Summary List Placement While the pandemic hit the US, everyone seemed to want their own house. With mortgage rates at record lows and no need to commute to work in cities for at least 2020, prices soared everywhere. But they’re also soaring because there isn’t enough wood out there: lumber, to be exact. Now it’s clear how […]
Summary List Placement The US labor market is still slowly recovering from the massive job loss last year, with around 9.5 million fewer jobs in February 2021 than there were a year ago. States across the US are also seeing job gains at different rates, but almost every state was still below pre-pandemic employment in […]
In concert with its ultimatum to brokers that they not use Rocket Pro TPO and Fairway Independent Mortgage, United Wholesale Mortgage on Wednesday officially released a new jumbo product. The Pontiac, Michigan-based wholesale lender, which discontinued jumbo products at the onset of the pandemic, is offering its mortgage broker partners a jumbo product that goes […]
Summary List Placement The Federal Reserve expects a strong economic recovery through 2021, but it still aims to maintain ultra-easy financing conditions well into the future. Members of the Federal Open Market Committee ruled on Wednesday to hold interest rates at historic lows following the conclusion of its two-day meeting. The central bank will also […]
Summary List Placement To continue providing aid to small businesses recovering from the pandemic, the House voted on Tuesday to extend the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) by two months, ahead of its expiration on March 31. The bill to extend the PPP had been introduced on March 11 by Small Business Committee Chair Nydia Velàzquez, […]
Summary List Placement Ohio’s Republican attorney general filed the first of what could be several lawsuits against the Biden administration over the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan. The Washington Post reported that Attorney General Dave Yost filed suit over the bill on Wednesday, charging that the requirements and restrictions on how $350 billion in state […]
HousingWire’s newest Marketing Leaders award recognizes marketing executives like David King, CMO of A&D Mortgage who have been leading their teams to pivot marketing strategies to adapt to client needs in recent months. “We recognized that explaining and marketing our unique value proposition had to be done more quickly and clearer than ever before,” King […]
Summary List Placement Plastics plants are still recovering from the winter freeze that struck the Gulf Coast last month, and it’s leading to rising prices and a shortage of materials for everything from homes and cars, to smartphones and face masks, the Wall Street Journal reported. Winter Storm Uri, which struck Texas in mid-February, devastated […]
Summary List Placement President Joe Biden said he is confident he can enact a large federal tax hike on some Americans with only Democratic support. It signals he may be ready to press ahead without Republican support in Congress. In an ABC News interview airing Wednesday, the president pledged to raise taxes on Americans earning […]
Mortgage applications dropped for the second straight week — falling 2.2%, according to the latest report from the Mortgage Bankers Association. The continued increase in mortgage rates is to blame, according to MBA’s Associate Vice President of Economic and Industry Forecasting Joel Kan. Rates have jumped north of 3%, with most recent reports showing it […]
Summary List Placement An ominous question lingered over much of 2020 and early 2021: What will happen to all the cities and states facing huge revenue shortfalls from the coronavirus recession? Most famously, some commentators have gone so far as to say 2020 killed New York City, a metropolis in which interpersonal contact is a […]
Summary List Placement Over the weekend, I went for a long-needed haircut. I had received my first shot of the Pfizer-BioNTech shot about two weeks earlier, and knew that I had some vaccine protection; I was eager to finally get a professional cut. When I got there, we began chatting about life and work. I […]
Summary List Placement A federal minimum wage increase didn’t make it into the American Rescue Plan President Joe Biden signed into law last week, but the majority of Americans still believe a $7.25 minimum wage is too low. A new Amazon/Ipsos poll released on Tuesday found that 80% of Americans believe the current federal minimum […]
Months after the departure of David Brickman, Freddie Mac has tapped Marc Grier to serve as CEO on an interim basis, the government sponsored entity said on Tuesday. Grieg will be intimately aware of the challenges he faces as interim CEO: he is currently a member of the board of directors. “As a member of […]
Months after the departure of David Brickman, Freddie Mac has tapped Mark Grier to serve as CEO on an interim basis, the government sponsored entity said on Tuesday. Grier will be intimately aware of the challenges he faces as interim CEO: he is currently a member of the board of directors. “As a member of […]
