Summary List Placement President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus plan is steadily making its way to a full House vote, and although Republican lawmakers have been in staunch opposition of the bill, Republican voters seem to largely support it. A Morning Consult/Politico poll released on Wednesday found that the public overwhelmingly supports the stimulus plan […]
Borrowers with mortgages backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac may be eligible for an additional forbearance extension of up to six months, the Federal Housing Finance Agency announced Thursday. On Feb. 9, the FHFA extended forbearance plans an additional three months past beyond their initial 12 month expiration. With the latest edict, the agency is now allowing borrowers up to […]
The average mortgage rate for a 30-year fixed loan is now just 3 basis points away from 3%, after a 16 basis point jump last week pushed mortgage rates to 2.97%, according to Freddie Mac’s Primary Mortgage Market Survey. The average mortgage rate hasn’t risen this high since the end of July 2020, but Sam Khater, Freddie Mac’s […]
Summary List Placement The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits declined more than expected last week, signaling the labor market recovery is still recovering, albeit at a modest pace. New jobless claims reached an unadjusted 730,000 for the week that ended Saturday, the Labor Department announced Thursday morning. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg expected the […]
Debbie Thayer, executive vice president of default administration at Shellpoint Mortgage Servicing, will speak on a panel titled Servicing Challenges During a Pandemic Period at HousingWire’s Spring Summit on March 4. Thayer will be joined on the panel by Courtney Thompson to discuss how servicers have scaled staff and operations to make sure homeowners are being served […]
Summary List Placement Millions of Texans lost power last week and were stuck living in freezing conditions as their electrical bills skyrocketed. The crisis was totally preventable, according to a left-leaning economist who teaches at the University of Texas at Austin, and the reason why has to do with the state’s deregulated electricity system. James […]
Summary List Placement One of the biggest laggards of the previous economic recovery is recovering better this time around, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Wednesday. The direct payments and expansion to unemployment benefits included in President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion relief plan are already among its most popular elements. But the inclusion of state […]
For the first time since March 2020, the national mortgage delinquency rate fell below 6% to 5.9% in January, according to data from Black Knight on Wednesday. At the current rate of improvement, the data giant estimates 2.1 million borrowers remain 90 or more days past due though are not yet in foreclosure. While modest […]
Summary List Placement Recently, Democrats have been clashing over how much federal student-loan debt to forgive. Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Chuck Schumer called for $50,000 in student loan forgiveness, but President Joe Biden essentially rejected that plan, throwing his support behind $10,000 in forgiveness. “I will not make that happen,” Biden said of the $50,000 […]
Summary List Placement Almost all states still had fewer jobs than before the pandemic at the end of last year, but just how far these states are from reaching previous employment levels vary. States that rely on industries that have been harder hit nationally by the pandemic are especially far below their February employment levels. […]
Summary List Placement At the start of the pandemic, Maya wasn’t paying too much attention to investing. But some of her friends — bartenders and DJs whose work dwindled during a period of social distancing — were. With extra time on their hands, they opened accounts on the startup brokerage Robinhood. “They would start tweeting […]
Mortgage applications decreased 11.4% from one week earlier, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s weekly survey for the week ending Feb. 19. It’s the lowest level applications have fallen to since December 2020. Activity decreased across the board, with the unadjusted index (-10%), the refinance index (-11%), the seasonally adjusted purchase index (-12%) […]
Rocket Mortgage will receive a tax subsidy worth up to $9.6 million to add hundreds of full-time jobs to Cleveland. The 600-plus new jobs will added over the course of a year. Ohio Lt. Governor Jon Husted on Monday said the Ohio Tax Credit Authority approved an expansion project for tax credit assistance for Rocket […]
Summary List Placement Senate Democrats want to enact a new $1.9 trillion rescue package within weeks, but one major hurdle stands between them and the bill’s final passage: whether it will include a $15 minimum wage increase. Once the House approves the legislation and sends it to the Senate, the wage provision is likely to […]
Summary List Placement Showing off wealth is no longer the way to signify having wealth. Flashing a Louis Vuitton handbag or a multimillion-dollar Bugatti have long been standard status symbols for the elite, but the ultrawealthy have increasingly turned to intangible investments such as security and health to discreetly flaunt their wealth instead. An unlikely […]
We may never again see a year like 2020. That’s somewhat somber news for the lenders who benefited from a series of downright strange conditions to generate more refi business than anyone in March could have imagined. Both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac reported that refis made up about 70% of their mortgage activity in […]
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 […]