Summary List Placement Additional fiscal stimulus is expected to lift inflation, but the quarter-century trend of weak price growth will likely remain intact, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Tuesday. With Democrats plowing forward with efforts to pass a $1.9 trillion stimulus plan, the focus has shifted from the package’s elements to its effect on […]
United Wholesale Mortgage has hired Desmond Smith, a former Fannie Max executive, to be its chief growth officer as the wholesale firm attempts to usurp Rocket Mortgage as the nation’s top lender. Smith comes to UWM after a stint at Fannie Mae as the senior vice president and chief customer officer for single family business. […]
Summary List Placement US home prices surged through the end of 2020 as record-low mortgage rates kept demand at elevated levels, and a general inventory shortage propped up prices. The S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller US National Home Price Index posted a 10.4% annualized increase in December, according to a Tuesday press release. The gain follows a […]
Summary List Placement Some small business leaders and owners are calling for Congress to pass the American Rescue Plan. Nearly 330 — including almost 30 leaders from different chambers of commerce — signed onto a letter organized by Invest in America Action and Small Business for America’s Future. They’re calling for the passage of the […]
Summary List Placement Wealth inequality hits close to home for Dan Price. The CEO of Gravity Payments, a credit-card-processing company based in Seattle, Price is perhaps best known for taking a million-dollar pay cut and setting a $70,000 minimum wage at Gravity Payments in 2015. The company’s sleek headquarters are located in the trendy downtown […]
Summary List Placement The House Budget Committee approved the $1.9 trillion rescue plan on Monday afternoon, putting the Democratic proposal on course to receive a final floor vote toward the end of the week. The 19-16 vote was mostly split along party lines. Every Republican on the panel opposed advancing the measure. “We are in […]
The total number of mortgages in forbearance declined seven basis points to 5.22% in the week ending Feb. 14, according to the latest estimate from the Mortgage Bankers Association. The trade group said 2.6 million homeowners are currently in forbearance plans. “The share of loans in forbearance has declined for three weeks in a row, with portfolio and PLS loans […]
Summary List Placement To help the smallest businesses in the country facing financial hardships, President Joe Biden announced on Monday that he will implement changes to provide more equitable access to the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). The first round of PPP loans closed in August, and in December, Congress added funding that allowed the second […]
Summary List Placement A new CNBC analysis of cost-of-living data from Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers looks at how a $15 minimum wage stacks up against a living wage. For families with two children and two parents working at the minimum wage, current minimums in every state are below a living wage, and even the […]
Summary List Placement Despite fueling 2020’s boom in the housing market, millennial homeowners are still lagging behind. More millennials bought homes last year than any other generation, according to Apartment List’s Homeownership report, as the pandemic accelerated a five-year trend in which millennial homeownership rates rose the fastest as the generation aged into the career […]
During breaks in nearly every televised basketball game, it’s there: Tracy Morgan imploring pensive homebuyers “pretty sure” is not enough, and that they can only be certain about their giant life choice with Rocket Mortgage. “Find the right mortgage with a local broker and Rocket technology,” intoned the narrator on the commercials, which premiered during […]
Summary List Placement The debate around passing President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion aid proposal is a simple one. Democrats argue the hole in the economy is so big that it warrants spending nearly $2 trillion, on top of the $3 trillion spent last March and the $900 billion spent late in Trump’s term. Republicans point to […]
Summary List Placement Since COVID-19 first sent vast swaths of US office workers home last spring, one of the biggest questions has been whether they’ll get to keep doing their jobs remotely after the crisis recedes. Two new studies by economists suggest that many will, mostly through a hybrid arrangement in which employees divide their […]
Summary List Placement Democrats are on course to approve $1.9 trillion in emergency pandemic spending within the next month. It would be yet another large infusion of federal aid only months after Congress passed a $900 billion aid package in December. But Democrats show few signs of hitting the brakes anytime soon on federal spending. […]
Summary List Placement As bitcoin continues its meteoric rise, breaching new records and crossing the $1 trillion market capitalization mark in just the last week, more investors are assessing the longstanding comparison between the famous cryptocurrency and an equally well-known asset class: gold. Both assets, experts say, are often seen as ways to diversify a […]
