The average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage slipped back down to 2.77% for the week ending August 5, according to mortgage rates data released Thursday by Freddie Mac‘s PMMS. The week prior, mortgage rates had rebounded slightly to 2.80%. According to Sam Khater, chief economist at Freddie Mac, concerns over the COVID-19 Delta variant, along with lower […]
Summary List Placement The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits dropped less than expected last week, capping off a volatile month that signaled a slowing of the labor market’s rebound. Jobless claims dipped to an unadjusted 385,000 last week, the Labor Department announced Thursday. That compares to a median estimate of 383,000 claims from economists surveyed […]
Summary List Placement Rob Ettaro and Kaliana Veros have been house hunting outside Salt Lake City for months. In the winter, the couple fell in love with a $479,000 home in Midvale, Utah. They prepared their first offer carefully, offering $6,000 above the asking price. The house ultimately sold to someone else — for $60,000 […]
Summary List Placement The states that are seeing robust employment growth for small businesses are also ones where many residents are vaccinated, according to a new report from Gusto. The report from Gusto, a small business payroll and benefits platform, shows that small businesses in the service sector tended to have larger employment growth in […]
Fewer than five million households failed to make their rent or mortgage payments in the second quarter of 2021, despite the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic still being felt across the country. According to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s Research Institute for Housing America (RIHA), 8.6% of renters (2.86 million households) missed, delayed, or made a […]
Glenn Stearns, CEO at eXp Residential real estate brokerage eXp continues to be profitable, and company CEO Glenn Sanford became a fan of Glenn Stearns through reality television. Those were two takeaways from the company’s second quarter earnings call on Wednesday, in which Sanford and other company executives wrestled with how to diversify a company […]
Summary List Placement Many student-loan debt borrowers are currently stuck in limbo, thanks to a growing civil war within the Democratic Party. Come the end of September, they’ll have to resume paying their federal student loans after enjoying an 18-month reprieve from payments and zero interest accrual. The pause has helped millions of borrowers stay […]
Summary List Placement The river-adjacent roads of Sussex County, New Jersey, don’t offer the restaurants, museums, and nightlife of New York City. But for roughly 140,000 Americans, the cheaper housing and sprawling land make up for the commute. Such is the appeal of an exurb. Areas known as “exurbs” were clear beneficiaries of pandemic-era migration. […]
Summary List Placement Months of record-breaking prices. A historic imbalance between buyers and sellers. Most homes selling in less than one month. To say homebuying in 2021 has been difficult is a gross understatement. And it seems that, finally, buyers have had enough. Two significant developments stand to cool the housing market from its current fervor, […]
Depository bank Citi continues to round out its mortgage executive team under the stewardship of Brad Wayman. Citi announced this week that it had appointed industry veteran Liz Bryant as the new head of retail mortgage sales for the U.S. Bryant comes to the St. Louis-headquartered lending operation following a long career at Wells Fargo, […]
Summary List Placement Conservatives, including a former Trump economic official, worry that the new eviction ban implemented by the Biden Administration on Tuesday could lead to less housing getting built, as millions of Americans prepared to be forced out of their homes amidst an ongoing pandemic. These worries come after the Biden administration announced a […]
Summary List Placement As workplaces begin to reopen from the COVID-19 pandemic, more skilled professionals in the US are choosing freelancing as their main source of employment, according to a new report. Upwork, a freelancing platform that connects professionals with businesses, surveyed workers who spent most of their time working remotely the past year. Most […]
Summary List Placement Former teacher Carrie Presley won “Teacher of the Year” two of the four years she worked for school districts in Oklahoma and Texas. As an accountant-turned-math teacher, she told Insider she believed she finally found her calling, but during the pandemic she made a difficult decision: She quit teaching two weeks into […]
Summary List Placement The US private sector added much fewer jobs than expected last month as several states began ending enhanced unemployment benefits and COVID cases crept higher, driven by the surging Delta variant. Private payrolls rose by 330,000 in July, ADP said in its monthly employment report. That compares to a median estimate of […]
Mortgage applications fell 1.7% in the week ending July 30, according to the latest report from the Mortgage Bankers Association. That’s despite the 30-year fixed rate falling to its lowest level in roughly six months. It’s an about-face from the prior week, in which applications increased 5.7% on the strength of descending mortgage rates. Mike […]
