“What is it called when an alligator has brain damage? A reptile disfunction.” On a more serious note, “Cognitive Surrender” is a new and useful […]
Spring always brings the same conversation in mortgage. Inventory is picking up. Buyers are more active. Phones are ringing a little more. There is this general sense that the market is waking up again. But while most loan officers are focused on what is coming in, very few are paying attention to what is already sitting there. Because buried in almost every CRM is a much larger opportunity than the new leads everyone is chasing. It is the deals we thought were dead. Last fall’s pre-approvals…
After coming off a holiday weekend and entering a lower liquidity environment today, the market is primed for more volatility, setting up for when Trump takes the podium at noon central time today to discuss the current Iran war. Off the heels of a stronger-than-expected jobs number on Friday (which had lower conviction given it was pre-Iran war), we are left with more of a longer digestion period with traders reentering the office today. That said, traders are mostly cognizant that it’s baby…
This year, “Bring a Kid to Work Day” is April 23. The name seems to have shifted: I remember “Bring Your Child to Work Day.” The population of the United States also shifts, something that lenders and originators are very aware of in the primary markets, and should be aware of in the secondary markets. Companies and job creators move, for various reasons. Population migration since 2019, accelerated by the pandemic, has shifted growth toward Sun Belt states like Texas and Florida while…
This year, “Bring a Kid to Work Day” is April 23. The name seems to have shifted: I remember “Bring Your Child to Work Day.” […]
What are “bone ash apartments”? Trust me: you wouldn’t want one next to you here in the States; it’s an example of when the government interferes with housing. China has two space problems, and one has become a solution to the other. The first issue is a property glut. Widespread government construction and a saving strategy centered on buying up more apartments than one might need means a lot of buildings are empty. And property prices in the country can be incredibly low, as they have…
What are “bone ash apartments”? Trust me: you wouldn’t want one next to you here in the States; it’s an example of when the government […]
There’s a moment most mornings, when it’s just me, a cup of coffee that’s already going cold, and a screen full of loans, emails, and conversations that need to be turned into something coherent before the rest of the industry wakes up. It’s not glamorous. No one is posting about it. But that hour tells you almost everything you need to know about this market. The people still doing the work, still refining their process, still picking up the phone when it would be easier not to, are the same…
My dad had a paper route growing up. Rain, fog, cold, it didn’t matter. He showed up, threw the papers, moved on. No audience, no applause, just consistency. He’s told that story more times than I can count, and for a long time I didn’t think much of it. Somewhere along the way (probably around 4:00 a.m. staring at a screen editing a podcast for the thousandth time), it clicked. That’s the whole business, and its blueprint. Show up, deliver, do it again tomorrow. If you do that long enough,…
Unlike the sunny outlook that a Golden Retriever’s or goldfish’s brain has, the human brain has a built-in negative bias that causes us to focus on bad things. This negativity bias can have an impact on our behavior and decisions. There are certainly a lot of bad things to focus on these days, but it is important for lenders and third-party providers to look past rates having gone up by .5 percent and remember the good things. For example, the U.S. home ownership percentage is about 66…
