Mortgage credit availability increased by 1.4% in May – a sign that volume-hungry lenders continued to loosen credit standards in a highly competitive market, according to Thursday data from the Mortgage Bankers Association. MBA’s Mortgage Credit Availability Index (MCAI) which uses 100 as a benchmark — increased to 129.9 in May. A decline in the […]
Summary List Placement Republicans and Democrats are eyeing a potential increase to the gas tax as both parties enter a last-ditch effort to strike a bipartisan infrastructure deal. The bipartisan group of 10 lawmakers includes Republican Sens. Mitt Romney of Utah and Rob Portman of Ohio, as well as Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West […]
Summary List Placement Tax-induced migration was a key part of the narrative of 2020, but the story actually began long before that. Lower-tax states are continuing to get richer thanks to a steady influx of new residents from higher-tax states, per a recent Bank of America Research note, which looked at recently released IRS data […]
Fannie Mae has given mortgage servicers the green light to use third-party digital vendors to verify income and asset information. Unsurprisingly, mortgage tech firms are thrilled. In a June 9 note, the government-sponsored entity told mortgage servicers they could implement the changes immediately. Servicers can use a third-party vendor to verify the information that the […]
Summary List Placement To ensure more equitable access to homeownership, California Senate Democrats included a program in the budget they unveiled last week that would partially subsidize the costs of buying a new home. The “California Dream for All” program, which the Democrats first outlined in April in the Build Back Boldly budget plan, would […]
Summary List Placement From direct stimulus payments to unemployment benefits, Americans have received a range of different forms of financial aid during the pandemic. But a large chunk of that aid — as much as 50% — may not have made it into the hands of the right people. Axios reported on Thursday that unemployment […]
Mortgage rates fell again last week, dropping three basis points to an average of 2.96%, according to Thursday data from Freddie Mac‘s PMMS. Rates have now managed to stay within a five basis point range above or below 3% for nearly two months. Higher mortgage rates historically have signaled a strengthened economy. But this is no ordinary economy: […]
Summary List Placement Consumer prices broadly rose by more than forecast in May as rebounding demand butted heads with various supply shortages through reopening. The consumer price index climbed by 0.6% from April to May, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said on Thursday. That landed above the median estimate of 0.4% from economists surveyed by […]
Summary List Placement Max Hayden, a 16-year-old New Jersey resident, reportedly pulled in $1.7 million in revenue flipping out-of-stock items online during the pandemic, including video games and outdoor heaters. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, the teen entrepreneur talked through his booming online resale business, now a taxpaying limited liability company. Hayden […]
Summary List Placement ProPublica reported Tuesday it had obtained a massive trove of IRS documents, revealing that America’s wealthiest individuals have avoided paying billions of dollars in taxes for years, resulting in income tax bills that amount to a fraction of their net worth. One of the key strategies employed by the ultrawealthy to keep […]
TIAA Bank is selling its correspondent lending platform to Pentagon Federal Credit Union for an undisclosed amount of money. The deal represents the latest mortgage space exit for the Jacksonville-based financial firm. TIAA Bank has laid off more than 200 workers over the past six months as it pivots away from mortgage servicing. In 2019, […]
Summary List Placement Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York assailed the crawling pace of negotiations with Republicans on Wednesday, arguing Democrats are wasting time on the legislative calendar. “Dems are burning precious time & impact negotiating w/GOP who won’t even vote for a Jan 6 commission,” she wrote on Twitter. “McConnell’s plan is to run […]
Summary List Placement A strong majority of Democrats in the House and Senate back making permanent a one-year cash benefit from President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus: up to $300 monthly checks to the vast majority of American families. The $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package passed in March increased the child tax credit’s amount to […]
Summary List Placement After nearly six weeks of back and forth between President Joe Biden and West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito on infrastructure, Biden ended the negotiations on Tuesday after failing to come to an agreement. Capito said in a Fox News interview on Wednesday that the White House “kept moving the goalposts” on […]
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell recently observed that across all kinds of financial services, activities that had once been principally the province of banks have moved into the nonbank sector, including IMBs. In discussing whether more financial institutions should have a duty to serve the capital and credit needs of lower-income communities — an obligation […]
