Rich Sweum's Blog

What goes down, must come up.  No one wants to here it and everyone believes there will be another way to get us out of this mess.  We are at an economic precipice of epic proportions! After todays predicted cut, the inflation genie is going to be fully wakened along with the escalating crude oil...

Another wild ride in the mortgage market this week.  Jeff was nice enough ask me to put this weeks summary together and I want to express how helpful AR has been to my business and general knowledge of the industry.  There are some really smart folks that post here, (as well as some complete tool...

There is one factor, an "uber factor" that matters more than anything else in determining the performance of a loan over time.  It ain't FICO, DTI, type of employment, or liquid reserves.What is this "uber factor"... Hmmmm, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times!  Of those homes that...

Last months straw:  NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun called the February Existing Home Sales report "another sign that the market is stabilizing," but he said it was too early to speak of its implications for the longer term.  I got emails from agents in my wheelhouse telling me, "See, I told you...

Here's Johnny!  Inflation will keep popping up in more and more pronounced ways over the next 2 quarters, and the tandem team of the Fed and the Treasury will react with temporary, stop gap measures to stave off a further unwinding of the credit markets.  The forward holds of the Titanic are floo...

What is to be gained from floating?  25bps, 50bps?  This week, we have the major inflation monitoring indexes reporting and there doesn't "appear" do be any rational reason to expect that the data coming out will be anything other than "inflationary."  I always ask my wife, "What does it feel lik...

A more friendly updated version. #1    This is this stuff that will kill Zillow Mortgage...quotes like this!  He is off by .5 percent in the best case scenario (FHA jumbo) and off by 1.125% worst case (Conforming Jumbo) #2   This Quote is crazy...no fee loan for 5.125%, 7/1 JUMBO ARM!!!  Holy cra...

Many correspondent lenders are going through gyrations and contractions that reflect the volatility in the market.  I know that many companies use pricing engines like Optimal Blue that don't allow the LO's to know which investor their loan is being placed with but other lenders are a little more...

I got one of those phone calls today...one of those calls that makes you smile.  A client that I had prequalified last year for a jumbo "zero down SIVA" Aurora Loan special...you know, one of those loans that contributed to Aurora's demise.  He was shopping me against Wells Fargo private banking,...

Update:  Gifts with strings attached:  no more  wholesale, brokered loans were much more likely to go into default.  Their benefactor said they would give, but WAMU would have to perform stop loss measures._________________________________________________________________________________________De...