Rates
Well lets blame it on Seattle’s Bad Goal line call, rates have tanked this week, seeing one of our worst weeks in over a month.
There was just too much good US economy news to battle all the bad news coming out of Europe.
Let’s talk about Europe first:
-Greece, still on top of mind. 2 Stories out of Greece this week, 1st was that Greece may cave in to EU wishes, even though a majority of voters in Greece want Greece to exit the EU. So this caused less people to buy US bonds.
Then the EU came out and told Greece that they can’t use their Junk Debt to guarantee future borrowing, duh. That would be like me buying a Junker at a junk yard for $300 and going to the bank and getting a loan on it for $15,000, just doesn’t work that way.
-Ukraine, Russian moved more troops into Ukraine, even though they said they didn’t, lots of special meeting going on for a resolution, but US is posed to start shipping arms to Ukraine, which could escalate the situation, which could be good for US Bonds.
These items technically should of caused, and in some cases did cause US bonds to rally again, and rate flow lower.
But here comes the good old USA!'
-ADP private payroll 213K vs est. of 225K, positive number.
-ISM non-manufacturing 56.7 vs est. of 56.5, positive number.
-Weekly jobless claims 278K vs est. of 290K
-And the Biggy, 257,000 new jobs vs est. of 235,000
-December revised from 252,000 to 329,000, and November and October were also revised up, totally an additional 147,000 more jobs than what was reported.
-Unemployment went from 5.6% to 5.7%, but this is a TOTAL BOGUS number.
But the number that really got people scared is average hourly earnings, i.e. wage inflation, est. was 0.3% increase and came in at 0.5%, up from -0.2% last month. Inflation is HATED by bonds and mortgage rates.
All of these numbers are pushing the talking head to think that the Federal Reserve in their March meeting will indicated when they will start increasing rates.
Although the Fed increasing their Fed Fund Rates isn’t directly related to Mortgage Rates, they do follow similar paths.
Not worth risking rates, lock them when you can.
Rural Development changes?
CFPB is looking at changing some RD guidelines to make it easier for lower income people to get home loans. Nothing specific yet, but watch out for some news in the coming months.
Closing Disclosure and Loan Estimator and Consummation
I keep warning and warning, and believe me there is lots of trainings coming, but on August 1st, 2015 our world is going to DRAMATICALLY change.
This is when the Good Faith Estimate is replaced by the Loan Estimator and the HUD-1 will be replaced by the Closing Disclosure.
Same day funding’s are going to be a thing of the past, and most lenders are telling us that the purchase and sale agreement can be written for 30 days, but closing could now take 7-14 business days.
Now this happened back in 2010, when the new GFE was released, the sky was falling, but it so happened that it wasn’t as bad as everyone thought.
This time around, the CFPB, is putting a 3 day waiting period between the day the borrowers receive the documents and when they can sign the documents.
What concerns me is that I have spoken to 2 realtors in the past week, that didn’t have any idea that this was happening in 5 months.
Like I indicated, I think more and more trainings will be happening in the coming months, so be on the watch for them.
Lead Generator
Facebook, pretty plain and simple, you need to have a presence on Facebook, 58% of all Americans are on Facebook.
Although FB won’t be the “it” in a few years, it is definitely the “IT” right now.
Start simple, get on it, and get as many friends as you can.
Advertise your business (with in the IREC rules).
Post a Minimum of 3x per week, but don’t do more than 1x per day, people get annoyed.
Don’t know what to post, I am always posting good info, repost that, or go to the web and find a cool news article about housing.
You can even repost this blog!
Get comfortable with Facebook.
Then in about 30 days, you need to get a Business Fan Page, they are pretty simple to do, and I can have you come into my office and set you up one in about 15 minutes!
Have all of your personal Friend “Like” your business page and grow it from there!
Whether you are 20 and just getting started with Real Estate or 80 and been in the Treasure Valley forever, a FB presence is a must right now.