Summary List Placement In May, wages for workers grew as employers struggled to hire. It seemed to show that businesses were embracing a simple strategy for luring workers back: Paying them more. Wages rose across the board for workers, increasing by $0.15 to average hourly earnings of $30.33. As Insider previously reported, the wage gains […]
Summary List Placement Some Democrats’ calls to cancel $50,000 in student debt per borrower has critics, with even President Joe Biden arguing it would benefit the high-earners more than the low earners. But a new study challenges that argument. The left-leaning Roosevelt Institute released a report on Tuesday analyzing the “regressive cancellation myth” that Massachusetts […]
Summary List Placement Americans continued to unwind trillions of dollars in savings throughout May, albeit at a less explosive rate, Visa said Wednesday. The Visa Spending Momentum Index reached 123.3 last month, according to a press release. The level suggests 59% of consumers spent more in May 2021 than in May 2020. Only 41% of […]
Summary List Placement Supermarket chains and convenience stores are offering new hires sign-on bonuses as high as $2,000, as they scramble for staff amid the current US labor shortage. Chains such as Ollie’s Bargain Outlet, Sheetz, and Tops Markets are hoping the cash benefits will tempt new hires that can staff stores and warehouses as […]
Summary List Placement As summer comes to the United States, the coronavirus is receding, businesses are reopening, and people are going back to work. There are memes everywhere trying to encapsulate the elation of the season — “hot vax summer,” “the new Roaring 20s,” etc. But on Wall Street, things are a bit darker. Among […]
Summary List Placement Americans have collectively saved billions from the last two rounds of stimulus checks, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan told CBS in an interview on Sunday. “Our consumers have lots of money in their checking accounts,” Moynihan told CBS. “They have not spent about 65-70% of the last couple of rounds of […]
For the third week in a row, mortgage applications decreased. Mortgage applications fell 3.1% in the week ending June 4, and refis took the biggest dip, according to the latest report from the Mortgage Bankers Association. “Most of the decline in mortgage rates came late last week, with the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage declining to 3.15 […]
Summary List Placement Job vacancies rose to a 20 year-high in April, a Labor Department survey showed Tuesday. The survey also showed that 4 million workers quit their jobs in April — another 20-year record. Job quits rose most in the retail sector and the professional and business services sector. Companies were advertising 9.3 job […]
Summary List Placement ProPublica has obtained years of federal income tax information for the 25 wealthiest Americans, and has released an analysis comparing their federal income tax bills to the rise of their net worth over the period from 2014 to 2018, showing their federal income tax bills added up to just 3.4% of their […]
Regions Bank is looking to make a big dent in the home improvement lending space, striking a deal to acquire EnerBank USA for $960 million in cash. EnerBank, a Utah-based subsidiary of publicly traded CMS Energy, has loan balances totaling $2.8 billion as of March 31, 2021 and is one of America’s largest specialized home […]
Summary List Placement Senate Democrats are starting to signal they are prepared to ditch Republicans on infrastructure, as the Biden administration’s talks with the GOP collapsed without a deal after more than a month. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Democrats were preparing to use reconciliation, a tactic to approve certain bills with a simple […]
Summary List Placement In 2007, and again in 2011, billionaire Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos reportedly paid nothing in federal income taxes. That’s according to confidential tax documents filed with the Internal Revenue Service obtained by ProPublica, which were revealed in a bombshell new report on some of the world’s wealthiest people. Bezos is currently listed […]
It was barely a year ago that Angel Oak Mortgage and the rest of the non-QM lenders were holding on for dear life. Now, the Atlanta-based lender is looking to raise $165 million as part of an independent public offering. Angel Oak Mortgage, managed by parent company Angel Oak Capital and Falcon I, is looking […]
Summary List Placement Millennials and Gen Z are going on a spending spree. They’re also going back to work. The two generations are now spending more money than they did before the pandemic, American Express CEO Steve Squeri said during a recent virtual investor conference, as reported by Bloomberg. “We assumed there was such pent-up […]
Summary List Placement The strongest economic rebound in eight decades will still leave much of the world struggling with the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, the World Bank said Tuesday. The global economy is expected to grow 5.6% through 2021, the institution said in a semiannual report published Tuesday. The forecast is up from a […]
