Famed Investor Bill Gross Calls For Massive Taxpayer-Backed Mortgage Refinance Initiative

Famed Investor Bill Gross Calls For Massive Taxpayer-Backed Mortgage Refinance Initiative: "The head of the world's biggest bond fund, bemoaning the slow economic recovery, reignited debate Tuesday by publicly supporting a massive new refinance program currently roiling the mortgage bond market by describing it as a form of fiscal stimulus that wouldn't add to the deficit."

Treaty Investor Visa (E-2) - Avvo.com

Treaty Investor Visa (E-2) - Avvo.com

he E-2 classification is authorized for a national of a country with which the United States has a commercial treaty, who is coming to the United States solely to direct and develop the operations of an enterprise in which he or she has invested, or is actively involved in the process of investing, a substantial amount of capital.

Can a reverse mortgage help you have a better retirement?

Can a reverse mortgage help you have a better retirement?: "Three years ago, Loxahatchee resident James Gamble was preparing for retirement. His home was paid off, he wasn't married, and he has no children needing an inheritance.

So to finance his retirement - and a summer home in West Virginia - Gamble took out a reverse mortgage, getting about $200,000 out of a house he paid an estimated $85,000 for in 1994."

The American dream of the Chinese rich

The American dream of the Chinese rich: "A US property agent draws potential Chinese customers with promises of green cards at a real estate fair in Beijing in this file picture taken in late June. (Photo by Wu Changqing for China Daily)

Yvonne Liu, 22, wanted to stay in the United States after her university studies, and her mother, a 46-year-old wealthy Chinese businesswoman, figured out a way to make that happen.

Lily Zhang flew to the US to look for investment opportunities. Her plan was to move some of her international trade business from the city of Xiamen in southern China to southern California."

Survey Shows Europeans Wish to Retire Abroad, In the Sun

Survey Shows Europeans Wish to Retire Abroad, In the Sun: "Survey Shows Europeans Wish to Retire Abroad, In the Sun
August 18th, 2010 � No Comments

Europeans retirees want to retire in warmer climates and predominantly in countries other than their own according to a new survey of 7,500 European workers from Aon Consulting.� Spain was the most popular retirement destination and also had the highest percentage of respondents who were citizens that wanted to remain in their home country for retirement."

FT.com / Commodities - Florida output forecast dents orange juice

FT.com / Commodities - Florida output forecast dents orange juice: "Florida output forecast dents orange juice
By Gregory Meyer
Published: August 17 2010 20:11 | Last updated: August 17 2010 22:22
The forthcoming orange crop in Florida, the world’s second-largest producing region, will be more than 10 per cent larger than last season, according to two closely watched private sector forecasts.

The new production outlook sent the price of frozen concentrated orange juice futures to a three-month low, but on Tuesday prices rebounded slightly.

EDITOR’S CHOICE
Investors remain keen, if cautious, on commodities - Aug-17

Investors turn to commodities when other markets fail to deliver - Aug-17

A centuries-old concept, futures trading has kept pace with the times - Aug-17

High demand for coffee’s perfect brew - Aug-17

Global oil-price benchmarks are not foolproof - Aug-17

Central banks and investors weigh in as gold market transforms - Aug-17

Orange juice is a $20bn industry with prices affecting farmers in Florida and Brazil, processors, trading houses and bottlers such as Coca-Cola and PepsiCo.

Florida is the world’s second-largest orange growing area after S�o Paulo state in Brazil. But its orange crop has dwindled as disease and real estate development have taken their toll. The state’s most recent crop was 18 per cent lower than the previous season."

USCIS - EB-5 Stakeholder Meeting

USCIS - EB-5 Stakeholder Meeting: "EB-5 Stakeholder Meeting

The Office of Public Engagement and the Service Center Operations Directorate invite you to participate in our upcoming stakeholder engagements to discuss the EB-5 (Immigrant Investor) program. The next engagement will take place on October 14, 2010 at 1:00PM (Eastern Time). To help you plan your participation, we have also established the following meeting dates for fiscal year 2011. Please note that some meetings will be in person and by telephone and some meetings will be via teleconference only.

Each engagement will be an opportunity for USCIS to share information on the EB-5 program and address stakeholder’s related topics of interest. We ask that you submit suggested agenda topics or themes to us by the deadline shown for the corresponding event. An open forum for questions and answers will be provided at each of these engagements, but please bear in mind that we will not address case-specific inquiries."

Reverse Market Insight � Reverse Mortgage Borrower Analysis, Part 2

Reverse Market Insight � Reverse Mortgage Borrower Analysis, Part 2: "Since Line of Credit (LoC) is the payment plan option selected by a vast majority of borrowers and is currently mandatory on Fixed HECMs due to full draw requirements, we’ve narrowed our focus to just the HECM ARM population and chopped off the top 60% of the chart to see the change more clearly.
Under 8% of HECM ARM borrowers in their 60s select one of the four monthly payment options (excluding LoC), whereas 32% of those over 100 select a monthly payment option. Given the greater tenure payments available to older borrowers this would seem more attractive to older borrowers, but the level of change surprised us.
So what does all this mean? We suspect that many will see product development opportunities and others likely see sales and marketing implications. We’re as interested as everyone else to see what this means for our market, but the resounding bottom line remains that the reverse mortgage market is in great need of market segmentation and diversity in our approaches to growing the business."

