jobs were added last month, much lower than the 105,000 economists expected to see in the report. Last month’s gains were also much smaller than in several previous months, and come after December had a revised […]
Summary List Placement Millions of people use Excel to sort and analyze data, and it’s a career mainstay for its highly transferable skill set. Mastering basic or advanced Excel functions can pay substantial dividends, improving workflow or even helping you advance in your career. Below, you’ll find 9 of the most popular online classes […]
This HousingWire Daily interview transcription features an interview with Housing Policy Council President and former director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency Ed DeMarco. In this episode, DeMarco talks about the Biden administration’s plans for homeowners coming out of forbearance and its focus moving forward. Listen to the full episode here and make sure to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. Below is the transcription […]
Summary List Placement Democratic Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware and Republican Rep. David McKinley of West Virginia introduced legislation on Friday that provides $1,400 stimulus checks to Americans while maintaining the $75,000 income threshold from the previous stimulus payments. In his $2 trillion stimulus plan, President Joe Biden called for $1,400 stimulus payments following […]
Mortgage Champions founder and CEO Dave Vermillion will be speaking on a panel covering operational strategies in the current market at HousingWire’s Spring Summit on March 4. Vermillion is a trainer, speaker, consultant, author, consumer advocate, and philanthropist. He and his team have trained over 1 million lending professionals and worked with over 600 financial organizations and […]
Fresh off its acquisition of Stearns, Guaranteed Rate has picked up Owning Corporation, a direct-to-consumer mortgage lender. The acquisition gives Guaranteed Rate, best known for its retail prowess, another engine to boost its growth in the direct-to-consumer channel. Terms of the deal with Orange, California-based Owning were not disclosed. According to Guaranteed Rate, Owning’s direct-to-consumer […]
Summary List Placement A group of Republican senators questioned the size of President Joe Biden’s $2 trillion stimulus plan in a letter sent on Thursday, noting that there is still emergency COVID-19 funding to be spent. On Monday, 1o Republican senators, led by Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, met with Biden to discuss their counter-proposal […]
Summary List Placement Workers who earned less than the median hourly wage saw greater job losses when the pandemic started and have seen a slower recovery, according to a new BofA Global Research report. BofA calculates the median average hourly wage as $15.30, using Current Population Survey (CPS) data. That equates to a salary of […]
Summary List Placement The US labor market improved slightly last month as daily COVID-19 cases crested and new stimulus hit households, but job-addition figures still fell short of expectations. American businesses added 49,000 nonfarm payrolls in January, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said Friday. The report misses the consensus economist estimate of 105,000 job additions, […]
Donald Trump has resigned from the Screen Actors Guild after the union threatened to expel him for his role in the Capitol riot in January. In a letter dated Thursday and addressed to SAG-AFTRA president Gabrielle Carteris, Trump said he was resigning from the union that he had been a member of since 1989. “I no […]
Summary List Placement The Senate unanimously passed a Republican amendment on Thursday that seeks to prevent Democrats from doing something they never wanted to do: double the minimum wage to $15 an hour during the pandemic. In effect, Democrats, as well as Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, joined with Republicans to drive the fact home. […]
Summary List Placement More than a decade since the last federal minimum wage increase, the country could be on track to see more than a doubling of the current rate by the year 2025, but only if Democrats can get the measure passed. As part of President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus plan, he included […]
PennyMac, the nation’s largest mortgage aggregator, posted net profits of $452.8 million in the fourth quarter of 2020. In all, the nonbank brought in $1 billion in revenue during the fourth quarter of 2020, its latest earnings report showed. The gains were driven by “core production and servicing results partially offset by fair value losses […]
Summary List Placement is a non-profit, massive open online course (MOOC) provider founded by Harvard and MIT to remove barriers to education. The site offers an impressive array of courses from top universities and institutions for those seeking to change industries, grow in their careers, or explore new interests. Courses are free to audit, […]
Like many players in the non-Qualified Mortgage space, Deephaven Mortgage was forced to halt operations in 2020 when liquidity dried up. That was then, this is now. Deephaven is now set to issue a $146.2 million security backed by non-QM mortgages that have seasoned for an average of nine months, a presale report from S&P […]
On frozen lakes and snow-covered fields in Canada’s wilds, magnificent geometric formations have suddenly appeared — the work of a retired headmaster stomping around in snowshoes to beat back pandemic blues. “I start with a shape — a hexagon, a square or a triangle — and draw lines through it or intersecting circles,” Kim Asmussen […]
Summary List Placement One of President Joe Biden’s earliest campaign pledges to increase the pay for millions of workers is on thin ice. And it’s not just because of Republican opposition. Biden’s proposal to raise the hourly minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 is so far one of the most controversial parts of his $1.9 […]
Lisa Haynes, the Mortgage Banker Association‘s senior vice president, chief financial officer and chief diversity and inclusion officer, will discuss how lenders can increase their diversity strategy to impact minority homeownership at HousingWire’s Spring Summit on March 4. The homeownership gap between white and Black Americans is larger than in the 1960s, and both real estate and […]
sto Summary List Placement The Senate kicked off a procedure called a “vote-a-rama” on Thursday where any senator can propose an amendment to the budget resolution. If the resolution is approved, it unlocks a process in the Senate for Democrats to pass President Joe Biden’s rescue package without Republican votes. Sen. Bernie Sanders, the chair […]
Summary List Placement Cybersecurity knowledge is vital for everyone to have, whether they run a small business or want to transition into an information security career. It’s also a rapidly growing field, with the US Bureau of Labor predicting a 31% growth in jobs within the next 10 years. Below are 9 online courses […]
Summary List Placement The US economy will struggle for at least a few more months before falling COVID-19 cases and stimulus can drive a full recovery, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Thursday. In her first television interview since being confirmed last week, Yellen emphasized the importance of using stimulus to bridge the final months of […]