Good Morning! Today is Tuesday, February 15. Russia said it would pull back some troops from around Ukraine. Donald Trump’s accounting firm cut ties with his family business and retracted years of financial statements. The SEC is probing the business of block trading on Wall Street, with subpoenas to firms including Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs as well as several hedge funds.
The Mortgage Note Reports
New Jersey Homeowners Can Apply For Up To $35K In Assistance: Eligible homeowners in New Jersey can receive up to $35,000 to help protect themselves against foreclosures.
Multifamily Forecast: Commercial and multifamily mortgage loan originations were up 79% YOY in Q4 and 44% from Q3, while total lending is expected to break $1 trillion for the first time in 2022, MBA reported.
Rate Locks Up: Black Knight’s January Origination Market Monitor Report showed overall rate locks up 9.5% from December, driven by 19.9% and 9.2% increases in purchase loan and cash-out locks, respectively.
And in other mortgage and housing news…
Fannie’s Year:Fannie Mae reported a net income of $22.2 billion in 2021 and $5.2 billion in Q4.
Freddie Exec Appointment: Freddie Mac appointed Heidi Mason as executive vice president and general counsel, taking over for interim general counsel Jerry Weiss.
Zillow Q4 Earnings: Developers in LA are turning apartments in Hawthorne and West Hollywood into workforce housing for the “missing middle.”
Rocket Sweepstakes:Fourteen winners took home a total of $1.6 million in cash prizes during Super Bowl LVI as part of the Rocket Mortgage Super Bowl Squares Sweepstakes.
Better.com Cont’d: Better.com’s firings mostly impacted its US workers rather than their lower-wage counterparts in India.
“Modern Master”: Cities looking to boost density and affordability should look to the work of architect Louis Sauer, who designed stylish modernist housing in the 1960s and ’70s, Anthony Paletta argues in Bloomberg CityLab.
The Next Gamble: Here’s what Wall Street thinks about Zillow’s “housing super-app.”
GSE Futures: What happened to all the big, bold proposals for GSE reform?