Summary List Placement The coronavirus recession hit small businesses hard. However, with the help of small business lending programs and government funding, many businesses managed to continue making their payments, with credit in good standing. A report released on Tuesday from the Urban Institute, a left-leaning think-tank, found that despite significant revenue losses for small businesses in […]
Summary List Placement Democrats are celebrating the passage of the American Rescue Plan as a win for Americans and are now beginning to look forward to an infrastructure spending bill. That leaves another major agenda from the 2020 campaign not on the legislative agenda: canceling student debt. Since President Joe Biden took office in January, […]
Summary List Placement Spending at US retailers slid in February as the effects of stimulus enacted late last year petered out. US retail sales contracted 3% last month, the Census Bureau said Tuesday. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg expected sales to decline by 0.5% in February. January’s blowout reading was revised higher to 7.6%. The reading […]
Summary List Placement A popular measure of small business activity improved in the first quarter, but underlying components suggest the segment’s recovery has a long road ahead. The MetLife and US Chamber of Commerce’s Small Business Index gained to 55.9 from 52.9 in the current quarter, according to a Tuesday press release. The reading marks […]
Summary List Placement In a press briefing on Monday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki addressed the possibility of a wealth tax, something the Biden administration is either open or opposed to, based on recent remarks. She was clear that its position, whatever it is, is far removed from the most prominent one: that of […]
The industry is now less than two weeks away from the one-year anniversary of the CARES Act, which provided borrowers with federally backed mortgages the option to receive forbearance for up to 180 days. After many extensions and exits, the Mortgage Bankers Association estimates 2.6 million homeowners are still in some form of forbearance, though that […]
Summary List Placement A survey conducted by Mizuho found that $40 billion of COVID-19 relief bill funds sent to Americans could go to bitcoin and stocks. Mizuho analysts, led by Dan Dolev, spoke with approximately 235 people with a household income of $150,000 or less in a survey released on Monday. The team found that […]
Summary List Placement Full economic recovery in the US might not be enough to close gender gaps exacerbated by the pandemic, JPMorgan researchers said. The coronavirus and its economic fallout disproportionately slammed American women, with female-dominated sectors like hospitality and education hit the hardest by lockdowns. The greater share of domestic work that women perform […]
Summary List Placement President Joe Biden signed a $1.9 trillion stimulus law last week, among the largest government rescue measures in American history. Many of its provisions are directed at keeping individuals and families afloat as vaccinations become more widely available. Still, some aspects of the law may end up dramatically remaking the social safety […]
Summary List Placement DC and Massachusetts may experience smaller changes to their employment growth because of the pandemic than other states, based on a new Brookings report. Mark Muro, senior fellow and policy director of the Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings, and research assistant Yang You looked at how employment may change across the US […]
Before Thursday, March 4, John was an unabashed fan of United Wholesale Mortgage. His West Coast brokerage shop sent tens of millions of dollars in loans to the wholesale mortgage giant in recent years. He loved their turn times, found their pricing to be competitive, and had good things to say about his account executive. […]
Summary List Placement President Joe Biden signed his $1.9 trillion stimulus package on Thursday, a win for many Americans who needed financial aid to recover from the pandemic. But that has slowed things down for the Internal Revenue Service to the extent that 7 million Americans are now waiting for tax refunds. In December, Congress […]
I hear a lot of chatter about a boom in cash-out refinances, and the presumption seems to be that this is destined to wreak havoc on the housing market and the economy at some point. Cash-out loans have been growing over the past few years and it is also true that we have a recent […]
Summary List Placement The US could return to full employment in 2022, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Sunday, renewing her forecast now that the Biden administration’s coronavirus pandemic relief package has been signed into law. “I am hopeful that if we defeat the pandemic, that we can have the economy back near full employment […]
Summary List Placement Millennials have lived through two recessions before the age of 40, the scars of which have accentuated an intra-generational divide. “The Great Recession hit the early wave of millennials,” Neil Howe, the economist, historian, and demographer who coined the term “millennial,” told Insider. “The pandemic recession is squarely impacting the late wave […]
