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To Our Clients, Colleagues and Friends,<\/p>\n
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- We have an Orange County commercial bank client looking for someone to run their\u00a0 Warehouse Lending operations.\u00a0 If you or someone you know is interested and has experience working for a warehouse lender, please send resumes to us at JGarrett@GarrettWatts.com<\/a>.\u00a0 For all you snow-bound people, Orange County has the best weather in the world. It was 71 degrees when we there a few weeks ago.\u00a0\u00a0<\/li>\n
- You baseball fanatics will remember the name Rabbit Maranville, the Braves Hall of Fame infielder.
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Look at his baseball cap.\u00a0 He played in a time when caps didn\u2019t have team logos on them, so it looks like he had his customized to show a swastika.\u00a0 You might have to enlarge the picture to see it, but it\u2019s there.\u00a0 There\u2019s also a picture of Tinkers, Evers and Chance we\u2019ve seen, and one of them also had a swastika on his cap.<\/p>\n
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- We stopped at Valley Forge last week when it was covered with snow and around 20 degrees, and it made us appreciate what the winter of 1777 must have been like for George Washington and his troops. Despite disease, lack of food, and bitter cold, he held the Continental Army together and showed a perseverance which is a hallmark of Americans today. The more you read about him, the more you realize he was not just our greatest President but one of our greatest Americans as well.<\/li>\n
- We were walking through a campus bookstore recently, and we saw about 15-20 required books we really wanted to read.\u00a0 Then we saw something by Jean Paul Sartre. Yuck. It\u2019s hard to know which was the worst part of college, reading Sartre or reading Marx?<\/li>\n
- Sometimes the easiest part of succeeding is to simply do what successful competitors do. Probably 90% of highly successful companies who use a hedging advisory service are using MCM, CMC, Compass, SI, MIAC or Flatirons.\u00a0 (We\u2019re writing this at 2:00 am, so maybe we missed one.)\u00a0 These are who the top performing mortgage companies use. If you\u2019re using Bill & Ted\u2019s Excellent Hedging Service, and if no one else has ever heard of them, you might have a problem.\u00a0 If you are<\/em> using Bill & Ted, you should still contact one of the companies named above and start to learn how they<\/em> operate.\u00a0\u00a0 We\u2019re 99% certain you\u2019ll find out how much better you could be doing.<\/li>\n
- Last week we told the joke about Bank of New York, but we accidentally combined it with some other item that made it look not-so-funny.\u00a0 So here it is again:
\nBank of New York was founded by Alexander Hamilton, and as you remember from American History, he was killed in a duel with Aaron Burr.\u00a0 If you\u2019ve done business with this bank, you also know that it can be stodgy and slow moving.\u00a0 The joke is that as he got ready for his duel, Hamilton told the bank staff \u201cDon\u2019t do a thing till I get back.\u201d\u00a0 We find this hilarious,<\/li>\n- Spring training is starting, and isn\u2019t there something exciting about that? We once read a book with a title something like Why Life Begins on Opening Day<\/em>, and doesn\u2019t that say it all?<\/li>\n
- WSJ reporter Bob Hagerty does some of the best investigative journalism we\u2019ve seen, and we noticed yesterday a WSJ article written by James E. Hagerty.\u00a0\u00a0 Who\u2019s this other guy?\u00a0 He also writes beautifully.<\/li>\n
- PMI reported a tough quarter with paid claims of $518 million, but the good news is that delinquency growth slowed and new delinquent notices were down.\u00a0 All M.I. companies have had some tough times lately, but PMI is definitely a survivor.<\/li>\n
- Think big or think small:\u00a0 When we\u2019re in a shop that is under leveraged, we like to run 3-4 scenarios showing what greater<\/em> loan volume would to earnings.\u00a0 When we see high volume shops, we like to run 3-4 scenarios showing loan volume shrinking<\/em> by various percentages and margins doing the same. You can do these scenarios on your own with a basic spread sheet, and we think you should be running these every month.\u00a0 When things change in this business, they change quicker and to a greater extent than anyone could have imagined, so knowing in advance what the impact might be can be good preparation for when the market turns.<\/li>\n
- The management at PHH noted in an earnings release that their mortgage production breakeven level is currently $28 billion annually or $2.3 billion a month.\u00a0 If a big public mortgage company thinks it\u2019s important to know their break-even number, every mortgage company should know theirs.<\/li>\n
- Is your Succession Plan current.\u00a0 Think of your top 3-4 people.\u00a0 If one of them got hit by a truck tomorrow or gave you two weeks notice, do you know exactly how you\u2019d handle their absence? Do you already have 2-3 names of possible replacements? Well-run companies plan ahead. Top employees come and go, and maybe some will get hit by that proverbial bus, but you just don\u2019t want to get caught flat-footed.<\/li>\n
- We made reference to CMG Mortgage Insurance Co. being out of business, and boy were we wrong!\u00a0 They\u2019re still in business and quite actively insuring new loans.\u00a0 They\u2019re among the highest-rated private mortgage insurers in the country and an eligible mortgage insurer for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They\u2019re meeting all existing loan obligations and have sufficient capital and reserves to pay all claims for new and existing business. The company continues to be an approved mortgage insurer with both Government-Sponsored Enterprises.<\/li>\n
- College endowments got clobbered last year, but some did worse than others. We saw one study that lusted the ten worst:<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
- Last week we told the joke about Bank of New York, but we accidentally combined it with some other item that made it look not-so-funny.\u00a0 So here it is again:
- You baseball fanatics will remember the name Rabbit Maranville, the Braves Hall of Fame infielder.