This is one of those stories that most people won’t understand, but one of the things that makes the mortgage business work is being able to access warehouse lines of credit to fund mortgages.  Warehouse lines had all but become extinct in the past year or so.

According to this Housing Wire story, GMAC’s ResCap is going to start to expand their warehouse lending practice.  This is the kind of oil that lubes to financing business.  This is encouraging news and while it won’t have an immediate impact, this is moving things in the right direction.

ResCap is a Twin Cities based mortgage company and they will be expanding their workforce by 1,000 people to handle the reviving mortgage business.   Unfortunately for Minnesotans, none of the jobs will be here in Minnesota.  (I’m sure it would have nothing to do with this).  They are looking to hire in North Carolina and Pennsylvania.  For more details see this Bloomberg story.

Minnesota has historically significantly outperformed most of the U.S. with good employment numbers.  Now in this recession, it looks like we played catch-up with the unemployment numbers in a hurry the past 6-7 months.  Check out the steepness of the graph below.

Minnesota has some serious headwinds even once this recovery begins.  My guess is Minnesota will lag the U.S. in recovery.  The State budget is a train wreck although you just don’t know it yet.  The problems are building and we will feel the drag in the Minnesota economy for the foreseeable future.  On top of that, it’s too costly to do business here compare to other states.

To see how any state is doing compared to the national average, check out this site from the Indiana Business Bulletin for an interactive map.