Title insurance upstart States Title announced this week $150 million in debt financing from HSCM Bermuda, which will go towards developing a more modern home closing experience. CEO Max Simkoff said the financing will held them “wipe the system clean” and build a homebuying system from scratch – one that is simple, efficient and digital, he […]
Courtney Thompson, senior vice president of default mortgage at Flagstar Bank, will speak on a panel titled Servicing Challenges in a Pandemic Period at HousingWire’s Spring Summit on March 4. Thompson leads Flagstar’s default mortgage operations team, delivering industry-leading transparency into the default mortgage servicing process. Prior to coming to Flagstar in 2014, Thompson had 15 years […]
Summary List Placement A week before taking office, President Joe Biden unveiled his $1.9 trillion American Rescue plan. The week before he took office, the plan became the source of nearly every discussion and debate occurring on Capitol Hill and in the White House. But now, there appears to be an end in sight and […]
Summary List Placement A popular gauge of US business output improved the most in nearly six years as falling COVID-19 case counts lifted the service industry, IHS Markit said Friday. The firm’s Composite Output Index rose 0.1 points to 58.8 in a preliminary February reading, signaling the strongest rate of expansion since March 2015. The […]
Existing home sales rose for the second consecutive month, as January saw a seasonally-adjusted annual rate of 6.69 million purchases – up a robust 23.7% year-over-year. You can thank millennials for it. Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the National Association of Realtors, said last month that he expected momentum to carry over from the end […]
It hasn’t been that long since the mortgage industry worked through the challenges of the early part of the century and now, once again, we find ourselves in a time when serving our customers is filled with financial hardships and uncertainty about the outcome. Just like we can look back and analyze how our industry […]
Summary List Placement Congressional Democrats and President Joe Biden are betting there’s a bigger hole in the US economy than some government models suggest. The main conflict around Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus plan has to do with a fairly simple concept: the output gap. That gauge measures the difference between actual output and the maximum […]
Summary List Placement A new McKinsey report on the future of work post-pandemic paints a dire picture for low-wage workers. The report focuses on the pandemic’s impacts on workers, employment, and the resulting types of jobs in eight different countries. Some of the resulting projections seem to follow a K-shape. Before the pandemic, almost all […]
Just a week after its initial public offering, multichannel lender loanDepot announced that it had earned over $547 million in profits during the fourth quarter, giving it over $2 billion in earnings across 2020. The lender, whose stock price skyrocketed following a downsized IPO that debuted at $14 a share, originated $37.4 billion in mortgages […]
Summary List Placement Climate change is affecting financial institutions and economies around the world, and transitioning to a green economy is necessary to avoid major damage, Federal Reserve Governor Lael Brainard said Thursday. The Fed has increasingly emphasized the need to adapt the US economy and the financial system to handle climate-related risks. Brainard doubled down […]
Homebuilder confidence in single-family homes jumped one point to 84 in February from 83 in January, according to the National Association of Home Builders and Wells Fargo Housing Market Index. Per the NAHB, January’s score of 83 was a four-month low. Strong buyer demand in February helped offset supply chain challenges and a surge in lumber prices, according to […]
Summary List Placement Walmart CFO Brett Biggs told CNBC that another stimulus check could give the company a “boost.” Biggs was speaking after the company reported its fourth-quarter earnings, which fell short of Wall Street expectations despite record sales in the US; the stock fell as much as 6.2% on Thursday. Notably, earnings for e-commerce […]
Summary List Placement Wealth taxes have been the subject of much conversation since the coronavirus pandemic began in 2020, but what if you could raise more money from the wealthy just by enforcing existing taxes? That’s an idea tucked into a bill sponsored by Rep. Ro Khanna of California following the chaos surrounding GameStop and the […]
Even Norman Rockwell couldn’t put a rosier cast to New Hartford, Connecticut, in mid-autumn. On the far western outskirts of the Hartford metropolitan area, the town’s converted brick mill buildings are now occupied by restaurants that sell and serve locally grown produce and locally made artisanal cheese. A river – the Farmington – really does […]
Summary List Placement Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Thursday that House Democrats were aiming to set up a floor vote for President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion federal rescue package at the end of next week. But she also acknowledged some procedural hurdles remained before the bill could be signed into law. The California Democrat said […]
