“Common sense is not a gift. It's a punishment because you have to deal with everyone who doesn't have it.” Common sense tells us that what goes up, must come down. Tulip bulbs, Florida real estate in the 1920s, cryptocurrency, and now sneakers. People need a place to live, but they don’t need to own fancy shoes hoping they’ll go up in price. The secondary market for Air Jordans, Nike Dunks and Air Force 1s is tumbling, with some limited-edition shoes selling for 30 percent less than they did several months ago. The sneaker resale market, which as of last year was racking up $6 billion in annual sales, has now hit a moment where supply exceeds demand. It’s bad out there: Nike Dunk Low Retro White Blacks that resold for $290 in February are now selling for under $200, and the Air Jordan 1 Retro High OG “Patent Bred,” is now selling for $230, down from $300 in February. The sell-off comes as investors in sneakers seek to unload their wares, potentially related to a tighter economic landscape in general. The average transactions at StockX, the sneaker resale marketplace co-founded by Rocket’s Dan Gilbert, were down 20 percent in June. (Today’s podcast is available here and today’s has an interview with Scott Haymore, Head of Mortgage Pricing and Secondary Markets at TD Bank, on what secondary marketing heads spend their days doing and the accessibility of homeownership. This week’s is sponsored by Candor. With Candor’s Machine as an Underwriter, lenders modernize their manufacturing infrastructure making them immune to margin, capacity, and staffing challenges forever.)

Lender and Broker Software and Services

“Richey May is honored to announce Michael Nouguier as our new Director of Cybersecurity Services. Michael has more than 15 years of experience providing enterprise information security and risk management services to various organizations, from mid-market to enterprise, with an emphasis on the financial services industries. Known for leading large and diverse teams of cybersecurity professionals, Michael has a track record of being a trusted and valued partner to clients, providing services that include Strategy & Advisory, vCISO, Digital Forensics & Incident Response, Penetration Testing, Vulnerability Management, Application Security, Implementation and Managed Security Services. For more information on how Michael and his team can customize solutions to meet your cybersecurity needs and objectives, please contact us.”

The Capacity crew had a blast at CMBA’s Western Secondary Conference, and can’t wait to be in “Beer City USA” next week! Join Jen Peachman, Manager of Strategic Partnerships, at MMLA’s Annual Conference, starting with the Pub Crawl on August 3 at 7pm. If you’ll be in Grand Rapids August 3-5, email Jen.Peachman@Capacity.com to set up a meeting. We’d love to show you how Capacity can relieve your team of time-consuming tasks. The mortgage industry is in dire need of a platform that securely integrates with lenders’ key systems, providing loan officers and brokers with instant, actionable answers about borrower opportunities, loan statuses, loss mitigation, and more. Capacity reduces the time that LOs and brokers spend logging into a sea of endless systems to find information. If this sounds familiar, see how Capacity can save your team time and frustration. See how it works.

Lenders are paying more attention to cost cutting as volumes fall and that means they are working to increase overall efficiency. One common problem involves boarding newly closed loans into the servicing platform. Fast growth and a new loan origination system poised some challenges for BMO Harris as staff worked to get closed loans boarded correctly into its servicing software. Despite having a good process, the bank was still losing too much employee time and lost documentation. Executives went in search of a technology solution capable of streamlining the workflow and ensuring that the data moved seamlessly and accurately to the servicing side. After an exhaustive search, BMO Harris found LoanComplete from Fiserv, a life-of-loan solution designed specifically to complement the bank’s loan origination system workflow, servicing, and compliance systems. Get the whole story in a new case study here.

Today’s dynamic lending environment has surfaced a new common necessity within a lender’s workflow: the need to change a product due to borrower or property eligibility. In response to market demand, Polly introduced a new and first-of-its-kind product change function that delivers granular post-lock transparency and the ability to take action - modifying product type and term combination(s) to another as needed, be it historical pricing, worse case, or current market. The company adds this unique functionality to an already robust lock desk workflow suite that boasts embedded, flexible automation for locks, lock extensions, re-locks, re-prices, price exceptions, float downs, and more. Read the full press release to discover how Polly’s modern and proven PPE facilitates deeper configurability, flexibility, and valuable time savings for mortgage lenders. Ready to see it in action?! Connect with Polly to take a closer look.

Webinars, Training, and Events Into August

In honor of Louis Armstrong’s birthday next week, Sales Boomerang and Mortgage Coach are sharing some information that will be sweet music to many struggling lenders’ ears: with the right technologies, not only can lenders survive this stormy mortgage market, but they can even surpass revenue goals as well! To learn which digital tools today’s top originators have used to add 20% or more to their closed loan volume, join Sales Boomerang’s Alex Kutsishin, Mortgage Coach’s Dave Savage, and Southern Trust Mortgage’s Jarrett Stanley on August 4 at 2 pm ET. Tune into the conversation and see “What a Wonderful World” this difficult rate environment can be with a powerfully automated borrower retention and conversion platform on your side.

