The new phone books are here, the new phone books are here! Oh, wait a minute. The new conventional conforming loan limits are here! The new conventional conforming loan limits are here! True, lenders that are entirely focused on non-Agency products like non-QM (without many of the loan level price adjustments or gfees) may not care too much, but for most, Freddie Mac’s and Fannie Mae’s changes are followed closely. For 2026 we’re up from 2025’s $806,500 to $832,750. This

Want better affordability? Lower house prices certainly helps, and this article states that more than half of homes in the United States have fallen in price in the last year. Forget interest rates: Certainly, there are fewer willing buyers when they know ahead of time that they may face increasing insurance, tax, or condo fees. (Lenders are doing what they can to control costs, and a recent STRATMOR piece is titled, “Rates Drop, Pipelines Pop: Don’t Let Fulfillment Flop.” )

It’s Thanksgiving week where many of us will get ready for family members will converge under one roof… This year, that roof will be mine…  Some may come packing rolls and green bean casserole… others will come packing fridge opinions, poorly timed critiques, and unfilled thoughts… but hey, what’s a family Thanksgiving without a little drama… and I don’t know about you, but I personally look forward to Uncle Joe telling the same story over and over about how kids these days a

According to NAR’s 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers , first-time buyers now have a median age of 40 , and their share has fallen to 21% , a record low. That is a historic shift that changes how we coach renters and near-ready clients. Quick history for context. In the 1980s , the typical first-time buyer was in their late 20s . From the early 1990s through the late 2010s , the median age sat in the 30 to 32  range. Even in 2020  it was 33 . Then, in only a few years,

“Remember to bring up politics at Thanksgiving to save some money on Christmas presents.” “What do tornadoes and Tennessee divorces have in common? Someone's going to lose a mobile home.” (My father’s family is from there, so I can use that one.) Mobile homes are one segment of the manufactured home biz, and at the other end of the scale there are some grand houses out there that are made in factories… It makes so much sense. Many in the United States believe that manufactur

MBS spreads widened modestly this week and volatility climbed to a one-month high, though still near multi-year lows. Treasury and mortgage-backed securities remained range-bound despite global risk-off sentiment driven by concerns around AI investment, valuations, and slowing growth. With the Fed signaling that future balance-sheet expansion (to combat reserves nearing scarcity) would be aimed at market functioning rather than stimulus, much hinges on next month's FOMC meeti

Our first official post-shutdown jobs number was delivered, and the market has spoken. The headline was 119k new jobs added in September, basically double what the market expected. However, not so fast. August was revised down to 6k, and the unemployment rate ticked still higher to 4.44%, the highest since October 2021.   The first place we look is from the Fed vantage point. A stronger jobs headline does give them breathing room (even if unemployment ticked higher). The futu

“Six cows were smoking joints and playing poker. That's right: The steaks were pretty high.” The steaks, uh, stakes, are high when changes to our housing finance system occur, or actions are taken that are negatively impact borrowers or reputations. In a typical organization, the CEO reports to the board of directors. The FHFA oversees Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, and with FHFA Director Bill Pulte, he pretty much appointed the boards of Freddie and Fannie but they are ultimate

“Here we are, a week away from Thanksgiving, and I’m in Kansas City . My family told me to stop telling Thanksgiving jokes, but I said I couldn’t quit cold turkey.” The CFPB isn’t going away “cold turkey” but yesterday’s personnel move was a reminder that there are clever people in Washington DC. It was a follow up to Trump Administration court filings last week that said the CFPB was on track to run out of money to operate at the beginning of next year and argued that it w

The Strategic Rise of Mortgage Servicing For decades, mortgage servicing sat quietly in the background...essential, yes, but rarely viewed as the heartbeat of mortgage banking. It was historically perceived as a post-closing administrative function: collect payments, manage escrow, and stay out of trouble. Today, that world is gone. Servicing has become one of the most strategically important assets in the mortgage ecosystem, a growth engine for originators, a competitive dif