Growing your personal brand is an important skill in a purchase market, which is why we’ve invited Neel Dhingra, a top producing manager at All Western Mortgage, to speak at HousingWire’s annual engage.marketing on June 17. Dhingra, who has grown his business through content marketing on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube along with The NeelHome […]
Summary List Placement The US economic recovery is well on its way, but it hasn’t been without its hurdles. Among the direst are supply-chain bottlenecks fueling shortages across a range of products. Inadequate supply of lumber has crippled the housing market and led prices to skyrocket. A lack of semiconductor chips is slowing activity in […]
Summary List Placement Although the pause on student-loan payments, accompanied by zero interest accrual, is continuing through September, the Federal Student Aid (FSA) office announced new increased interest rates for the next year. It’s another sign that the $1.7 trillion student debt crisis, which President Joe Biden vowed to address in his campaign last year, […]
Summary List Placement Demand for workers in the US intensified in April as nationwide reopening squared off with an unprecedented labor shortage. Job openings rose to a record-high 9.3 million from 8.3 million in April, according to Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS, data released Tuesday. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg held a median […]
Summary List Placement The push for a $15 federal minimum wage could cause fast-food chains to raise prices or slash jobs by turning to automation instead, a former McDonald’s CEO said. McDonald’s last month announced it was raising minimum pay at corporate-owned stores across the US amid the current labor shortage, and said that it […]
Summary List Placement The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has started notifying 36 million American families that they could be eligible to receive a monthly child tax credit starting next month. President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus law in March included up to $300 in monthly child tax credits for each child under the age of […]
Servicers’ forbearance portfolio volumes decreased again last week, falling two basis points to 4.16%, according to a survey from the Mortgage Bankers Association. Despite May 30 marking the 14th consecutive week of overall declines, a nearly equal number of forbearance exits and re-entries have left forbearance portfolio volumes essentially unaltered. Broken down by investor types, […]
Summary List Placement To provide pandemic relief to the 43 million borrowers in the country with federal student loans, President Joe Biden extended the pause on payments through September. His Education Department has even cancelled student debt for some groups of people. Now there’s a number on how much those efforts increased losses in the […]
Summary List Placement The Biden administration moved one significant step closer to achieving one of its key tax goals over the weekend when the G-7 group of major global economies announced it had struck a deal to levy a 15% minimum tax on multinational corporations. The G-7 deal marks the start of a potentially historic […]
United Wholesale Mortgage has been aggressively price-cutting loans to put pressure on competitors for months now. It appears they’ve just thrown gas on the fire in the hopes of boosting their second quarter numbers, while hitting their rivals ahead of earnings call season. UWM said on Monday that they’ll price-match any conventional loan on primary […]
Summary List Placement If you’re in the market for a used car, be prepared for some sticker shock. Prices are projected to have skyrocketed again in May, and that boom is probably going to be a primary driver of increased inflation. A note by a group of UBS researchers, led by Alan Detmeister, forecast a […]
Summary List Placement The labor markets in some states are recovering much more quickly than in others – and local lockdowns, the size of their tourism industries, and the number of people who moved there during the pandemic could be the reason why, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal. As a result, […]
Summary List Placement The hospitality industry is struggling to fill roles amid the labor shortage hitting industries from education and healthcare and ride-hailing apps – but some types of restaurant are having a harder time finding workers than others. Fast-casual restaurants, coffee shops, and snack bars have nearly as many employees as they did before […]
Summary List Placement Forty-five million Americans have a $1.7 trillion student debt burden in the country. And many of them, alongside Democrats and advocates, want President Joe Biden to forgive $50,000 of their debt. He hasn’t done that yet, but the president has taken steps to lessen the burden and provide relief during the pandemic. […]
Summary List Placement Finance ministers for some of the world’s wealthiest nations have reached a “historic agreement” to tackle tax abuses by internet giants and to introduce a global minimum corporate tax rate of 15 percent. “I am delighted to announce that today after years of discussion G7 finance ministers have reached a historic agreement […]