A report from the Daily Mail. "In his three-minute call, Vishal Garg CEO of mortgage lender Better.com Vishal Garg, said that the 'market has changed' - meaning savage cuts to the $7 billion company's workforce were needed to avert disaster.…
A report from IFR. "The speed of the turnaround is remarkable given Zillow had raised over US$1bn in the securitisation market in the last three months. 'Everyone is trying to figure out what's going on. I want to know if…
A report from the Phoenix Business Journal in Arizona. "A former Coolidge real estate agent faces decades in prison after being convicted this month in a scheme that emptied a family friend’s savings of $185,000 amid promises to help the…
A weekend topic starting with Market Watch. "We all know that house prices are rising at a record pace right now, but few realize just how far from normal this is. For the entire 20th century, the annual average increase…
A weekend topic starting with the New York Times. "'It’s making me nervous that you’ve got this incipient housing bubble, with anecdotal reports backed up by a lot of the data,' James Bullard, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank…
A weekend topic starting with the Journal Record. "Today we dive deeper to better understand the anatomy of a bubble. In Poor Charlie’s Almanack, discussing the need for more reconciliation of psychology and economics, Mr. Charlie Munger cited a study…
A report from the Financial Post in Canada. "Bill Morneau had been finance minister for only 36 days when he first attempted to do something about runaway housing prices and mortgage debt. He announced in December 2015 that the minimum…
A report from CNBC. "The Federal Reserve now owns more than a third of the agency mortgage-backed securities, or MBS market. At the start of 2019, the Fed held $1.6 trillion in agency MBS. It tapered that down to $1.37…
A report from Bloomberg. "What’s flown largely under the radar amid the central bank’s efforts to bolster the economy, is the Fed’s role in pushing the $6.8 trillion mortgage-backed securities market to extremes. The Fed has bought more than $1…
A weekend topic starting with Housing Wire. "This week, FHFA Director Mark Calabria and the GSEs have rolled out an across-the-board 50 bp delivery fee on all refinances. Since the onset of COVID-19, and despite heroic efforts by the Fed…