Summary List Placement A few months ago, as COVID-19 restrictions began to ease, many companies ordered their employees to return to the office. Never mind that millions of Americans had grown accustomed to the freedom and flexibility of working from home. The worst of the pandemic appeared to be over, and corporate executives wanted to […]
Rocket Companies, parent of Rocket Mortgage, has its eyes on the solar energy industry, announcing this week that it will enter the green energy game by 2022. According to the Detroit-based company, it will be leveraging the same technology, data and client experience used in the mortgage, real estate and personal lending spaces “to help […]
Summary List Placement The Biden administration is poised to announce a limited eviction ban after coming under immense pressure from progressives to act in recent days. A person familiar with the new policy from the White House said it would be a 60-day federal eviction freeze targeted at areas with surging infections from the Delta […]
The blockchain revolution may soon be coming to mortgage lending. And it could take the form of a very old-school lender – Homebridge Financial Services. The Mike Cagney-led fintech lender Figure Technologies, most recently valued at $3.2 billion, announced Tuesday afternoon that it would merge with Homebridge. “We are bringing together the most robust, powerful […]
Summary List Placement New York City just made a gamechanging move for its economy — and maybe the country’s. Mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Tuesday that workers and people in the city will need to provide COVID-19 vaccination proof for indoor activities at restaurants, gyms, and performance venues. The mandate, known as the “Key […]
When you hear people say that the current housing market is like 2008 all over again, you may want to remind them of the huge differences between this market and that one. The previous economic expansion, from 2010-2019, wasn’t a housing bubble. Quite the opposite: In that cycle we had the weakest housing recovery ever, […]
Summary List Placement Filings for unemployment benefits are still roughly double their pre-pandemic norm. There’s reason to believe they’ll never hit those lows — the old “normal” — ever again. Weekly counts of jobless claims have fallen steadily as more Americans have gotten vaccinated and economic restrictions were reversed. Initial claims most recently came in […]
The purchase market reigned supreme in the second quarter of 2021, and multichannel lender loanDepot reported a 31% increase in purchase mortgage transactions from the prior quarter. But the lender’s gain-on-sale margin and net income fell significantly during the second quarter, a trend that is keeping executives and LOs up at night across the industry. […]
Summary List Placement Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York hasn’t slept much. But on Tuesday morning, she showed no signs of exhaustion as she greeted people at the steps of the Capitol. Progressives led by Rep. Cori Bush of Missouri have staged a sit-in at the Capitol since Friday night, demanding an extension of the […]
Fannie Mae continues to reap the rewards of low mortgage rates as it posted a net income of $7.2 billion for the second quarter of 2021, up from $5 billion in the first quarter. Refinances continued to account for the majority of the government-sponsored entity’s acquisitions. In the second quarter, refinances made up 65%, or […]
Summary List Placement August 3 is Black women’s Equal Pay Day. That is, it will take a typical Black woman starting on January 1, 2020 an additional seven months into 2021 to earn what non-Hispanic white men made in 2020 alone. Black women working full-time, year-round make 63 cents for every dollar similarly employed non-Hispanic […]
Banks moved to ease lending standards for most mortgage loan products during the second quarter, according to a loan officer opinion survey published this week by the Federal Reserve Board. The quarterly survey found that banks loosened their underwriting standards most notably for jumbo products, including qualified mortgages (QM), jumbo mortgages and non-QM jumbo mortgages. […]
Summary List Placement Throughout the pandemic, unemployment insurance and its pandemic-era expansions helped jobless workers pay their bills during a crisis — that is, if they received their funds in time. It’s no secret that states struggled to get payments out to recipients. A new report from Tyler Boesch, Ryan Nunn, and Katherine Lim at […]
Summary List Placement The Treasury Department took initial steps to start paying off the federal government’s bills on Monday because Congress missed a July 30 deadline to either raise or suspend the debt ceiling. In a letter to Congressional leaders, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said she’s starting what are known as “extraordinary measures” to keep […]
Servicers’ forbearance portfolio volume fell yet again, this time dipping a single basis point to 3.47% from 3.48% last week, according to a survey from the Mortgage Bankers Association. According to MBA’s estimate, 1.74 million homeowners are still in forbearance plans. The share of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans in forbearance also decreased two basis points to 1.79%, and Ginnie Mae loans decreased […]
