Thu, Dec 17 2020, 10:07 AM
Who would’ve thought that one day we’d be smoking weed at a family gathering, but the illegal part would be the family gathering? For most of us, fami...
Tue, Dec 15 2020, 10:12 AM
“We were so poor when I was a kid that we couldn’t afford tinsel. We had to wait for Grandpa to sneeze.” At the opposite end of the economic spectrum,...
Thu, Dec 10 2020, 9:59 AM
“My ability to remember song lyrics from the 80s far exceeds my ability to remember why I walked into the kitchen.” The Baby Boomers are certainly rid...
Wed, Dec 9 2020, 9:58 AM
I’m gonna ask my Mom if that offer to “slap me into next year” is still on the table. It’s great to be a lender in 2020, and should be into 2021, but ...
Tue, Dec 8 2020, 10:41 AM
Huh? Talk of a government shut down? Again? Are you the typical lender off to a record December, after setting records in November, October, September...
Mon, Dec 7 2020, 8:54 AM
Large-scale mortgage in-person conference activity, and official mortgage business travel, appears to be shut down until at least the summer of 2021. ...
Fri, Dec 4 2020, 10:23 AM
Have you ever wondered why so many lottery winners go broke? If they had any financial sense, they wouldn’t have bought a lottery ticket in the first ...
Thu, Dec 3 2020, 10:09 AM
With the COVID pandemic, it doesn’t quite seem like we’re in the middle of pro football season, although apparently the folks in Jacksonville will do ...
Wed, Dec 2 2020, 11:17 AM
Fun with numbers for Hump Day! Numbers were behind HP’s decision to leave California for Houston. Thank you to Len T. who sent a great chart of the na...
Tue, Dec 1 2020, 10:08 AM
In equity news, despite some predictions to the contrary , the market had its best month since 1987. This, in the face of renewed layoffs and economic...
Mon, Nov 30 2020, 9:51 AM
Thank you to Tracy C. sent, “An unemployed court jester is nobody’s fool.” There are millions of unemployed U.S. citizens, and the CFPB, HUD, and othe...
Fri, Nov 27 2020, 9:17 AM
Left over pumpkin pie for breakfast today? Have you begun your company’s Holiday Cookbook yet? (Help corporate culture by sending an email, ad a recip...
Wed, Nov 25 2020, 9:36 AM
Second only to the excitement of the new phone book coming, the new conforming loan limit is $548,250 for 2021 , up from $510,400 in 2020, and some in...
Tue, Nov 24 2020, 10:59 AM
Remember when you drove to work every day? For non-mortgage kicks, here’s a site where you can take a virtual drive through dozens of cities around th...
Mon, Nov 23 2020, 10:02 AM
Sunday morning I was trying to explain to my cat Myrtle how the total cost of rescuing a stranded Matt Damon in all of his films (think Saving Private...
Fri, Nov 20 2020, 10:10 AM
Many years ago I was hanging out with George Clooney and made the mistake of telling him, “Look, you’ll never amount to much as an actor. You’d be muc...
Thu, Nov 19 2020, 9:01 AM
“Life is like a helicopter. I don’t know how to operate a helicopter.” Remember how exciting it was when the technology of spellcheck came along? (Peo...
Wed, Nov 18 2020, 9:13 AM
If you had 20 million close friends, and each one owed $500k on their house, the total would be $10 trillion of mortgage debt. Coincidentally, that is...
Tue, Nov 17 2020, 10:58 AM
Predictions? Show me one person, a year ago, who forecast what has happened (so far) this year! (I went to see a psychic the other day. I knocked on t...
Mon, Nov 16 2020, 9:12 AM
Here’s a good one. “I’m giving up drinking until Christmas. Sorry, wrong punctuation. I’m giving up. Drinking until Christmas.” Did you know that 1/20...
Fri, Nov 13 2020, 10:11 AM
Welcome to the first Friday the 13th of 2020 since March. What an eight months! Cindy E. writes, “The longer I stay at home, the more homeless I look....
Thu, Nov 12 2020, 10:52 AM
Are the election results under control? Thank you to Hawai’i’s Joe G. who sent along this site where the odds of who the next president will be are po...
Tue, Nov 10 2020, 10:28 AM
The headlines continue to blare and attract attention. HUD Secretary Ben Carson tested positive for coronavirus? True. Some foreign leaders not congra...
Mon, Nov 9 2020, 10:11 AM
First Sean Connery, and now Alex Trebek! Their time together on Jeopardy is legendary. (“Please refrain from using ethnic slurs!”) The last time I che...
Thu, Nov 5 2020, 10:29 AM
With Nevada’s 6 electoral college votes, nothing says 2020 like the fate of the nation resting in the hands of Reno. When sending out a daily commenta...
