Professional Business & Financial Services

08/10/2026

This was a quick trip but a very informative event. Good times and great people!

Continuing to learn and invest in your education and career is critical in this fast paced digital age! I'm glad to be part of Ease Mortgage, a group that recognizes the need to "level up" so that we can be the best at taking care of client needs and being at the forefront of lending opportunities. Also, I really had a great time with my talented team mates M. Graham and Greg Hamby - Your Favorite Lender who added their informed perspectives and kept classes interesting!

07/24/2026

Housing starts jumped 19% in June. Here's why that's not as good as it sounds. The headline number looked great. The details, not so much.

With total housing starts surging to a rate of 1.427 million units, June looked like a big month for homebuilding. However, that number was almost entirely driven by apartment construction bouncing back after an unusually terrible May. Single-family home construction fell for the third month in a row while multifamily starts jumped 76% in June, recovering from a 41% drop the month before.

Builder confidence sits at just 34 on the NAHB index, well below the 50 threshold that separates growth from contraction. Builders are getting squeezed by elevated mortgage rates, rising material costs, and climbing insurance and transportation expenses.

Permits fell 3% from May and are running below last year's pace. This means improvement on housing supply remains delayed because permits are the forward indicator signaling what builders plan to do over the next 6–12 months.

The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, aimed at streamlining regulations and encouraging new construction, was just signed. But NAHB chairman Bill Owens was straightforward in stating: "It will take time for these measures to take effect." One law won't close a 4-million-unit supply gap overnight.”

What that means for you: less competition on apartments, continued pressure on single-family prices, and rates that aren't dropping fast enough.

TLDR > What actually happened:
- Apartment construction bounced 76% — after crashing 41% in May
- Single-family homes fell for the 3rd month in a row
- Builder confidence at 34 — below the 50 growth threshold
- Permits fell 3% — meaning fewer homes are coming in 2025

If you're buying or selling this year, the supply picture matters for your strategy. Reach out (DM or call) and let’s talk through what this means for your situation.

07/15/2026

Most Americans want to walk from their home to their coffee shop. Almost none of them can.

And gas prices are making that gap much more expensive to ignore.

According to the National Association of Realtors’ (NAR's) latest survey, most Americans want walkable neighborhoods — but barely any exist. The NAR survey found that 64% of Americans say they'd pay more to live within walking distance of parks, shops, and restaurants.

When pushed to make a real trade-off, 59% chose a smaller-yard home in a walkable neighborhood over a bigger yard that requires more driving. Here's the catch: only 2.8% of homes nationwide actually qualify as walkable.

The numbers:

- 64% would pay more to live near parks, shops, and restaurants
- 59% picked a smaller yard in a walkable area over a bigger yard with more driving
- 15–25% price premium for walkable homes vs. car-dependent ones
- Only 2.8% of U.S. homes actually qualify as walkable

With gas up 40%+ and car payments averaging $770/month, the math on suburban sprawl is getting harder to ignore. Walkable homes sell faster and for more — the demand is there. The inventory isn't.

The key will be developers that make the projects (and numbers) work with community input.

07/02/2026

Four weeks of consistency - the housing market is trying to find its footing. Here's what this week's data actually means for you.

This week's Realtor.com data delivered a signal the market hasn't offered in some time: genuine stability. Days on market matched year-ago levels for the fourth consecutive week — a sharp reversal from earlier this year when homes were sitting 11%+ longer than the prior year, a gap that has now fully closed and held.

Inventory continues to expand. Active listings crossed 1.1 million this week — a level not seen since December 2025 — extending an unbroken streak of year-over-year inventory growth dating back to November 2023. Over that period, more than 300,000 additional homes have entered active listing status nationwide.

New listing activity added to the positive picture. More than 100,000 fresh properties came to market this past week, marking three consecutive weeks of year-over-year growth — a meaningful turn after sellers spent much of early 2026 on the sidelines.