Summary List Placement President Joe Biden has already led the US through some of its strongest ever quarters of economic growth. But two other post-war presidents have him beat. The government revealed on Thursday the US economy grew at an annualized rate of 6.5% in the second quarter. The figure marked the second-largest jump in […]
Summary List Placement In a labor market where workers are quitting en masse, seeking out better positions, and feeling the impact of employers raising wages, companies are scrambling to staff up. One new measure they’re taking: Saying just how much their open roles pay. A new report from Bloomberg looks at data from Emsi Burning […]
Summary List Placement The east coast and west coast have long had a rivalry, but their diverging responses to economic reopening are painting a new chapter: New York City is reviving fast and San Francisco and Silicon Valley are asleep. In New York City, finance giants’ urges to return to offices are reinvigorating neighborhoods that […]
Summary List Placement House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is urging the Biden administration to extend the federal eviction moratorium that ended on Saturday. Since Democrats failed to renew it on Friday, they’ve been clashing with Biden over who needs do it in a game of hot potato. “It is unfathomable that we would not act to […]
Summary List Placement The mayor of Montana’s most populous city, Billings, says some people have moved from coastal states to the area because they want to be around other conservatives. Bill Cole told TIME magazine that he believed three major factors had brought newcomers to the city: affordable housing, people prioritizing their family and community […]
Summary List Placement Millions of Americans could wake up to eviction notices on their front doors. A Supreme Court ruling that only Congress can extend the ban on evictions, enacted in March 2020 to help stop the spread of COVID-19, prevailed Sunday over a last-ditch, too-little, too-late plea from the Biden White House. What comes next? […]
Summary List Placement Republican governors began cutting federal unemployment benefits in June. Some argued the move would push jobless Americans back into the workforce, while others more bluntly criticized the federal enhancement for disincentivizing work. Early signs suggest they’re getting exactly what they wanted. By the end of July, 26 states will have prematurely ended […]
Summary List Placement As many as 9 million Americans are holding back from returning to work as the highly contagious Delta variant spreads, Neel Kashkari, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, said Sunday. That reluctance could slow the US labor market’s recovery, the Fed official told CBS’s chief political analyst John Dickerson on “Face […]
Summary List Placement Higher pay and prices are sticking around. But don’t expect them to keep surging higher. The economic reopening and resulting surge in spending have driven inflation to dizzying highs. Bolstered savings have run up against rampant supply shortages, leading to outsized demand and higher prices. At the same time, the unusual labor shortage […]
Summary List Placement What if the entire national conversation we’re having around student loan debt is the wrong one? In the ongoing dialogue on student loans, a disproportionate amount of attention is being paid to what amount of blanket forgiveness is the “right amount” to help our country manage this $1.71 trillion liability on our […]
Summary List Placement In March, home prices surged at their fastest pace since 2005, and Google searches for “when is the housing market going to crash?” spiked 2,450%. One year into the pandemic, one thing is clear: Uncertainty ushered in a housing boom bolstered by the desire to have bigger, better spaces to quarantine and […]
Summary List Placement The eviction moratorium is expected to end on July 31, after Congress failed to renew it before heading into recess until mid-September. Once the moratorium expires, about 7.4 million Americans will risk getting evicted in the next coming months, according to Census Pulse Survey Data. Women, people of color, and low-income households […]
Summary List Placement Rep. Cori Bush slammed Democrats, saying they decided to take a recess ahead of the upcoming eviction moratorium deadline, potentially plunging millions of renters into a state of disarray. “We could have extended it yesterday, but some Democrats went on vacation instead,” Bush, a progressive representative from Missouri, said on Twitter Saturday […]
Summary List Placement A restaurant in Stockton, California, is using a robot helper to serve customers as it struggles to hire workers amid the US labor shortage. “We are struggling to find people to come in and work, just like every other business right now,” Ana Ortiz, general manager of the Sugar Mediterranean Bistro, told […]
Summary List Placement People incarcerated in US prisons received $783.5 million in stimulus payments, Fox News reported. About 560,000 people imprisoned for the entire 2020 tax year received payments under the American Rescue Plan, according to IRS documents obtained by conservative group American Crossroads, Fox reported. The data release followed a series of debates in […]