Reverse Market Insight � Reverse Mortgage Industry Trends – June 2010

Reverse Market Insight � Reverse Mortgage Industry Trends – June 2010

Another month in the rear view mirror, and we’ve officially reached the halfway point for the year. We’ve already seen a bounce in volumes from the May low and signs of life from the broker side of our industry, but who are the winners and losers among the states and metro markets around the country?

• Texas and Maryland continue to outperform among the top 10 states, down -26% and -23%, respectively
• Maryland’s strength is mostly attributable to the mini refi boom in Baltimore, which remains the only positive performer among the top 10 cities, up 12%
• Houston is the engine for Texas, down just -11%
• Philadelphia is a surprising metro we haven’t talked much about lately, but is down just -5% from last year at this time
• California has a virtual lock on average loan size growth, with 9 of the top 10 cities – but looking at total loan volume growth is an entirely different story. New Orleans, Baltimore, Tulsa and Santa Fe all rang up more loan volume by Maximum Claim Amount dollars than last year.

Internal USCIS memo suggests improvements for EB-5

Internal USCIS memo suggests improvements for EB-5: "Some EB-5 regional centers are in Targeted Employment Areas (TEAs). Federal law defines such regions as “a rural area or an area that has experienced high unemployment of at least 150 percent of the national average.” These locations can be attractive to foreign investors, as only a $500,000 investment is needed to meet the requirements of the EB-5 visa program.

According to the USCIS, China produced the most successful investors in the EB-5 visa program with 1,979. South Korea had 903 people who earned U.S. green cards through the program, the second most."

Reverse Market Insight � 2010 � August

Reverse Market Insight � 2010 � August

Summary:

Reverse Mortgage Wholesale Leaders – June 2010

After a very tough May for the reverse mortgage broker business, June provided a welcome bounce that almost kept pace with retail/direct endorsements. Broker volume grew 15.2% while retail/direct grew slightly faster at 17.6% as the overall business regained some traction from May’s trough levels. Retail/direct volumes have continued to outpace broker loans, continuing the trend started last month but we’ll wait a while before calling this the new world order for reverse.

One of the interesting trends we’re watching is the consolidation of lending in the reverse mortgage market toward fewer, larger lenders. We’ve written about this before, and it’s an interesting complementary perspective to the count of active lenders and average loans per lender.

Here’s a good illustration:

• In 2008, there were 2,950 active lenders, compared to 3,151 in 2009
• The 100 largest lenders for 2008 shrank -6.8% in 2009, but the other 2,850 lenders actually grew by 4.6%

South Florida Beaches Expected to Dodge BP Oil Spill - Real Estate Channel Global News Center

South Florida Beaches Expected to Dodge BP Oil Spill - Real Estate Channel Global News Center

Many homeowners across South Florida still owe more than home's worth

Many homeowners across South Florida still owe more than home's worth

My Panama Lawyer: EB-5 visa still attractive for the millionaires moving to the US

My Panama Lawyer: EB-5 visa still attractive for the millionaires moving to the US

Heat Stress in the Elderly

CDC Extreme Heat | Heat Stress in the Elderly: "Heat Stress in the Elderly
Elderly people (that is, people aged 65 years and older) are more prone to heat stress than younger people for several reasons:

Elderly people do not adjust as well as young people to sudden changes in temperature.
They are more likely to have a chronic medical condition that changes normal body responses to heat.
They are more likely to take prescription medicines that impair the body's ability to regulate its temperature or that inhibit perspiration."

Reverse Market Insight � Industry Trends

Reverse Market Insight � Industry Trends

Reverse Mortgage Industry Trends – May 2010

Since we already know that May’s volume levels rebounded a bit in June, it doesn’t feel quite so disheartening to show the headline graph from this month’s Reverse Mortgage Industry Trends report.

HECM Endorsement Trends by Year

Volumes for each month this year have been below 2009 thanks to startlingly low application counts, but now the task before us all is to improve on the 39% decline YTD. No one is expecting a 100,000 loan year anymore, but it’s shocking to realize that 80,000 would represent significant progress given what we’ve seen so far.

So where is the volume coming from next month and for the rest of the year? Last month we looked at HECM Purchase, which has been growing steadily (up almost70% last month vs. 2009), but started from nothing in late 2008 so we need more than just impressive growth figures (last eight months = 910 total loans). We continue to believe that the potential exists for 10,000 or more loans annually from this program, so we thought it would make sense to share that high level analysis with you here.

