A recent release from the American Enterprise Institute harkened back to Milton Friedman’s discussion of the now famous I, Pencil essay by Leonard Read. In short, I, Pencil tells the story of a pencil and the multitude of factors that go into its assembly. Where does the wood come from? How is it transported? What goes into the production of the ... Read More ›

Last week, I had the distinct pleasure of attending the First American Risk Intelligence Forum in Nashville, Tennessee. It was my first visit to Nashville and it did not disappoint. The tour of the Country Music Hall of Fame, and the dinner and country music at City Winery were fabulous. Read More ›

Not all housing markets are the same, particularly in their path to recovery since the housing market bubble popped almost a decade ago. Measuring the severity and duration of collapse by market and the amount of price recovery to date reinforces that not all housing market recoveries are created equal. Some markets are already better off than ... Read More ›

Five-years ago this week, Dodd-Frank was signed into law, ushering in a new era in mortgage lending. While the merits of the bill are still being weighed, mortgage originators and title and settlement service providers are grappling with the implementation of one component of Dodd-Frank – TILA-RESPA Integrated Disclosure (TRID). TRID is part of a ... Read More ›

Housing market improving as underperformance gap between existing-home sales and market capacity shrinks. First American’s proprietary Existing-Home Sales Capacity (EHS-C) model provides a gauge on whether existing-homes sales are under capacity or over capacity based on current market fundamentals. For the month of June, the EHS-C rate decreased ... Read More ›

Over the weekend, Greece signed up for an agreement with the European Union that saved it from a “Grexit” (Greek exit from the Eurozone). In other news, the Chinese stock market has finally stabilized almost a third off its early June peak. Yet this wasn’t necessarily the result of the market alone, but significant intervention on the part of the ... Read More ›