I asked 3 lenders today how the loan tightening was affecting them.  Here’s how they responded:

Lender #1:

No doubt our industry is going through a very tough time – the toughest most of us have seen it in years.  What’s happening with the tightening of guidelines is great – in fact it should have happened much earlier and we wouldn’t be having as many problems as we have right now. Hindsight 20-20 I guess. However, we are STILL lending 100% to qualified borrowers, we are still lending to no ratio, NINA loans and stated loans – just not to 100% but 95%, which is still great. The article that you sent me that quoted what the loan officers were saying were mostly brokers. And yes, wholesale is going to tighten incredibly – the likes of any and all smaller lender, brokers – they are going to HAVE to consolidate in this market to ride out the storm. There is no other way.

Lender #2:

It’s not good anywhere.  There is absolutely no liquidity in the secondary market.  It’s a serious overreaction but that’s typically what happens in the financial sector.  Could take 90-180 days to come back to sensible pricing.

Lender #3:

The only thing we’ve done (together with the industry) is qualify interest only loans at the amortized payments, plus we did bump our jumbo rates

We still have ACORN, etc and the conforming rates have been coming down.
Business is strong, especially for an August

You know how the media likes to generalize the market and say it’s valid for the entire country.
Apparently the New York market is at an all-time high.

Knock on wood