Author: Press Room

The client approached my desk, clearly unhappy. Her new granite countertops didn’t look as handsome in her kitchen as she had expected. She thought maybe the fabricator had installed the wrong slab. I sent our project manager to the job site, paperwork in hand, to check. He confirmed that she did get the Santa Cecilia – very popular in 2005 – she’d chosen. The problem was her lighting, which was making the heavily patterned gold and brown stone look downright ugly. If tunable lighting had been available back then, her problem could have been solved with simple user-operated color controls.…

Home prices in the United States increased 5.5% year-over-year in January, according to the latest data by CoreLogic. However, prices dropped by 0.2% on a month-over-month basis.  CoreLogic projected that home prices will decrease by 0.1% on a month-over-month basis from January to February this year, but will increase on a year-over-year basis by 3.1% from January 2023 to January 2024.These are the states with the highest price increases, based on CoreLogic’s data:  Florida (13.4%)Maine (11.5%)South Carolina (10.7%)”While 2023 kicked off on a more optimistic note for the U.S. housing market, recent mortgage rate volatility highlights how much uncertainty remains,”…

Our goal here at Credible Operations, Inc., NMLS Number 1681276, referred to as “Credible” below, is to give you the tools and confidence you need to improve your finances. Although we do promote products from our partner lenders who compensate us for our services, all opinions are our own. Rates for well-qualified borrowers using the Credible marketplace to refinance student loans rose this week for 10-year fixed-rate loans and fell for 5-year variable-rate loans. For borrowers with credit scores of 720 or higher who used the Credible marketplace to select a lender during the week of Feb. 27, 2023:Rates on…

The White House will propose a rule intended to lower credit card late fees to approximately $8.  The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) will propose the rule at President Biden’s fourth Competition Council meeting.BIDEN CLOSES REMARKS ON ‘JUNK’ FEES: ‘I APPRECIATE THE FRUSTRATION OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE’ “Over a decade ago, Congress banned excessive credit card late fees, but companies have exploited a regulatory loophole that has allowed them to escape scrutiny for charging an otherwise illegal junk fee,” CFPB Director Rohit Chopra said in a press release. “Today’s proposed rule seeks to save families billions of dollars and ensure…

A growing number of Americans are falling behind on their car payments, an ominous sign for the U.S. economy as high car prices and persistent inflation strain household budgets.  Car repossessions tumbled in the early days of the pandemic when the government sent $5 trillion in stimulus money to American homes and businesses. But they have progressively ticked higher as sky-high prices for used and new cars alike forced consumers to take out bigger loans.  In January, the percentage of auto borrowers who were at least 60 days late on their bills climbed 2% from December and 20.4% from a…

Recent banking turmoil in the U.S. and Europe has been a source of panic, but analysts are pointing to a pocket of opportunity: the preferred shares of the big banks. “Of all the asset price movements driven by the banking panic in the past few weeks, one of the few notable pockets of value created in markets appears to be subordinated financial debt,” Citi said in a April 2 note, referring to preferred shares of banks. The large banks are “doing just fine,” Loreen Gilbert, CEO of WealthWise Financial, told CNBC’s ” Street Signs Asia ” on Monday. She said…

China began a second day of drills around Taiwan on Sunday as the island’s defence ministry reported multiple air force sorties and said it was monitoring the movement of China’s missile forces, as the United States said it was watching too.China, which claims democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory, began three days of military exercises around the island on Saturday, the day after Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen returned from a brief visit to the United States.While a security source told Reuters most of Saturday’s activities ended by sundown, Taiwan’s defense ministry said they had resumed on Sunday and the…

The International Monetary Fund warned this week of “vulnerabilities” among so-called non-bank financial institutions, saying global financial stability could hinge on their resilience. The Bank of England called attention to the same issue last month. And global investors surveyed by Bank of America in the middle of the recent banking crisis pointed to a group of US non-banks — rather than traditional lenders such as the newly defunct Silicon Valley Bank — as the most likely source of a credit crisis. But what exactly are non-banks and how risky are they? The term encompasses financial firms, other than banks, that…

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Bitcoin (BTC), the leading cryptocurrency in the world, dropped to the $28,000 level from the $28,300 level on Thursday. Bitcoin’s previous upward rally slowed after gaining 20% in March, its biggest month since January. Bitcoin reached a high of $29,173 in March, but it was a short-lived spike. In the meantime, the Ethereum price dropped from $1,941 to $1,870 on Thursday. However, it increased by 10.6% in March and by 56% this year. Although, traders seem to be hesitant to place any strong bids in BTC as investors awaited the release of the US non-farm payroll data, which is set to be…