Summary List Placement President Joe Biden met with top labor leaders on Wednesday to discuss the potential for COVID-19 relief, job creation, and further infrastructure improvements through new funding. Biden emphasized the importance of passing both his $1.9 trillion stimulus plan, along with additional infrastructure funding, to boost the economy and create millions of new […]
After three weeks of unchanged rates, the average mortgage rate for a 30-year fixed loan jumped 8 basis points to 2.81%, reaching its highest point since mid-November, according to Freddie Mac’s Primary Mortgage Market Survey. While economic spending has improved, due to the most recent stimulus, supply chain shortages are causing downstream inflation, leading to higher mortgage […]
Summary List Placement The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits unexpectedly increased last week as Democrats pushed onward with President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus plan. New jobless claims totaled an unadjusted 861,000 for the week that ended Saturday, the Labor Department said Thursday morning. The reading lands above the median estimate of 773,000 […]
Black homebuyers’ mortgage applications are 2.5 times as likely to be rejected as the submissions of white home shoppers. That’s one finding from a National Association of Realtor’s report released Wednesday that reveals glaring racial disparities in an otherwise rosy home market. The report – which culled data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community […]
Summary List Placement Federal Reserve officials’ view of the US economy improved in January as vaccines rolled out and Democrats pushed for additional fiscal stimulus, according to meeting minutes published Wednesday. Members of the Federal Open Market Committee met on January 26 and 27 to discuss the central bank’s policy stance and developments in the […]
For those of us who have been in the mortgage industry for any length of time, we understand the complexities surrounding guidelines, the importance of staying up to date on key changes within the industry and how our communication to both our clients and partners is imperative in order to build and maintain relationships. In […]
Summary List Placement President Joe Biden announced on Wednesday that he will invest $1.6 billion to expand the availability of testing in K-8 schools and underserved areas, intended to serve as a “bridge” until Congress approves more funding. During his first presidential town hall in Milwaukee on Tuesday, Biden said that by the end of […]
Overall household debt increased by $206 billion in the fourth quarter of 2020 to $14.56 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The Fed said that increase was primarily driven by a dramatic increase in mortgage originations. Mortgage debt balances broached the $10 trillion mark in the fourth quarter, increasing by $182 […]
First American Mortgage Solutions, a subsidiary of “Big Four” title insurer First American Financial, has executed a strategic tech integration with default and loss mitigation workflow provider BackInTheBlack. The integration allows First American Mortgage Solutions to automate loss mitigation title reports, uninsured property reports, loan modification and partial claim documents and lien priority insurance directly […]
Summary List Placement Several top Democrats pushed back on Wednesday against President Joe Biden’s dismissal on Tuesday night of their proposal to forgive up to $50,000 in student loan debt. Sens. Chuck Schumer of New York and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts released a joint statement defending their plan, and said student-loan forgiveness was a step that […]
Summary List Placement Every elected Democratic state treasurer is calling on Congress to approve the American Rescue Plan, including the provision with $350 billion in state and local aid. The 17 treasurers signed on to a letter organized by Invest in America Action calling for the necessity of that full relief. States received $150 billion of […]
Summary List Placement Some top UK firms plan to make COVID-19 vaccinations mandatory for staff through “no jab, no job” employment contracts, The Financial Times reported. Law firms that declined to be named told the FT that businesses, ranging from care-home operators to big multinationals, were considering contracts that require new and current employees to […]
As mortgage rates come off of their historic lows, mortgage applications dropped for the second week, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association. Mortgage applications dropped 5.1% for the week ending Feb. 12, after falling 4.1% the week prior. Notably, the refinance share of activity dropped to 69.3%, the first time it’s been below […]
Summary List Placement President Joe Biden effectively rejected on Tuesday evening a Democratic plan put forward by Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Chuck Schumer to wipe out up to $50,000 in student loan debt per borrower. Instead, he said he backed a measure to provide up to $10,000 in forgiveness. “I will not make that happen,” […]
Depository bank Western Alliance has reached a deal to acquire correspondent lender AmeriHome for $1 billion in cash, the firms announced late Tuesday afternoon. With the acquisition, Western Alliance will grab full control of America’s third-largest correspondent lender from an affiliate of financial giant Apollo Global. AmeriHome purchased approximately $65 billion in conventional conforming and […]