Tue, Nov 3 2020, 10:22 AM
What are companies doing with the 2020 money they were going to spend on travel and entertainment? Saving it for the second half of 2021? Last week I ...
Mon, Nov 2 2020, 9:44 AM
Some would say that the year is either flying by, others would suggest it is slowly bumping along the bottom. Either way, here we are in November, and...
Fri, Oct 30 2020, 9:47 AM
Happy X/XXX/XX if you are a Roman. Rome certainly had its share of slaves, and the existence of slavery in one’s family has certainly caused consterna...
Thu, Oct 29 2020, 9:43 AM
This weekend we receive an extra hour of 2020. If there was ever a reason to end the time change, this certainly is it! Markets don’t like uncertainty...
Wed, Oct 28 2020, 11:52 AM
Surely not everyone was kung fu fighting, right? I hope that we don’t see any fighting after November 3. I love to ask people, who think we’re going t...
Tue, Oct 27 2020, 10:55 AM
Etch A Sketch is buying Rubik's Cube? Who can keep up? What does a lender do when they’ve hit operational capacity, and don’t want to disappoint LOs w...
Mon, Oct 26 2020, 10:57 AM
The most reliable way to forecast the future is to try to understand the present. Vendor M&A is rampant (the latest being First American acquiring Ser...
Fri, Oct 23 2020, 9:49 AM
Let me state for the record that I am not a robot, although I often seem to be asked to check a box on certain websites by… robots. This article , how...
Wed, Oct 21 2020, 9:13 AM
Want some guidance? “If you get a loan at a bank, you’ll be paying it back for 30 years. If you rob a bank, you’ll be out in 10 years. Follow me for m...
Mon, Oct 19 2020, 8:45 AM
Fifteen days until the election! How many days would it take you, or the company that employs you, to save up $11 million? In my discussions with CEOs...
Fri, Oct 16 2020, 9:06 AM
What’s more important, spending money on the latest iPhone, or taking care of your body? Every Thursday we receive Initial Jobless Claims statistics, ...
Thu, Oct 15 2020, 12:04 PM
When I grow up, I want to live in… Estonia? If you need a break, and are thinking about leaving the U.S., take a gander at some highly-ranked work fro...
Wed, Oct 14 2020, 9:39 AM
I really wanted to mix things up today so decided to send this commentary out from the other side of the dining room table this morning. Yippee! Speak...
Tue, Oct 13 2020, 9:04 AM
If I were going to open up a store for eyeglasses, I’d make the sign in front of the building blurry. Lenders now don’t have to be so clever, as we’re...
Fri, Oct 9 2020, 8:51 AM
Eddie Van Halen advised, “You only have twelve notes. Do what you want with them.” Twelve is probably the number of undecided voters in the U.S. at th...
Thu, Oct 8 2020, 9:01 AM
Illinois, Alaska, and California. This morning’s drama revolves around the next presidential debate (virtual or not) but folklore tells us that it was...
Wed, Oct 7 2020, 9:32 AM
You have a couple workdays under your belt this week, so let’s take a one paragraph break from mortgage stuff. Pumpkin patches are here, and every par...
Tue, Oct 6 2020, 10:13 AM
Yes, here we are at the 10th month of the year. You know, “Dec” ember. Oh, this is “Oct” ober. There’s a reason. The numerical names of months date ba...
Mon, Oct 5 2020, 9:07 AM
Are you sure that the underwriter or processor working from home isn’t working simultaneously, on a different laptop, for another company besides your...
Fri, Oct 2 2020, 8:57 AM
We’re finally in October, which means one thing is certain: that all the cobwebs and dust in my house just became Halloween decorations. Markets don’t...
Thu, Oct 1 2020, 10:58 AM
Fourth quarter already!? Was the third quarter of 2020 the best quarter ever to be in residential lending? Will the fourth quarter beat it? While much...
Wed, Sep 30 2020, 9:58 AM
Welcome to the start of Fat Bear Week in Alaska. (There’s even a Park Service bracket with the favorites... expect upsets!) It’s probably easier to fo...
Tue, Sep 29 2020, 8:56 AM
Here's a brief video refresher of our tax code if anyone needs it. If eight months ago someone had told you to pick a country where there is a mudslin...
Mon, Sep 28 2020, 8:54 AM
Thank you to those who wrote commenting about the Yelp study showing that 164,000 businesses across our nation have closed since March . “Bouncing bac...
Fri, Sep 25 2020, 9:13 AM
TGIF! Do Fridays mean as much as they did up until mid-March? Yes! Well, maybe. How about some non-mortgage stuff? There is, after all, life outside o...
