A realtor in Texas. I want to provide interesting real estate articles to keep readers current on what is happening in real estate and other topics of interest!
With interest rates at all time lows, a shadow of repos to hit the market after the election, the downgrading of the US, and other important news, real estate has a major role to play on whether our country's economy is strong or flat or weak.
When it comes to dating, homeownership can be the ultimate aphrodisiac.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- When it comes to dating, homeownership can be the ultimate aphrodisiac.
In a survey of 1,000 single people, more than a third of women and 18% of men said they would much rather date a homeowner than a renter.
Only 2% of women said they preferred to date a man who rents, while only 3% of men said they would choose a woman who rents over one that owns her home, according to the survey, which was conducted by Harris Interactive for real estate site Trulia.
Both sexes also clearly prefer it when there's no roommate in the picture; 62% of survey respondents, men and women, prefer to date singles who live alone.
Just read an interesting article about 203K FHA loans and investors. Investors at present are not allowed to get these rehabilitation loans to improve properties and make them more valuable. But should they be allowed to? Because in the past there were abuses, now no investor can get such a loan; but there are so many technological advances which would make it easier to monitor the system, maybe this is the answer to the glut of foreclosures sitting unsaleable on the market.
Question 2: Is selling these foreclosures in mass as rentals good. Sounds good to me, but this article gives some thoughts there were new to me. Like who wants to live in these type homes without modifications? If Investors can't get the $$ for the remodel from an FHA 203K loan, will they just buy them and rent them as slumlords.
If you don't know what a correspondent lender is, its one that buys loans from other banks. Here's a good article I found about BOA leaving that area and Wells Fargo doing 30% of all correspondent lending. Read and get better educated about what goes on behind the scenes in mortgage lending.
Smaller Players Easing Squeeze in Third-Party
The greatest fear for small- to medium-sized nonbanks is that Wells Fargo—the “big kahuna” of mortgage finance—will exit the correspondent lending space. And what a fear it is: in the most recent quarter in which there are final numbers, Wells bought a stunning $41 billion of loans from others, giving it a market share of 30% in the channel.
Of course, there is nothing out there to suggest that Wells has any intention of leaving the correspondent channel or scaling back its presence in mortgage banking—though its wholesale production has been slipping for several quarters.
Recently, Bank of America (the second-largest buyer of closed mortgages) exited correspondent lending, which on the surface appears to be a major blow. But believe or not, there appear to be plenty of midsized lenders out there, looking to enter both the correspondent and wholesale channels, which is good news for the industry.
But the problem with these new entrants is that they don't have any “scale,” at least not right now.
Case in point is Banc of Manhattan Capital in Woodland Hills, Calif. In November the bank-owned company entered the correspondent channel, doing little business its first month, but in December its volume jumped to $50 million.
“We want to achieve scale,” said BMC EVP Dan Baruch, an alumnus of both Bank of America, and Countrywide Financial Corp.
Baruch's chief duty at the company is overseeing warehouse lending, a business he helped launch at CFC last decade. Baruch admits that his firm's warehouse volume is small but hopes that it will change for the better over time.
(BMC is a national lender in both warehouse and correspondent.)
Meanwhile, refinancings remain strong, accounting for about 70% of production. In a hot refi environment third-party lending (brokers/correspondents) tends to do better and figures collected by National Mortgage News bear that out.
In 3Q retail lending accounted for 52% of production nationwide compared to 8% for wholesale, and 40% for correspondent. The retail market share has been slipping steadily since the first quarter of 2011 when the channel registered a multiyear high of 56%.
It's long been said that wholesale and correspondent lending are cheaper than retail when it comes to counting costs—but during the housing/mortgage boom third-party lending produced lower-quality loans (or so it's been argued).
Unlike commercial bankers, mortgage bankers tend to be more entrepreneurial.
When a large player leaves a sector (such as correspondent or wholesale) almost immediately some company somewhere seizes on the sudden opportunity to pickup new business.
Last week's news that CitiMortgage was exiting the wholesale channel was received poorly in some sectors of the industry, until it was pointed out (by this newspaper) that table funding accounts for just 9% of Citi's overall residential production.
Will Citi be missed? Not according to some brokers I spoke with. “To tell you the truth their rates were nothing special,” said one New Jersey broker.
Who then might fill Citi's shoes? Maybe a firm like Cole Taylor Mortgage in Chicago. Two years ago Willie Newman, a former top executive at InterFirst Mortgage, joined the bank with the stated goal of growing its presence in residential finance.
A wholesale and retail lender, Cole Taylor funded $1.1 billion in 2011, more than doubling the bank's volume. In a few weeks it will receive its 33rd state lending license. That's not exactly in the same league as Citi, but it's a darn good start.
When it comes to dating, homeownership can be the ultimate aphrodisiac.
