Rich Sweum's Blog

KEY PHRASE: AFTER THE MERGER!  All along, I have said that the only thing that BofA is interested in is their servicing portfolio and access to current accounts for their own marketing purposes.  75% of these job cuts will be from the CW side, which is comparable to other buyout/bailout acquisiti...

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- Home prices across 20 major U.S. cities have dropped a record 15.3% in the past year and are now back to where they were in the summer of 2004, according to the Case-Shiller home price index released Tuesday by Standard & Poor's. Prices in the 20 cities are now down 17...

"You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end - which you can never afford to lose - with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be."  The Stockdale Paradox. James Stockdale  (google it.) Here is where I struggle with blind o...

What is it about July?  Well, coming to grips with horific 2nd quarter performance numbers, a new round of write downs (both residential and commercial MBS's/CDO's), AND more importantly...NO, and I mean NO arrows left in Uncle Ben's quiver that can stave off a further massive deterioration in th...

I love asking prospective clients who have to sell their home to buy another this question; "So, what do you think your house is 'worth?'"  Their first response is usually, well, a year ago our neighbor with a home a little (700sqft) larger than ours sold for $X. Then comes some painful, emotiona...

From Bloomberg: June 12 (Bloomberg) -- Retail sales in the U.S. rose twice as much as forecast in May as Americans snapped up electronics, clothes and furniture, evidence that they aren't hoarding their tax-rebate checks or using them just to pay for gasoline. (DUH, do people ever do anything els...

If Zillow doesn't raise the bar on loan quote requestors OR allow LO's to contact them directly, then each state should have 5-10 "zillow police" loan officers who can flag irresponsible LO's, get quicker responses from Zillow to remove crazy comments and fraudulent ratings.  Time and time again,...

The previous charts had a more concentrated bubble of neg am loan recasts in 2010-2011.  Credit Suisse has done some more research and found that because "so many" people have been making the bare minimum payment on these loans, we are going to be seeing more and more of the WAMU and CW 115% neg ...

Don't worry, I'm not putting on a grass skirt! Back in the 80's, home prices were around 2.2 to 2.5 times household annual income (depending on what sources you believe)  Interest rates were BRUTAL, financing options limited, and supply was pretty scant. Today, home prices nationally are 3.8 to 4...

We all knew that DU 7.0 was going to be a tighter, but just to give you a little comparison in findings on a file that was exactly the same, run on both engines: My Community 97, 5/1 ARM, 704 fico, 42% back end ratio, condo... REFER / EA IV...yea, as in "4"! Home Possible 97... Streamline accept....