Since the November election, mortgage rates have spiked roughly 75 basis points, promising to snuff out the refinancing market and possibly leading to a spate of industry layoffs. But so far, it appears that many firms are keeping their cost-cutting powder dry. “Application volume has been pretty much the same,” said Paul Rozo, CEO of nonbank originator Paramount Residential Mortgage Group, Corona, CA. “I think it’s too early in the game to be thinking about layoffs.” Marc Savitt, a principal in The Mortgage Center, a small West Virginia-based brokerage firm, said...
Mortgage lenders and other employers that have made or are preparing to implement changes to comply with the Department of Labor’s revised overtime pay regulations may have to reevaluate whether to hold off or go forward with those plans, according to wage and overtime experts. On Nov. 22, Judge Amos Mazzant of the Eastern District of Texas granted a request by several states to block the new overtime pay rules that would have gone into effect on Dec. 1. The judge issued a preliminary injunction after determining that the DOL did not have the authority to decide whether workers should be paid overtime based on their salary level alone. Mazzant agreed...
In case you haven’t noticed: the national debt is ready to crack the $20 trillion mark – almost twice the dollar volume of outstanding residential debt in the United States.
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