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...
Thu, Sep 24 2020, 8:59 AM
I need to make a dart board for the wall behind me for Zoom calls that has “rates up” and “rates down” and “rates the same” on it. Until we see actual...
Wed, Sep 23 2020, 8:54 AM
I know that plenty of folks at United Wholesale read this commentary, and the company is in the news about a merger that will take UWM public valuing ...
Tue, Sep 22 2020, 9:11 AM
Today (Tuesday), while Washington DC “sucks the air out of the room,” welcome to the Autumn Solstice (Equinox) in the U.S., the day when the Sun appea...
Mon, Sep 21 2020, 10:24 AM
If you watch the news long enough, you see all kinds of interesting things. Cracker Barrel is adding alcohol to its menu? Yup! And you must watch this...
Fri, Sep 18 2020, 9:15 AM
Before the pandemic I used to spin that toilet paper roll like I was on Wheel of Fortune. In March and April I turned it like I was cracking a safe. N...
Thu, Sep 17 2020, 9:00 AM
Why is it that every time I call some place, I hear the recording, “Wait times to speak to a representative are longer than normal.”? Why can’t I ever...
Wed, Sep 16 2020, 10:15 AM
The Fed Funds futures market sees the Fed holding pat on rates well into 2022. What could cause rates to go up? A vaccine. Until definitive news like ...
Mon, Sep 14 2020, 9:27 AM
People can accomplish a lot in a day. And lenders are continuing to hire like mad dogs (if mad dogs had HR departments), especially non-bank lenders. ...
Fri, Sep 11 2020, 9:08 AM
Plenty of people tell me that I should “head down to Clown Town.” I never know quite how to take that. But now we have Zoom Towns ,” and thank you to ...
Thu, Sep 10 2020, 9:14 AM
I don’t know exactly when it happened, but somewhere along the line my dog learned the noise the cheese grater makes when I pull it out of the drawer....
Wed, Sep 9 2020, 11:39 AM
Tom Petty sang, “There's somethin' good comin,' just over the hill, somethin' good comin', I know it will. And I'm in for the long run, wherever it go...
Tue, Sep 8 2020, 8:53 AM
On one hand we have the old adage, “No tree grows to the moon.” On the other hand, MLOs and real estate agents are licking their chops given that 52 p...
Fri, Sep 4 2020, 10:39 AM
As we head toward the Autumnal Equinox on 9/22, places like Seattle and Minneapolis are losing four minutes of sunlight a day. Something else that is ...
Thu, Sep 3 2020, 10:54 AM
“It was the third of September, that day I’ll always remember , yes I will… Wherever he laid his hat was his home… And when he died, all he left us wa...
Wed, Sep 2 2020, 10:21 AM
I don’t know whether my Nolan Ryan rookie card, fortuitously spared from my bike spokes decades ago, is worth $500 or the 10 cents I spent for the pac...
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