There are a few key steps in this quick analysis, and we’ll be the first to admit this is back of the envelope rather than something we can prove in our normal style from hard data. That being said, the numbers get interesting very quickly.

• There are 23.2 million senior homeowner households in the US as of 2008
• According to a 1991 study by the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University, only 7.4 percent of seniors moved in a given year, which we’ve adjusted down to 6% due to their lower survey age
• Statistics range from 60-80% of seniors owning their homes outright, so we took the more conservative assumption that only 20% of seniors would use mortgage financing to purchase a home

That leaves some 280,000 seniors purchasing homes annually with mortgage financing, so HECM’s opportunity is to capture some portion of that. Whether you believe that HECM can capture 5% or 50%, we still have a large market to address. Of course, that also doesn’t consider seniors who otherwise would not be able to move or buy a house with traditional mortgage financing, but could through a HECM Purchase.

It’s not the only answer to today’s tough market conditions, but it certainly pencils as part of a larger solution.

Click on the image below to view the full Industry Trends report for this month.

Reverse Mortgage Industry Trends – April 2010

We’ve been talking the past few months about a few specific markets around the country that have weathered the storm of decreased volume, most notably Baltimore. Rather than beat the Baltimore drum another month, let’s talk about a slightly different topic that caught our interest this past month.

We’ve been underwhelmed by the volume (or lack thereof) of HECMs for home purchase since the program’s introduction but we think it’s time to look a little closer at what’s happened thus far. But while the total has been uninspiring, the trend is definitely headed in the right direction.

Take a look at the chart below for an illustration how this tiny niche of the HECM market grew over the course of 2010.

The market grew nicely over the year even as principal limits were reduced in October, although it’s very early to tell whether HECM Purchase is more or less affected by those changes. Another interesting way to look at the volume is to see where the product is doing well geographically, as illustrated below.

It’s perhaps no surprise to see some of the leading HECM states in CA and FL take charge here as well, but if you’re doing business in either of these states perhaps these charts can help you point out the value of HECM Purchase to your business network. HECMs assisted in closing over 1,200 home sale transactions last year for almost $325 million in home value.

It’s a small number today, but it points the way toward incremental growth both for our own senior market and for real estate business partners.

Click on the image below to view the full Industry Trends report for this month.

Reverse Mortgage Industry Trends – March 2010

If you want to see a telling visual of our industry’s pain, check out page 1 of this month’s report. The first graph showing year over year endorsement trends shows just how tough the road has been recently for reverse mortgage professionals from a volume perspective, with a huge gap opening up between the blue line representing 2009 and 2010’s sickly purple line. (To make it easier for all to see, we are referencing the graph below:)

It certainly doesn’t help the comparison that we had a nice rise in March 2009 resulting from the $625K lending limit increase. We’ve been talking recently about the encouraging uptick in application volumes, but that will take at least another month or two to show up here due to endorsement lag times.

So now that we have the bad news out of the way, let’s talk about some bright spots. In keeping with the increased lending limits mentioned above and our recent analysis of refinance volumes, you might be surprised to find out just how effective the lending limit increases still are at affecting the dollar volumes of different markets and lenders around the country – even one year after our last lending limit increase.

Baltimore is a great example of refinance success in a market by enterprising lenders, and this month’s report shows another good opportunity in growing markets. To highlight, let’s look at the MCA Growth Table at bottom of page 2:

Every city on this list has seen significant increases in dollar volumes that drive revenue and profit for lenders (and put dollars in senior borrowers’ pockets), with many doubling compared to last year. Since we’re showing you the result of lenders’ collective efforts in these areas it goes without saying that you won’t be the first to discover these growth opportunities, but the scale of these markets suggest that there could easily be more potential here than is currently being tapped.

We’ve consistently noticed that despite the large numbers of active lenders in big markets, many metro areas still look relatively under-served compared to rural communities when we look at senior households per active lender on our Market Opportunity Report, but it also is evident on this report in a more bottom line measure: average loans per lender. Check out the table below for a quick look:

It’s worth pointing out that Brooklyn shows up at the top of the MCA chart and here as well, but notice that Chicago has both the most active lenders and second highest loans per lender average. Sure, it’s hard to make a living just originating three loans a month in Chicago if that’s all you’re doing, but remember that’s the average – there are a lot of lenders doing much more than that in just that one market. Same goes for the other cities listed here, which have more active lenders than every other city but still show decent volumes per lender.

For those inclined to be pessimistic we freely admit that there are also a lot of lenders that do less than average in each of these cities, just as there isn’t a silver lining without a dark cloud. In the meantime, our optimistic clients can keep thinking about how lower upfront costs can reach a whole new customer base that doesn’t want every last dollar in their hands today.

If there’s any truth to the long touted statistic that 4 out of 5 senior homeowners don’t have a mortgage (and we think there is), then it stands to reason that lenders offering an efficient means of making that equity available for future emergencies at little cost today breaks new ground for where this industry can go from here.

Click on the image below to view the full report for this month.

Source: http://www.rminsight.net archives