CategoryMortgages/Credit/Cash

Fannie & Freddie Want To Show Us Their Private Side

Fannie Mae’s Institutional Arrogance Earned Them A Leadership Purge The GSEs Are Up For Sale To Fund The Big Beautiful Bill The Time Of The Tariff Chaos Is Not The Time To Privatize The GSEs Fannie Mae, the dominant of the two governmentsponsored entities (GSEs), has long permitted a reckless culture that was maintained after going into receivership. They’ve seen some significant lapses of...

Get Used To High Mortgage Rates And High Rents

Expectations Of Continued Inflation Remains Firm With Consumers The Moody’s Downgrade Of US Credit Will Drive Interest Rates Higher Rising Interest Rates = Rising Rents Consumer perception of rising inflation has been growing since the beginning of the year. The tariff tantrums are inflicting far more damage to the US economy than any other country, and the full impact has yet to be...

Housing Affordability Is Down But Lets Lighten Up On All The Negativity

NAR’s Housing Affordability Index Is A Trade Group Stunt Rising Income Playing A Large Role In Softening Damage Of High Mortgage Rates Housing Affordability Is At Crisis Levels But Millions Are Still Buying Homes Nearly 12 years ago, my friend Barry Ritholtz wrote a takedown on NAR’s Housing Affordability Index. His conclusion? It’s worthless and still worthless, citing only one month back during...

Lon Gisland, A Tale Of Two Markets

Housing Prices Are Rising Sharply On Long Island And The Hamptons Sales In The Long Island Suburbs Are Falling While Rising In The Hamptons Wall Street Record Profits/Bonuses Expected To Drive More Hamptons Sales Despite Financial Market Volatility I first heard the band Beruit play live at Lincoln Center with another favorite band, Calexico. The venue overlooked Central Park, and the entire...

Tariff Insanity Won’t Bring The End Of The Housing Economy As We Know It, And I Feel Fine.

We Still Don’t Know What We Don't Know Since The Tariffs Are Not An Economic Strategy Tariffs Are Inflationary Because They Are A Tax On The American Consumer This Ship Has Sailed: Shift To Manufacturing As US Economic Driver Every day, I endeavor to write about the nuances of the housing market. However, with the tariff tantrums coming out of Washington, DC, on an hourly basis, it is the only...

Tariffs Tantrums Are Getting More Pushback Than Donut Holes

Goldman Sachs Now Sees Three Fed Cuts Later This Year Recession Odds Are Rising Quite A Bit In Back Half Of Year Mortgage Rates Could Slide More As Economy Receives Blunt Force Tariff Trauma As I’ve mentioned here before, tariffs are inflationary, and that’s not a political statement. However, you can see in the chart below that the use of tariffs is significantly higher in Trump II than in Trump...

But Whatever: Fannie Mae Blacklists And Arrogance

The GSEs May Be Sold To Help Pay For A Tax Cut For The Wealthy Housing Is Local But Mortgage Rates Are National Privatizing The GSEs Supposedly Determine Whether Doing So Will Raise Rates One of the housing related promises coming out of Washington D.C. has been to privatize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (governmentsponsored entities/GSEs), often described by my peers as a couple of big dumb banks...

Will Redfin Finally Become A Rocketship?

Redfin Snapped Up By Rocket Mortgage Becoming A Notable Threat To Zillow Redfin, The Discount Real Estate Broker, Never Figured Out How To Be Profitable Rocket Has Always Seemed To Defy Interest Rate Gravity And Redfin Has Great Tech Wow. Today is the birthday of the World Wide Web. No one saw the acquisition of Redfin by Rocket Mortgage coming, and perhaps that's what makes this transaction so...

Housing A Recession Doesn’t Rate

Recession Talk Has Crept In To The Economic Conversation Chaotic Economic Policy Pauses The Consumer Recession Means Real Job Loss But Possibly Lower Rates Well, it’s been a chaotic 2025 so far with the uncertainty ratcheted up to sky and tariff policy’s blunt force trauma thrown against friends and neighbors. If you’ll recall, implementation of tariffs in 2018 specifically punished soybean...

It’s A Perfect Storm When PITI Becomes PITIHOA

It's Not Just Principal/Interest. All Homeownership Costs Are Rising. Mortgage Rates Are Not Expect To Fall Much, If Any, In 2025. With Migration Surging Into FloodProne Locations, Obtaining Insurance Becomes Key Issue. I hope all my Housing Note readers are enjoying the holidays with family and friends. I'm visiting my wife's family in the empty Macadam parking lots of strip malls in the din of...