On pricing: the annual decline in median list prices steepened, but the week-over-week picture is calm. Median list price per square foot has held flat for five straight weeks. The negative annual comparison reflects a favorable seasonal comp from last year, not fresh weakness. Price reduction share has been falling since March.

For CRE sponsors and multifamily borrowers: improved buyer-side demand metrics reduce exit risk on bridge deals, and stabilizing single-family supply dynamics often precede rental demand softening. Worth watching as the summer selling season develops.

06/25/2026

The Fed held rates. But the message was anything but neutral.

Here's what that means for CRE borrowers.

Kevin Warsh's first FOMC meeting as Fed chair produced a 12-0 vote to hold — but the more significant signal was in the language. The committee issued a flat, unhedged commitment to price stability. No qualifiers. No dot plot submission from the new chair. A deliberate signal that rate guidance now flows through the institution, not the individual.

FOMC projections now show the median member penciling in a 25bps hike before year-end, followed by easing in 2027. That's a meaningful shift — earlier this year, no hike was on the table at all. May CPI came in at its hottest since 2023, driven largely by energy disruption from the Iran conflict, which puts the inflation-fighting posture in context.

For CRE finance: floating-rate exposure deserves a fresh look. PCE data Thursday is the near-term catalyst to watch — Core YOY PCE is expected at 3.4%, and anything above that prints negative for rates. Volatility is elevated all week.

Warsh is also launching five internal task forces — covering communications, the balance sheet, data sourcing, AI's effect on productivity, and the inflation framework itself.

The week ahead is critical. PCE inflation data drops Thursday — the Fed's key measure. If Core PCE rises above 3.4%, expect rates to feel it fast. Add geopolitical pressure from the Iran situation and new Fed speakers, and volatility this week is expected to be high.

Thinking about locking your rate or floating? This is the week to have that conversation. DM us or drop a comment — we're watching the market in real time.

06/16/2026

Existing home sales posted their strongest month since December and the people driving it may surprise you - May was a moment for first-time home buyers in 2026!

11/14/2025

Buyers aren’t calling the shots yet, but stay tuned

For buyers who hold out hope for buying a home in 2025, it would be great to believe the housing market is about to flip. Realtor.com’s Allaire Conte says take heart — we're living through a market shift right now. Its slow, gentle nature just isn’t making headlines quite yet. So if you're trying to figure out whether now's the time to buy or sell, you're not alone.

She reports that after years of sellers calling all the shots, things are starting to change. Mortgage rates have dipped a bit, and active listings rose 17% year over year in September, marking the 23rd straight monthly gain. The typical home now sits for 62 days on the market—a full week longer than last year—and approximately 1 in 5 listings are cutting prices. But don't pop the Dom Perignon yet, as inventory bubbles still pop in territory significantly lower than pre-pandemic levels.

You may have forgotten what a seller's market looks like. Conte defines it as (1) there are fewer than 6 months of available housing inventory, (2) homes sell at or above asking price, (3) days on market are low (4) bidding wars become the norm again. If it all sounds familiar, it’s because most of the country has been stuck in this pattern since the early 2010s, when new-home construction never caught up after the 2008 financial crisis.

Realtor’s Chief Economist Danielle Hale noted as long ago as July that the balance of power in the housing market keeps shifting in favor of homebuyers. A report a month before that confirmed that growing inventory, price cuts, and slower-moving homes had given buyers more leverage than they'd had in years. Still, we're not swimming in buyer-market territory quite yet. Mortgage rates remain high, and list prices are holding steady, even growing a tad year over year. Think of it as “buyer-smiley” rather than buyer-controlled.

dericgurley

07/29/2025

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07/15/2025

Mortgage Applications Jumped Last Week

What a difference a day makes. A small-but-brief drop in interest rates can make one big ripple even when there is an otherwise tepid mortgage demand.

Realtor.com’s Diana Olick reports that total mortgage application volume jumped 9.4% last week compared with the previous week, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA), resulting in an adjustment for the July Fourth holiday.