Join your fellow industry colleagues who have partnered the MBA and are taking advantage of free MBA webinars, select research offerings, self-study education courses and more. With MBA, you will have the backing of a trusted name and endless resources. Your MBA membership grants you access to education, research, committees, and informational webinars that are important to you now.

This Friday at 1PM MT is the next edition of The Mortgage Collaborative’s Rundown with Rich and Rob. We’ll will be covering current events in the mortgage market for 30 minutes starting at noon PT in “The Rundown with Rich and Rob”!

Join Snapdocs and leading lenders on Thursday, July 28th at 10AM PT for a discussion on the recent market shift and how Snapdocs has increased cost savings.

Do you filter your leads to ensure they are real? If a bot fills out a form on your website with a random person’s information, you do not actually have that person’s consent. Making contact is braking TCPA regulations opening yourself up to litigation. Using both TrustedForm and Anura provides double the protection from TCPA litigation brought by fraudulent users. On Thursday, July 28th, join ActiveProspect and Anura to see how implementing the Anura API allows you to pass the IP address and User Agent of the site visitor who submitted the lead and verify whether that lead is fake.

National MI’s is hosting an exclusive webinar on August 11th at 10:00 am (PST) reviewing insights from the 2022 State of the Mortgage Industry Half-Time Report! Despite the challenges in today’s current housing market, there are significant opportunities for lenders to grow their business through untapped equity and purchase business. Kristin Messerli of Experience.com and Dave Savage of Mortgage Coach interviewed over 25 highly successful and experienced industry experts to provide market insights and a practical guide to gaining market share in 2022 and beyond. Register today at National MI University.

Next week! Grand Rapids, Michigan, hosts the Michigan Mortgage Lenders Association Annual Lending Conference August 3-5. “We have nationally recognized industry and motivational speakers. Learn from them and get the motivation, inspiration, and insight to apply to your business to bring it to the next level. We also have a full schedule of educational sessions, social receptions, and indulgent dinners.”

CMLA is the premier association for professionals in the mortgage lending industry in Colorado and the Rocky Mountain region. Register for the 2022 CMLA Convention, August 3-5, and “celebrate and showcase what makes us valuable to our members and the industry. We are ADVOCACY, we are EDUCATION, we are COMMUNITY, and we are CONNECTION.”

Insellerate will be hosting clients, partners, and industry thought leaders to Huntington Beach CA, on August 6th-9th for the Annual Insellerate Experience Summit. This exclusive, by invitation only event, will take place at The Waterfront Beach Resort, a Hilton Hotel, Huntington Beach, California 92663. Learn More https://insellerate.com/summit-22/

CoAMP is setting the stage with its clients to help answer the question: “Why I’m the best option for your lending needs.” Learn how to use the presentation to help increase the effectiveness of “C.A.R.E.ing” for clients in this marketplace. Register for the CoAMP August 12 hybrid seminar, attend in person or join online, teacher will be virtual. Cost is $19 for members, $59 for non-members.

Fannie Mae “Fraud: Tips, Trends, and Pursuit” webinar is now available for on-demand viewing. Check out this session that features recent trends in mortgage fraud activity, including detection and best efforts for prevention.

October Research is accepting registrations for its first Women’s Leadership Summit (WLS) taking place August 17th and 18th at The Westin Savannah Harbor Golf Resort & Spa. Built around four pillars: Develop, Grow, Support and Empower, WLS will provide an opportunity to design your personal journey in a fun and supportive environment. Take your career to the next level while building the support network you need to succeed. Visit OctoberResearchWLS.com to see the agenda, speakers and to register. Save your seat today!

The MISMO Fall Summit is approaching: August 29 -September 1 in Washington, DC. Here’s the link for info and registration.

The Knowledge Coop offers August Live CE events, and has included a “20% off” discount code. 8/9/2022 Roseburg Oregon https://knowledgecoop.swoogo.com/Roseburg2022

20% discount code: Live.CE.2022.Rose. 8/11/2022 Medford Oregon https://knowledgecoop.swoogo.com/Medford2022 20% discount code: Live.CE.2022.Med. 8/22/2022 Boise Idaho https://knowledgecoop.swoogo.com/Boise2022 20% discount code: Live.CE.2022.Bois. 8/29/2022 Sacramento California https://knowledgecoop.swoogo.com/Sacramento2022 20% discount code: Live.CE.2022.Sac. 8/31/2022 San Diego California https://knowledgecoop.swoogo.com/SanDiego2022 20% discount code: Live.CE.2022.SD.

