The rapid rise in interest rates have caught some off guard and are making a challenging market even more so. However, it’s important to put a few things into context. 1. Rising rates are not unmanageable by a long shot, and rates in the 5% and 6% range are not going to cause a meltdown as some on social media might have you believe. 2. Home prices are not rising as fast as they did last year, but just because some sellers are reducing their asking price on homes, doesn’t mean the housing market is falling, it means that they aren’t rising as fast as they were. 3. While there aren’t as many buyers bidding on the same house as there was before, estimates are that there are still far more buyers than sellers as we speak. 4. Last year the average cost of a mortgage loan was about 2.96%…
Posted On Monday, 18 April 2022 00:00 Written by
It’s another day and as you sit sipping your morning coffee (or tea) you may not realize that much of your day will be run by that “inner voice” that dictates how you see the world.   Those experiences of yesterday have a place in our brains that tell a story. The story is based on an experience you had at a given time in a particular situation, and your perception of that experience gets logged into a permanent file in your brain.  That thought may be a total misperception but will “rule” how you think, behave, and act … and then catalogue the experience next time a similar situation occurs. 
Here’s the thing… Most of the time, that observation can be good or bad, but either way, it becomes the blueprint for your thinking and perception going forward.  If you’ve had a good experience, you write a story.…
Posted On Friday, 15 April 2022 00:00 Written by
I read recently that major league pitchers and catchers now have been given permission (the green light) by MLB to establish signals to counteract “signal stealing” by the opponents during a game. You certainly will recall the system that the Houston Astros were caught using during the 2017 MLB season. But just a minute, stealing signals has been part of baseball since Elston Howard moved from the Negro Leagues to catch for the New York Yankees.
Catchers have been changing signals to their pitcher even before Howard was sitting in that crouch in the Bronx. You’ve seen catchers waggle their fingers from a one or two and move their non-glove hand from one leg to the other. As a kid on the playground, it was simple “one” was a fastball: “two’ was a curve. That was about it. No sliders, no knuckleball, etc. Of course, this was before Little League…
Posted On Friday, 15 April 2022 00:00 Written by
What began as a classification of “bring your own personal electronic devices” to work or school has not only evolved exponentially over the past decade, but it has also become the new status quo. It is certainly safe to assume that every adult and most children have at least a phone, tablet, or personal computer that facilitates access to software, including apps and websites, that serve a variety of purposes. This increase in ability of the average person to be hyperconnected to the Internet and, in this Communication Age we find ourselves in, to each other is what I have referred to as the consumerization of information technology (IT).
Of course, what has transformed most notably is that the usage of those devices now intersects in integral ways with people’s professional lives as well as their personal ones. While this makes things easy for the consumer across several circumstances, it has…
Posted On Tuesday, 12 April 2022 00:00 Written by
After more than a year if getting fiscal policy completely wrong and just making up stories about the economy, it seems the FED members all want the microphone and to share their opinions on how they are going to “fix” the very problem they created! Every time one of them speaks, the bond market loses its mind and tries to figure out what they are saying, and this creates wild movement, all pushing rates higher. As we have been saying here for quite some time, if you like it, LOCK IT! That said, it all goes back to PAYMENTS and how we can best help our clients maximize their borrowing power by helping them get into the best possible position to buy, even if rates and prices are going higher! 1. CREDIT! Credit is at the root of the cost of money, PMI, and insurance. Even just a modest improvement…
Posted On Monday, 11 April 2022 00:00 Written by
 AJ Barkley is the Neighborhood and Community Lending Executive at Bank of America, where she identifies opportunities to drive responsible lending among low- and moderate-income borrowers, underserved communities, and multicultural borrowers across the economic spectrum. In her role, she is accountable for the end to end process, strategy through execution, for the company’s Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) commitment and fair lending laws and regulations for home loans, small business, and vehicle lending. She is also responsible for relationship deepening with multicultural, first-time homebuyers and low- and moderate-income consumers through strategic alignment with nonprofits, community advocacy groups, real estate professional organizations including homebuilders, and other key industry leaders. Most recently, AJ served as the bank’s interim Retail Sales East Executive, leading an organization of more than 2,000 employees who assist the bank’s Retail, Preferred and Global Wealth Management clients with their borrowing and banking needs, including mortgage, home equity, credit card,…
Posted On Monday, 11 April 2022 00:00 Written by
As you watch these gifted athletes perform in the final game of the 2021-22 NCAA men’s basketball season (Yes, Alice, March Madness is finally over!) and marvel at their athleticism, you begin to wonder if they really appreciate their God-given talents. If you’ve been around athletes as long as I have, you have seen all levels of athletes, unless you have not been a close-up witness to the Special Olympics.
It was the mid-1970s when Teresa Brown called to invite me to be a celebrity presenter and hand out medals at the California Special Olympic Summer Games to be held at UCLA. It was an invitation I was honored to accept. When I drove into my UCLA parking place at about 9 a.m. that first day, I was surprised to see several hundred athletes already warming up for their events. Athletes of all ages, sizes and shapes were sprinting,…
Posted On Friday, 08 April 2022 00:00 Written by
The industrial manufacturing sector has always been coined the “backbone” of the United States and the world. Whether it is supplying the population with goods, building integral pieces for lifesaving medical equipment, or providing lasting careers to millions of individuals, manufacturing is omnipresent in many ways. But recently, there seems to be more disruptions and uncertainties surrounding the manufacturing sector, all stemming from various sources. Companies in manufacturing are scrambling to find a solution to these disruptions and, more often than not, are floating around in neutral.
Regardless of the specific disruption interfering with each and every manufacturing company, there is largely one major arrow pointing directly at a Hard Trend future certainty that is not going away: the concept of next-generation manufacturing. This terminology may have older generations thinking of it as a “millennial or Gen Z takeover”; however, a shift in the age of the workforce in manufacturing…
Posted On Wednesday, 06 April 2022 00:00 Written by
We are all aware that a person’s credit score impacts their ability to obtain a mortgage; it dictates the cost of that loan if they qualify. However, very few people focus on all the factors involved in a credit score. Further, while many people think that they are “good” if their score is over 620; most people are unaware that according to Experian®, the average credit score in the United States as of 2/22/2022 was a record high of 714! Why is this important? Because anything below 714 is BELOW AVERAGE! So, if you put it into perspective, that client with that 620 score, is 93 points BELOW AVERAGE!  The reason this is important is that the borrower’s credit score impacts not only the interest rate on the loan, but it also can impact: Loan program LTV Ability and cost of PMI Ability and cost of homeowner’s insurance   The…
Posted On Tuesday, 05 April 2022 00:00 Written by
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