Gary Pierpont Blog

This blog has written a few times over the last months on the influx of foreign capital into the U.S. housing market. This weekend, the major news sources are covering that again, because of the new statistic that almost 50% of these purchases are all cash. But, what is actually happening to the market as a whole? Adam Taggart did a fairly thoughtful analysis on the market as a whole in the context of supply, demand, and the global economy. I don’t know how reliable a forecaster he is, never having followed his stuff before, but it makes for a very interesting read.

First, two caveats: with current prices down, probably not many of you are worried about the cost of energy; and consider the source (the North American Insulation Manufacturers Association contributed a lot to the article). That said,, Dr. Jonathan Levy, professor of environmental health at Boston University School of Public Health, believes that nationally we could cut electricity by 5% and natural gas by 10% if homes were properly insulated. When was the last time you checked your insulation?

OK, we’re as excited as everyone else for the season premier of The Walking Dead this Sunday; but there’s another kind of zombie we don’t love as much: the zombie foreclosure. What’s a zombie foreclosure? It’s a property where the lender entered the foreclosure process, the homeowner moved out, and then the bank stopped the process — never taking the title, and effectively leaving the property abandoned. These abandoned properties can quickly deteriorate, and have a negative effect on surrounding property values. Thankfully, they’re on the decline.

Well, we’re four days into the new regulations, and — lo and behold — the sky has not fallen. It turns out there was a rush on mortgages last week, in preparation for the new regulations, but in most cases that may not have really been necessary. It appears that things are going smoothly at most lenders. The only real “danger” is that closings may take longer at the largest banks. If you’re looking at one of them, word on the street is that closing could stretch to 60 or 75 days.

Memories can be short lived. Sure, we all remember the mortgage meltdown of 2008. But do we really remember it? Would it surprise you to learn (or remember, or fail to remember), that one — and only one — executive from a major mortgage lender was found liable in a court of law? Rebecca Mairone, then COO for a division of Countrywide, in 2013 was found liable for misrepresenting the quality of mortgages. But the story is never quite that simple, as reported by Bloomberg Business.

U.S.A. Today posted a great article on Saturday, that they borrowed from the Motley Fool. The upshot of it is, as a home buyer, you need to keep in mind that the people across the table from you are trying to sell you something. And while clearly, with interest rates at their current levels, it’s hard to know when you’ll have a better opportunity to buy a home, if ever, it’s also true that pushing yourself to the limits of your finances may not be the best decision. Here are 5 things to keep in mind.

Well, we’ve been blogging about the tightening in mortgage lending regulations for what seems like forever now, but it finally went live this weekend. The “know before you owe” rules are officially in effect. Of course, in the age of very long internet contracts that no one ever reads, it may be optimistic to hope that borrowers will read the fine print of their mortgage contracts, but that’s one of the main aims of the new rules. The Financial Times has a little more background on these and surrounding regulations.