Rich Sweum's Blog

These guys are baffoons!  Keystone cops!  A vaudeville sideshow act!  Both of them are stooges of the financial sector and have done nothing but clusterize an already bad situation.  "All is well! Do not flee, we support the current structure of the GSE's!" I posted my contempt for Paulson this W...

Have you had any challenges with your MI company of choice lately?  They definitely have been taking a beating over the past 8 months as many of their stock prices have spiraled (not in a good way).  From Condo's, warrantability, cash out restrictions, credit score limitations to DTI ratios...it'...

  I first posted on this past winter of 2008, that a re-enactment of a version of the Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) created by the FDR administration in 1933 might be the cat's meow, and the only measure that the country could afford, that could stem the rising tide of foreclosures.  I rece...

KEY PHRASE: AFTER THE MERGER!  All along, I have said that the only thing that BofA is interested in is their servicing portfolio and access to current accounts for their own marketing purposes.  75% of these job cuts will be from the CW side, which is comparable to other buyout/bailout acquisiti...

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- Home prices across 20 major U.S. cities have dropped a record 15.3% in the past year and are now back to where they were in the summer of 2004, according to the Case-Shiller home price index released Tuesday by Standard & Poor's. Prices in the 20 cities are now down 17...

"You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end - which you can never afford to lose - with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be."  The Stockdale Paradox. James Stockdale  (google it.) Here is where I struggle with blind o...

What is it about July?  Well, coming to grips with horific 2nd quarter performance numbers, a new round of write downs (both residential and commercial MBS's/CDO's), AND more importantly...NO, and I mean NO arrows left in Uncle Ben's quiver that can stave off a further massive deterioration in th...

I love asking prospective clients who have to sell their home to buy another this question; "So, what do you think your house is 'worth?'"  Their first response is usually, well, a year ago our neighbor with a home a little (700sqft) larger than ours sold for $X. Then comes some painful, emotiona...

From Bloomberg: June 12 (Bloomberg) -- Retail sales in the U.S. rose twice as much as forecast in May as Americans snapped up electronics, clothes and furniture, evidence that they aren't hoarding their tax-rebate checks or using them just to pay for gasoline. (DUH, do people ever do anything els...

If Zillow doesn't raise the bar on loan quote requestors OR allow LO's to contact them directly, then each state should have 5-10 "zillow police" loan officers who can flag irresponsible LO's, get quicker responses from Zillow to remove crazy comments and fraudulent ratings.  Time and time again,...