Late night Originations link fest… -Will Facebook’s New Timeline Spell Disaster For Realtors (InmanNews) -Mortgage Rates For Buying Investment Property (MortgagePorter) -Tweet By Voice With New Plantronics Headset (VentureBeat) -Lots Of New NY Condo Inventory Coming (TheRealDeal) -Can Mortgage Servicing Be Saved From Itself (WSJ) -Michael Lewis Writing Liar’s Poker Movie (NetNet)

Largest Mortgage Lenders & Investors Who were, and probably still are, the largest mortgage lenders/investors in 2009? There were no real surprises. Private Mortgage Insurance Making A Comeback? PMI gave its clients some good news by reducing the minimum FICO score from 720 to 700 for CA, AZ, NV, DE, HA, NJ, and FL and [...]

Do Employees Make Less In Tight Job Market? Whether it is a house, a bushel of wheat, or a share of stock, when a buyer and seller come together an item trades hands. A lower price will always benefit the buyer. Is that the case in the labor market, where buyers (employers) and sellers (employees) [...]

Rates May Hold When MBS Buying Ends At least there is no ambiguity about what the Fed is doing in their mortgage purchase program. Last week the Fed purchased a net $12 billion in agency MBS, bringing its total net purchase to $1.161 trillion. But everyone has a pretty good sense of how this movie [...]

Rate & Market Update Rates dropped for the second week in a row bringing rates close to all time record lows set April and November 2009. The official report on rates isn’t relevant for consumers because it’s published by Freddie Mac a week late (so this week’s rates will be published January 28), but markets [...]

Since sending the WeeklyBasis 2010 Rate Outlook this Monday (as opposed to normal Friday delivery), rates are still holding. See below for current levels as of the end of mortgage bond trading today. Now onto the critical alert for the week: Homebuyers intending to use FHA loans to finance condo purchases should be advised that [...]

Employees at a pizzeria in Ireland were fired for watching porn on the job. Isn’t that disgusting? Irish people attempting to make pizza! Small to Mid Size Mortgage Companies Expanding What isn’t disgusting is the number of mortgage companies which are interested in expanding. For example, First Centennial Mortgage, out of Illinois, is sending out [...]

As discussed last quarter, FHA loans have become the most viable way for borrowers with less than 20% down to buy a home. Single family home FHA loans are fairly straightforward. Rules for condo FHA loans have recently changed, and it’s critical for any homebuyer targeting condos up to a price point of $850k and [...]