So where are people moving? With all the midrises, townhomes and highrises appearing, is it urban? Or are people still moving out to the ‘burbs and exurbs for their single family dream? Wendell Cox fromDemograhia suggests that things are returning to normal, and that means most employment growth is happening outside the urban cores of the 52 major metropolitan areas (over 1 million population). As the chart shows, annual job growth from 2010 – 2013 is in the urban core (CBD or Central Business District), Later Suburb and Exurb. Just to confuse things a bit, Joe Courtright of City Observatory suggests the opposite, that job growth in City Center is faster than job growth in what Courtright calls the Periphery.

How could a new Federal agency named the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau have any chance of being a good thing? Not to mention the clunky initials – CFPB – they are trying to brand themselves with. Anyway, this new set of regulations takes effect on all residential loans on August 1st – it is important to note that loans applied for and in process prior to August 1st will not be impacted by CFPB. It combines or ‘integrates,’ to use their term, TILA and RESPA disclosures and procedures. Brandon Ehrlich from HomeStreet was nice enough to debrief our team this year, in spite of my obvious disdain. There will be much more info coming from a variety of sources. To me, it makes a 60 day closing – – if we’re lucky – – the new closing timeline norm. It places more power and control in the hands of lenders (!), and, in my opinion, will add more pieces of paper to an already clunky process. There, I feel better.