As I type these words, I am sitting in front of one of Chuck Berry’s early residences in St. Louis. STL has a good musical reputation, a fine mortgage association , a Fed that puts out great research, and has many nice neighborhoods. But to call this specific area where I am sitting a “transitional” neighborhood would be generous. Although there is potential, nearly every house standing could use an immense amount of work, and the residents probably aren’t regulars at home i

To paraphrase one of my favorite movie quotes (from Tommy Boy): There are less orthodox ways to get a good look at a T-bone, but I’d rather take a butcher’s word for it…   Over the past month, we’ve been given the daunting task of deciphering employment and inflationary data points through less conventional sources. Now that the government has reopened, we’ll soon get the opportunity to hear about the T-bone straight from the butcher’s mouth.   This Thursday, we’ll finally re

The mortgage industry is once again revisiting products and practices that many thought had been relegated to the past. Adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs), for example, are resurfacing...not because they are “evil,” as some headlines teasingly suggest, but because the yield-curve dynamics and affordability challenges of this cycle naturally push them back into relevance. When recessionary pressures build, the curve steepens, short-term rates ease, and borrowers begin re-examini

Supposedly commercial air travel is back to normal, good for anyone coming in for the Mortgage Bankers Association of St. Louis event tomorrow and Thursday’s Mortgage Bankers Association of Kansas City annual luncheon. Speaking of Missouri, the Pony Express ran between St. Joseph and Sacramento for 18 months in 1860–1861, put out of business by the telegraph. (I had an ancestor, Frank “Deafy” Derrick, who rode for the Pony Express.) The telegraph was a great example of “bet

For decades, credit reports were treated as snapshots - a fixed moment in time meant to summarize a borrower’s financial history. That view no longer fits today’s reality. Credit data has evolved into a living, dynamic asset that tells a story not just about who a consumer was, but how they are behaving right now and where their financial trajectory is heading. This shift is more than technical, it’s strategic - driving smarter decisions and better outcomes across the mortgag

When I stepped into the role of MISMO President just ahead of the 2025 MBA Annual Convention, I already understood MISMO’s reputation. But it wasn’t until I got behind the curtain that I truly appreciated the depth of collaboration, volunteer leadership, and shared purpose that has kept this organization going strong for more than 25 years. And if there’s a single theme that stands out from my early weeks in the role, it’s this: MISMO’s impact is everywhere, especially in the

Today’s trivia: Missouri and Tennessee are tied for bordering the most states: eight. This week I head to Missouri, the jumping off point for thousands of wagon trains heading west in the mid-1800s. Back then, land grants were relatively common but home loans weren’t, LTVs were high, and repayment was usually within five years. Deals were done with a handshake. Fast forward to today, and we have Fannie Mae dropping its minimum credit score requirements and relying more on DU

The U.S. Federal Reserve doesn’t set mortgage rates, the market does. People in our biz know that mortgage rates and pricing are a function of supply and demand, not from some Administration decree for a 50-year mortgage, assumability, or portability. The same can be said of food, hence President Trump changing his tariff policy again given higher prices due to those tariffs, and precious metals, with some twists. Gold is a traditional gift in Vietnam (connoting luck), so at

I always wonder, when I see two gas stations near each other in a small town, if the owners agree on pricing and share information. But when you’re dealing with trillions of dollars of mortgages and millions of borrowers, well, that’s a different scale, and the leader and boards of directors should be held responsible if the news is correct. Per the AP, “A confidant of  Bill Pulte , the Trump administration’s top housing regulator, provided confidential mortgage pricing data

One word for you: "uncertainty," across both policy and markets, as the shutdown-delayed flow of economic data left lenders, investors, and regulators operating in a fog. The Federal Reserve reiterated that it cannot commit to further rate cuts until it can review labor-market and inflation data that have been missing for weeks. That wait-and-see stance kept Treasury yields confined to a familiar, narrow range despite mixed auction results: the 10-year note stopped through ex