Money Matters- Finally!

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In our final round up of the year, I'm delighted to see the Fed increase rates a .25% after 2 years of speculation by all the experts at every Federal reserve meeting.

Frankly, I expected the Fed to delay once again as I was predicting the first quarter of 2016, but I'm very pleased they finally pushed the increase through. Now, all the speculation and anticipation is out of the way and we can focus on the markets as I don't believe we'll see another rate increase until Q4 of 2016 at the earliest. I had been saying for months that the longer the Fed waited, the more damage would be caused as it would be seen by the world as a sign that the US economy couldn't withstand a minimal increase of .25%.

Interestingly, the markets reaction with 10 Year Treasury yields has been somewhat muted because of the holidays and shortened trading sessions. Going forward, I expect there is a much better chance that yields on the 10 year Treasury will improve towards the 2% mark vs. moving higher.

With interest rates still at historic lows and strength in the banking sector in 2015, there will be a lot of fresh capital in 2016 to finance real estate of all types.

We want to wish you all a very happy, healthy and prosperous new year and to thank you for the support and confidence you placed in us in 2015 which marked one of our biggest years since our inception in 2001 for both residential and commercial loans.

Money Matters: Markets are Confused!

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The September Jobs report released Friday wasn’t pretty. Expectations were at 205,000 but came in well short at 142,000 and July and August were revised down by a total of 59K. This, in addition to other current factors discussed earlier, will most likely postpone any rate increase out to the first quarter of 2016 at the earliest. In fact, Fed Fund Futures are now pricing-in the first rate hike in March 2016! The Labor Force Participation Rate fell to 62.4%, the lowest since October 1977. The only positive note, if there is one, is that the rate of people seeking full-time employment who have been unsuccessful in their search, including part-time workers, fell to 10%, the lowest since June 2008. That’s one out of every ten people in the country that can work and wants to work can’t find work!

All of this confusion has caused rates to rally and mortgage rates are dropping for both commercial and residential real estate. Year end is rapidly approaching and if you have a loan that needs to be funded before year end, now is the time to act as everyone gets very busy closing out their current pipeline and very little attention will be paid to new loan requests.

Our latest transaction to brag about is a client who called and said, “my property was appraised better than what the lender expected and everything was nearing completion, but at the last minute they decided to cut back my loan amount because they said ‘I was getting too much cash out.’” This is a lender that they had done multiple transactions with. We stepped in and within 45 days got a larger loan amount than the original commitment ($8,300,000), at a better rate with better overall terms!