In Florida, the FAMP 2022 Annual Tradeshow and Convention will be August 17-20 at the Caribe Royale Resort – Orlando, Florida. Exhibitors, networking, education

The OriginatorConnect Conference returns to fabulous Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas this August. The 3-day weekend event is filled with workshops, sessions, product showcases, and plenty of networking opportunities. Come early for the pre-conference events happening Thursday, August 18. Registration is open for OriginatorConnect August 19th-21st. Use promo code 'OCNFREE' at checkout. Take a look at the video recap of last year's record-breaking OriginatorConnect.

Capital Markets: Fed Day

Gasoline prices are coming down! It isn’t the only thing. Recent weak economic indicators have already raised some problems for the Federal Open Market Committee's very hawkish path. But it can also be argued that deflation on non-essentials like Walmart is seeing is exactly what the central bank wants and will only galvanize it to keep hiking sharply. Economists will tell you that the Federal Reserve is in a tough spot: as inflation is still raging and the economic backdrop has dramatically deteriorated since its last meeting in mid-June. The consensus is still for a hike of 75-basis-points today.

Ahead of today’s release of the latest FOMC decision, we received some housing market indicators yesterday. According to the FHFA House Price Index, home prices rose 1.4 percent month-over-month in May, which was a decrease from 1.5 percent in April. On a year-over-year basis, home prices are still up over 18 percent. Separately, the Case-Shiller Home Price Index rose almost 20 percent in May, though elevated mortgage rates will soon make gains like this unsustainable. Prices remained the strongest in the South and Southwest. But new home sales declined 8.1 percent month-over-month in June to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 590k units, well below 670k expectations. On a year-over-year basis, new home sales are down 17.4 percent as homebuilding continues to punch below its weight. Sales were the weakest in the largest regions, the South and West, as higher mortgage rates and higher prices created affordability pressures for prospective buyers. Today’s Fed events happen this afternoon with the release of the FOMC Statement followed by Chair Powell’s press conference. Before the Fed, the MBS market is interested in weekly mortgage applications from MBA, which decreased 1.8 percent from one week earlier, the fourth consecutive week of declines. Applications now sit at the lowest level since February 2000. We’ve also received June durable goods orders (+1.9 percent, ex-transportation +.3 percent) and advanced indicators ($98.2 billion, a significant decline). Later this morning brings June pending home sales. The Desk will purchase up to $832 million UMBS30 4 percent through 5 percent MBS from early payoffs. We begin the day with Agency MBS prices roughly unchanged as is the 10-year yielding 2.80 after closing yesterday at 2.79 percent.

Employment

Black Knight is hiring a hedge analyst in its Optimal Blue division. This person will work closely with clients to implement and execute mortgage pipeline hedge strategies, trade mortgage-backed securities and manage best execution through the employment of proprietary analytics. Other current openings in the Optimal Blue division include trade operations administrator, mortgage capital markets analyst and implementation analyst. These positions are available in Chevy Chase, Md., Denver, Colo., and San Francisco, Calif. For more details on these roles, contact Betsy Meek. In addition, Black Knight is always looking for talent across a wide variety of other roles. Visit us for a full listing of all open positions.

Evergreen Home Loans™ is helping loan officers take home financing to the next level with Evergreen Advantage™. This combines its signature customer service with an exclusive technology platform that brings mobility and convenience for loan officers, business partners, and customers. Features include an integrated loan origination system (LOS), point of sale (POS) system, online application, digital income and asset verification, a mobile app, eClose, eNote, and Remote Online Notarization (RON). Loan officers are able to access their business anytime and anywhere, simplify workflows, and increase customer satisfaction and referrals. Evergreen Advantage also includes a CRM and marketing communication tools to help loan officers grow their business. Is your company investing in you? Evergreen does and loan officers interested in taking their business to the next level should visit the Evergreen Home Loans Careers page.

Despite the changes in the market, New American Funding continues to demonstrate growth this year. This includes the company’s continued national expansion to new markets in the first half of 2022, adding over 150 seasoned mortgage professionals, opening new branches, and further building on a strong foundation of customer service. The company is led by some of the most talented divisional leaders in the industry that have an average tenure of nine years at New American Funding. This allows the company to offer a culture, business outlook, and vision that’s centered around stability, consistency, and a commitment to excellence in operations. The privately-held company is always working to exceed customers,’ and its own, expectations, whether by developing team members within the organization or recruiting top talent with fresh ideas. If you’re ready to join a company with a strong vision and the courage to execute on it, contact Jordyn Dexter at 800-450-2010 x7651 today! EOE