Summary List Placement Many Americans are seeing $1,400 stimulus checks hit their bank accounts this weekend under President Joe Biden’s stimulus law. But people may not be able to immediately tap into it — at least, not until St. Patrick’s Day at the earliest. The direct payments, which the IRS labeled as “Economic Impact Payments,” are set […]
Summary List Placement Americans are starting to see $1,400 stimulus checks land in their bank accounts this weekend under President Joe Biden’s stimulus law. But people who don’t get a direct payment right away won’t be left unaware of its arrival for much longer. The IRS said on Friday that people can begin tracking the […]
Summary List Placement As the coronavirus pandemic disrupted life throughout 2020, economists debated the shape of the recovery from it. Would it be a V shape, a U shape, or even an L shape? The answer that emerged was something different: A K shape, in which the well off recover like they’re in a V, […]
Summary List Placement American billionaires have earned so much money during the pandemic that they could fund two-thirds of President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 relief package using profits generated in the last year, a report shows. The combined fortune of American billionaires rose around $1.3 trillion, or 44%, from March 2020 to March 2021, Americans for […]
Summary List Placement The latest round of stimulus checks has already landed in thousands of people’s bank accounts as of Friday, according to The Wall Street Journal. The $1,400 checks are the latest round of direct payments delivered to Americans since the coronavirus began about one year ago. Treasury Department officials said earlier Friday that […]
Summary List Placement House Democrats said on Friday afternoon they have officially started work on an infrastructure package, kicking off what appears likely to be a lengthy stretch of negotiations on a multitrillion-dollar economic recovery bill. “Building our transportation system has long been bipartisan,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement. “It is our hope […]
Summary List Placement The unemployment benefits in the $1.9 trillion stimulus plan that President Joe Biden signed into law on Thursday included a tax exemption on the first $10,200 of the benefits received last year. But it could still be difficult for taxpayers to claim this exemption, and Senate Democrats are pushing the IRS to […]
Summary List Placement President Joe Biden signed the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 stimulus bill into law on Thursday. Tucked into it is a $100 billion plan to offer most parents recurring monthly checks from July through December: $300 per child under age 6 and $250 per child ages 6 to 17. After that, parents can claim […]
Summary List Placement Every time an elected leader proposes a progressive policy that will cost money — expanding health care, for instance, or the wildly popular American Rescue Plan that the Biden White House is championing to combat the economic damage caused by the coronavirus pandemic — the inflation hawks loudly warn that another Great […]
Summary List Placement Although vaccine distribution is ramping up across the country, the Covid-19 pandemic isn’t over, and Americans are still facing financial hardships. And while moratoriums on evictions and foreclosures have been instituted and repeatedly extended, progressive House Democrats want the government to do more. They want to ease the burden on renters and […]
Summary List Placement They say that Wall Street is not supposed to be an emotional place, but if you want to see the “Masters of the Universe” burst into tears you need only bring up Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s wealth tax proposal. Last week billionaire investor Leon Cooperman called the policy “foolish” on CNBC. This after, […]
Summary List Placement The UK economy shrank 2.9% in January, better than the 4.9% contraction expected. It left the economy 9% below its February 2020 size, with the UK one of the worst-hit countries. Economists have predicted a swift recovery, however, thanks to the UK’s speedy vaccine drive. Sign up here for our daily newsletter, […]
Finance of America Reverse will soon debut a hybrid product that combines elements of a reverse mortgage with a forward mortgage. The lender says it’s an innovative approach to servicing borrowers who are in retirement age but don’t qualify or wish to refinance into a long-term mortgage. The new product, called EquityAvail, funds at closing […]
Better.com is continuing to grow its head count in the midst of the pandemic, announcing Thursday that it will be adding at least 2,000 Google Career Certificate graduates in the next three years. The hiring initiative will be through Better.com’s partnership with Merit America, a nonprofit that helps Americans without college degrees get jobs. Positions […]
Summary List Placement Crypto whiz kid Justin Sun, acquired a piece of digital art for $69 million on Thursday in a record-breaking Christie’s auction. Sun—who once paid $4.6 million to have lunch with Warren Buffett—bid $60.25 million for the digital work, called “Everydays: The First 5000 Days.” Including the buyer’s premium the total cost for […]