The Home Loan Landscape: Battlefield Dispatches

To many a South And West Palm Beach home loan applicant, the mortgage industry might seem to be as inscrutable as the mysterious monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey. It seems to act as an all-powerful gatekeeper, only granting passage into the world of homeownership based on formulations it alone determines—either by logic or whimsy (depending on which way the decision goes). The home loan industry appears to hold all the cards in a game where it never entirely shows its hand—or so it can seem (especially to first-time applicants).

Melodramatic Reports of the U.S. Home Loan Landscape

The truth is that mortgage issuers are motivated by the same carrots and sticks that any financial entity has to juggle: profits are the goal, expenses are to be minimized, and evaluating risk is the key factor that rewards lenders who have skill and experience.

Since mathematics and statistics are so elemental in the process of sound lending decision-making, you’d think that insider accounts of home loan industry processes would be communicated in dry academic language, entirely devoid of drama. You’d envision office scenes with row upon row of computer-bound statisticians calmly calculating away at their keyboards.

If recent accounts are any indication of the mood emanating from upstairs mortgage industry boardrooms, some uncommonly animated goings-on may be emerging. Midweek, at least one commentary bore a noticeable similarity to a battlefield dispatch.

CNBC portrayed a week where conditions had industry lenders increasingly “desperate for business” as home loan demand plummeted. The Federal Reserve was tagged as the party most responsible for inflicting the rate-hike damage—but only in a noble “battle” to defeat the real enemy: “high inflation.” As in many wartime scenarios, innocent bystanders were in danger of being swept up in the carnage. In this current conflict, “that means the economy suffers”—as well as “would-be homebuyers”—for whom “it’s a double whammy.”

The second part of the ‘whammy’ (the first was the 7+% rates being quoted for some loans) was credit availability, which tumbled the most for jumbo loans—which “more borrowers have to use today due to higher prices.” It might seem that the presence of those higher prices ought to count as a third (thus, ‘triple’) whammy—in which case you could reasonably wonder if the faulty tally was due to the fog of war. Or could it be that the higher prices should count as less than a full whammy because of an offset (the increasing popularity of adjustable-rate mortgages) since those enable more affordable monthly payments?

In any case, for a less martial analysis of today’s South And West Palm Beach home loan and real estate landscapes, give me a call at (561) 316-6800. Here the actual South And West Palm Beach home loan landscape isn’t foggy at all!