Good morning! Today is Tuesday, July 28. The majority in the U.S. House of Representatives are backing a plan to bail out airlines. Four days after baseball restarted its season, a wave of positive coronavirus tests cast the league’s plans into doubt. Instagram is offering to pay TikTok users with millions of followers to switch to its new competing service.
And in mortgage and housing news …
DOWNTOWN BUSINESS: Although downtown business districts are struggling due to continued economic lockdowns and questions about safely reopening offices, the long-term outlook for these areas appears to be in good shape.
FORBEARANCE NUMBERS: The share of mortgage loans in forbearance dipped slightly to 7.74 percent in the latest Mortgage Bankers Association forbearance survey. That works out to an estimated 3.9 million mortgages.
COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE: Due to the pandemic, over 100,000 small businesses are permanently shuttered, and an additional 2 million are at risk of immediately closing. New tenants are also in short supply. As a result, commercial real estate needs help stabilizing.
AMROCK: Texas’s Fourth Court of Appeals unanimously overturned a jury verdict and found that there was no evidence that Amrock acquired HouseCanary’s trade secrets through any breach of contract. Here is why the case fell apart.
FED AND TREASURY: In mid-March of this year, the explosion of COVID-19 caused the market for just about everything in fixed income to seize up, scaring the stuffing out of the members of the Federal Open Market Committee and their counterparts at the Treasury. Simply stated, the market for Treasury and agency debt evaporated for several weeks even as stocks swooned.
HOW LOW CAN THEY GO? How the Fed could push mortgage rates even lower this week.
AFFORDABLE HOUSING: New announcements from Google and Apple shed light on how the billions the companies pledged for affordable housing will be deployed to solve a West Coast housing shortage.
POCKET LISTINGS: A federal district court has denied a bid by Top Agent Network to stop the National Association of Realtor’s pocket listing policy.
REALTOR SALARIES: From state to state, the average salaries for real estate agents and real estate brokers can vary significantly.
REFINANCING: These are the best (and worst) reasons to refinance your mortgage.
MORE HIRING: Embrace Home Loans opens positions across the East Coast. The mortgage lender seeks to add to its sales and support teams in three origination channels.