The MBA's National Advocacy Conference in DC wrapped up this week, and any time you have a gaggle of mortgage personnel in one place, talk in the hallways inevitably turned to current market conditions. For example, servicing rights have increased in value, and MSR trading multiples are in the mid 5x range for certain cohorts (markedly higher than the 4x1 value where it was for years), depending on asset mix, recapture assumptions, and servicing execution. Servicing portfolio

Walk through enough mortgage operations and a pattern emerges: lenders have applied automation with considerable sophistication to the tasks that needed it least, and left the moments that matter most to chance. The result is an experience that feels seamless until it suddenly doesn't. And when it breaks, it breaks at exactly the wrong time. This is not an argument against automation. Under sustained margin compression and declining origination volumes, cost discipline is not

“Friction” has quickly become the mortgage industry’s favorite word, but like most buzzwords, it risks being overused and under examined. Everyone wants to remove it, from origination to capital markets to post-closing, but few stop to ask where it actually lives or why it persists. The reality is that friction is not a singular flaw; it’s the visible output of deeper design issues. It shows up in rising costs to originate, in employee frustration, and in the quiet inefficien

For years, mortgage lenders have optimized the wrong end of the funnel. Entire operating models are built around application-to-submission ratios, pull-through rates, lock efficiency, and funding velocity. The industry has become exceptionally good at measuring what happens after a borrower is “in.” But the uncomfortable truth is this: most of the damage is already done before the application ever exists. The real leakage point -- the one that quietly drains revenue, distorts

For lenders, the most important metric is often the one they do not measure. For all the dashboards tracking pull-through, pipeline conversion, lock fallout, and funded loan volume, there is a gap at the very beginning of the mortgage funnel that continues to erode performance in ways most organizations do not fully see. That gap is application abandonment: the borrowers who start an application with intent, engage just enough to indicate demand, and then disappear before eve

“People who cheat on their taxes disgust me. This is not the kind of world I want to raise my 23 dependents in.” While FHFA Director Pulte is caught up in another controversy , this time with Donald Trump’s Jesus meme, wanna know how much your state makes in taxes every year? Here you go. Mortgage loan originators are very concerned with fiscal issues, as well as who their clients are. What better way than… the Census Bureau! The U.S. Census Bureau released a downloadable fi

April 15… Tax Day. “Donald Trump is introducing a 30 percent tax on shredded cheese. It's part of his plan to Make America Grate Again.” Plenty of people were, no doubt, working on their federal taxes last night, as well as state income taxes although nine states don’t have income tax and others, like Mississippi and Oklahoma, are seeking to eliminate it altogether. Some of those working on their taxes could very well have bought or refinanced a home last month. According to

“A tax versus a fine? A fine is a tax for doing something wrong. A tax is a fine for doing something right.” Yes, the traditional tax deadline is tomorrow, with our tax dollars funding a plethora of government programs and payrolls. Money for the government can come from individual income taxes, payroll taxes, and corporate income taxes, and it collects revenue from excise taxes, estate taxes, tariffs, and fees, which together finance public services and programs. It’s hard t

Last month, the Trump administration issued an executive order  aimed at housing finance. Within the EO the following was spelled out: Sec .  7 .   Digital Mortgage Modernization .  The Secretary of HUD, the Secretary of VA, and the Director of the FHFA shall consider, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law:   (i) eliminating unnecessary wet-signature requirements for disclosures, applications, closing documents, and similar documents; (ii) standardizing acceptance

For nearly anyone working in the residential mortgage industry since the mid-1980s, our industry has been shaped by a single, powerful force: the refinance cycle. Rates fell, borrowers refinanced, volumes surged, and the system reset. That pattern repeated itself as the ten-year treasury rate consistently and repetitively fell during a 40-year cycle becoming so ingrained that it came to define how lenders built their businesses, how capital flowed through the system, and how

The mortgage industry has long been defined by the paradox of being both highly standardized and deeply manual, governed by rigid guidelines yet executed through labor-intensive processes that leave ample room for inconsistency and friction. This is most evident in underwriting, where highly trained professionals sift through stacks of borrower documents (i.e., pay stubs, tax returns, bank statements) reconciling data and translating findings into conditions that drive the lo

If you want to be paid to move to, or stay in, Detroit, this new program paying big bucks is your chance! Hats off to those marketing folks… Do you know the difference between “used,” “pre-owned,” and “pre-loved?” Marketing. Words matter. Do you know the difference between a mortgage and a lien? A mortgage (“death pledge," same root as mortician or mortuary) is the loan you take out to buy property, and a lien is a clause in the mortgage contract which gives the lender the r

Collections of people who work at lenders, investors, and especially third-party providers spend a chunk of their time in hotels, probably rack up loyalty points with certain hotel chains. They’re an “asset” for you, but a “liability” for hotels. Hotel and motel chains have to literally account for the fact that they technically owe their customers money. This adds up: seven large hotel groups collectively owe $11.6 billion to their guests , squirreled away across millions of

Let’s take a look at the mail bag. “Rob, with the war in the Middle East pushing gas prices higher, and transportation costs impacting everything, are you seeing a shift in what lender sales managers are telling their staff? ” Absolutely. We are constantly reminded that interest rates are out of our control, and lenders are focusing on how to grow in a tough market, and training and encouraging MLOs to use the tools they have to help borrowers and “play the long game.” Having

The mortgage industry loves to talk about the future. For at least a decade, that future has sounded the same: fully digital, end-to-end, frictionless. Every few years, we give it a new label: “digital mortgage,” “point-of-sale transformation,” “tip-to-tail.” Now it’s AI. Same promise, new packaging. And yet, here we are; still stitching together systems, still reconciling numbers between screens, still asking humans to interpret what machines should already know. The issue i

My cat Myrtle never had much use for a credit report. Nor credit scores, which came along in 1958, nor a FICO score (1989). Millions of borrowers were analyzed without them. Rumors swirl of the FHFA, overseer of Freddie and Fannie, “operationalizing” VantageScore any day now. VantageScore, created in 2006, is a joint venture by the three major credit bureaus (Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion). Will it change your lending process? Possibly. Do government regulations change yo

After years as a housing economist, it becomes clear that the numbers only tell part of the housing story. On paper, it is straightforward. Prices, incomes, and interest rates interact to determine affordability. In practice, it is far more complicated because those numbers are filtered through human behavior, perception, and trust. That gap between what is true and what people believe to be true is at the crux of today’s housing market dynamics. Many borrowers are convinced

My path into mortgage was not accidental, but it also was not linear. I was first exposed to the space as a student during the financial crisis, when I was studying real estate and working as a research assistant at a mortgage-focused research center. At that time, the work was closely tied to the government’s response to the crisis, which gave me an early appreciation for how central mortgage is to the broader economy. It is not just a financial product. It is a system that