2014, an unknown so make it good!

"There are good days and there are bad days, this is one of them," Lawrence Welk, American musician.
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Winchester Cathederal at Christmas, Hampshire England

Shared by Uros Kralj
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What can we make of the seeming incongruity of indicators in the housing market as 2013 comes to a close?
Mortgage applications recently hit a 13-year low. Existing home sales fell for the third consecutive month – and for the first time on a year-over-year basis in quite some time. Pending home sales also fell for the third consecutive month. But homebuilder sentiment rose significantly, we saw an enormous spike in housing starts, and existing home prices continue to creep up, although more slowly than they rose earlier in the year. --Rick Sharga in REWired
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Shared by Uros Kralj
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The year in review: HW memes revisit the top mortgage finance stories of 2013  http://www.housingwire.com/blogs/1-rewired/post/28409-the-year-in-review-hw-memes-revisit-the-top-news-stories-of-2013
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Sortelha, http://www.flickriver.com/places/Portugal/Guarda/Sortelha/

Shared by Xalima Miriel
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One of the nation’s largest wholesale mortgage lenders is telling its brokers they can no longer negotiate the amount of their fee with borrowers.

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“Borrower-paid compensation will no longer be negotiated and the ‘lender-paid level’ will become a uniform broker compensation level,” Provident Funding Associates says in updating its loan officer compensation policy.
Borrowers can still pay the broker directly, but the amount of the compensation must be the same as lender-paid compensation, according to the new policy that went into effect Jan. 1. - Brian Collins in Origination News
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Barcelona, Spain

Shared by Gia Huy Au Duong
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The coming year may bring an intensely activist and somewhat partisan Federal Housing Finance Agency, a general slowing of the housing market’s growth compared to 2013, and a full-court press election-year push on key issues influencing the housing and investments markets. -- HousingWire
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Nat'l Real Estate Post:
...real estate news and mortgage news we’ve got a new security on the streets. Instead of mortgage backed securities, we’ve now got CEO Stephen A. Schwarzman of the Blackstone Group packaging up rent backed securities. 
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Ceremonial room ceiling of a palace in southern Germany.  Shared by Klaus Herrman