The average contract interest rate was the lowest level in three months, accompanied by a 9% jump in refinance applications — 56% higher than the same week one year ago. Refinance demand has been particularly weak because mortgage rates were stuck at high levels for so long.

That 9% was mirrored by the same increase in mortgage loan applications for the week and was 25% higher than the same week one year ago.

She cites the MBA’s Joel Kan, who says, “Homebuyer demand is being fueled by increasing housing inventory and moderating home-price growth. The average loan size on a purchase application, at $432,600, was at its lowest since January 2025.”

It’s a much trickier market than those in the past, says Olick. “While purchase mortgage demand has historically trended pretty closely with actual home sales, there are a lot of unusual factors in today’s market. Consumer sentiment is unsteady, and cancellation rates on contracts have been high for both new and existing homes,” she says. “So far, pending sales, which represent signed contracts, have not been rising along with mortgage demand.”

She also reports that mortgage rates began climbing again just before the July Fourth holiday, and are up again this week so far. “It may not, however, be a sign of a stronger move higher.”

It’s not a matter of what goes up must come down, according to Mortgage Daily News’ Matthew Graham. “We often tend to see slightly brisk movement in the opposite direction after experiencing a consistent trend in the other direction. The month of June was arguably such a trend, and it took rates to their lowest levels in several months. Apart from the last few days of June, today’s rates are still the lowest since late April.”

What comes next? Anybody’s ballgame.

Realtor, TBWS

06/30/2025

Slim pickings begone

At last. Your agent is telling you that she can line up more than one or two listings for you to tour in a day. Why? Fresh listings are there for the taking, with actual time to make a decision because of a slower pace of activity after what seems like an unending sellers’ market.

While it’s not time yet for glass-half-full or full house analogies, according to Realtor.com’s Snejana Farberov, things are gradually looking up after a sluggish spring season, citing more than one million for-sale homes on the market across the U.S. Another bit of welcome news? Buyer confidence in the U.S. housing market has been on an upward trajectory, boosted by better-than-expected job and inflation reports.

It’s important not to misinterpret, however. Major affordability challenges exist and persist, driven in part by mortgage rates stuck in the mud with no tow truck in sight to pull them out, now that the Feds announced they planned to keep rates steady for the foreseeable future.

With new listings ticking up, however (increasing 3.5% from a year ago) buyers stand to gain some negotiating power over the summer months, according to Realtor’s economist Jiyai Xu. "This will be an important trend to watch, especially as regional real estate dynamics diverge and the market gradually shifts back in favor of buyers," notes Xu.

Farberov reports that the overall number of for-sale homes was up 27.5% year over year, marking the 85th straight week of annual gains in inventory.To boot, for the eighth consecutive week, there were more than 1 million listings available nationwide, marking the highest inventory level since December 2019.

Xu is careful to report that while choices for consumers have expanded, overall supply remains well below pre-pandemic levels, especially in the Midwest and Northeast, where new development has been stagnant while demand remains high. Southern metros? They now exceed pre-COVID inventory levels, fueled by faster new construction over the past several years.

“The price of the typical home increased again last week, edging up 0.9% from a year ago—but it was still down 0.3% from the beginning of 2025,” says Farberov. “The median listing price per square foot—which adjusts for changes in home size—rose 0.7% year over year.”

Xu adds, ”With inventory growing, and 1 in 5 sellers slashing prices, the pendulum is swinging back toward a balanced market, as price growth slows and buyers gain more leverage.” He also reports that homes spent five days longer than a year ago waiting for a buyer to come along and close the deal, signaling that the pace of the housing market continued to ease annually.

While the typical listing lingered unsold for 53 days last week (about the same as six years ago), it’s interesting to note that (for context) when America's housing stock was at its lowest in the spring of 2022, median time on market was as low as 28 days. No one is talking about seeing that number again anytime soon, but the rule usually says that the longer homes remain unsold, the more likely price drops will result. Time to see if that rule holds water.

Realtor, TBWS