Loan Think

By now you've read all the stories about those protesting lefties from the 'Occupy Wall Street' movement who are encouraging their followers to move their savings and checking accounts from megabanks like B of A, JPM and Wells to more consumer friendly organizations such as a credit union.

When the average taxpayer hears that Uncle Sam has provided $170 billion of their money to bail out the GSEs they get outraged. (Okay, some of that money has gone right back into the government's pocket via dividend payments from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.) But how do you explain to the man-on-the-street that without the GSEs the housing and mortgage markets would collapse?

We all know that the social media is the latest hot trend in sales and marketing. Look at how many companies have created a Facebook presence that seeks to interact with consumers. Personally, I follow Tabasco and Disney.

Effective Jan. 1, 2012 the California Real Estate Commissioner may issue citations to unlicensed persons the commissioner believes to be engaging in activities for which a real estate license is required or to licensees who are in violation of any provision of the Real Estate Law or any rule or order thereunder.

According to the National Association of Realtors, home sale contracts are falling through at twice the rate of last year. And who does the trade group blame? Answer: lenders for turning down applications, and (of course) appraisers.

One man's junk is another's gold, especially when it comes to mortgage servicing rights. Late this past week Ocwen inked a deal to buy roughly $15 billion of MSRs from JPMorgan Chase, which like many mega-servicers (except for maybe Wells Fargo) is downsizing its presence in the receivables market (for a variety of reasons).

Great batch of recent letters, adding detail to content we posted. These are all pretty self-explanatory. I can answer Mr./Ms. Gardner's question, though- the mortgage industry has retracted employment by 50% since the go-go years! That's a data point to reflect over!

It appears that a member of the 'Grand Ole Party' has gone off the reservation. That would be Sen. Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee who the other day introduced a bill that would wind down Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac over time (that part is okay) but wants to nationalize the privately managed MERS System.

Foreclosure filings increased 7% in October from the prior month, but were down 31% compared to the year ago, according to new figures from RealtyTrac. It's hard to tell if this is good news or not.

Let me throw a National Association of Realtors statistic at you—70% of all first time homebuyers rented before buying their first home. So, when you market to apartment complexes, it's like shooting fish in a barrel, right?