After coming off a holiday weekend and entering a lower liquidity environment today, the market is primed for more volatility, setting up for when Trump takes the podium at noon central time today to discuss the current Iran war. Off the heels of a stronger-than-expected jobs number on Friday (which had lower conviction given it was pre-Iran war), we are left with more of a longer digestion period with traders reentering the office today. That said, traders are mostly cogniza

This year, “Bring a Kid to Work Day” is April 23. The name seems to have shifted: I remember “Bring Your Child to Work Day.” The population of the United States also shifts, something that lenders and originators are very aware of in the primary markets, and should be aware of in the secondary markets. Companies and job creators move, for various reasons. Population migration since 2019, accelerated by the pandemic, has shifted growth toward Sun Belt states like Texas and Flo

What are “bone ash apartments”? Trust me: you wouldn’t want one next to you here in the States; it’s an example of when the government interferes with housing. China has two space problems, and one has become a solution to the other. The first issue is a property glut. Widespread government construction and a saving strategy centered on buying up more apartments than one might need means a lot of buildings are empty. And property prices in the country can be incredibly low, a

There’s a moment most mornings, when it’s just me, a cup of coffee that’s already going cold, and a screen full of loans, emails, and conversations that need to be turned into something coherent before the rest of the industry wakes up. It’s not glamorous. No one is posting about it. But that hour tells you almost everything you need to know about this market. The people still doing the work, still refining their process, still picking up the phone when it would be easier not

My dad had a paper route growing up. Rain, fog, cold, it didn’t matter. He showed up, threw the papers, moved on. No audience, no applause, just consistency. He’s told that story more times than I can count, and for a long time I didn’t think much of it. Somewhere along the way (probably around 4:00 a.m. staring at a screen editing a podcast for the thousandth time), it clicked. That’s the whole business, and its blueprint. Show up, deliver, do it again tomorrow. If you do th

Unlike the sunny outlook that a Golden Retriever’s or goldfish’s brain has, the human brain has a built-in negative bias that causes us to focus on bad things. This negativity bias can have an impact on our behavior and decisions. There are certainly a lot of bad things to focus on these days, but it is important for lenders and third-party providers to look past rates having gone up by .5 percent and remember the good things. For example, the U.S. home ownership percentage i

“Rob, what do you hear about Fannie & Freddie being released from conservatorship?” Not much. Although it may change with one random tweet, the idea & process of jettisoning them is not even “on the back burner”… It may be back in the refrigerator. Maybe 2031? Both are certainly building up their net worth, but they don’t have enough capital to be released based on the amount of capital required under an Administrative Rule . The U.S. Government doesn’t want to lose control,

(Yes, this is the non-April Fool’s edition.) Research suggests that by the time your child turns 18, you will have spent approximately 95 percent of the time you will ever spend with them in your lifetime. (Don’t worry, I am not going to break into Harry Chapin’s “Cat’s in the Cradle.”) Time flies, Apple turns 50 today, the first quarter is in the books, and here in Northern Nevada, like everywhere, lenders are watching trends and technology. There are all kinds of lists ou

Critics outside of our industry say that the mortgage biz is dull, mature, and has become unstable. Those inside of it, however, know differently, and see it as an ever-changing kaleidoscope of exciting changes, incredible innovation, and complexities rivaling the Apollo Program. Originators are always focused on borrower trends, and pollster Larsen, Golden, & Miller released the results of its latest survey done by its blue ribbon commission, somehow reaching people on their

How do you like this eye opener: “The value of the property being appraised should be adjusted downward if the ethnic composition of the neighborhood to which it belonged was not homogeneous.” (The Appraisal of Real Estate, 1970) Appraisal methodology and analysis have changed over the years, and we’re about to undergo another major alteration with UAD 3.6. Some investors are ahead of the 11/2/26 curve. For example, Newrez is now accepting loans from clients who have adopted

I’m not sure anyone truly owns the borrower anymore. That might sound off, especially at a time when the largest players in our industry are doubling down on scale… acquiring servicing portfolios, building end-to-end ecosystems, and positioning themselves to manage the entire customer lifecycle. The assumption is simple. Control the servicing asset… control the relationship. But here’s what I keep coming back to. At the street level, that borrower’s journey is rarely that sim

In 1983 there was a Cabbage Patch Doll shortage. In 1996 there was a lack of Tickle Me Elmo dolls, leading to stampedes. Really? Do you think we’ll see that with Needoh or Jellycat globs or dolls? Probably not. Do you remember when everyone was talking about the lack of housing inventory as a problem for buyers? Those days are long gone: There are now nearly 50 percent more home sellers than buyers as mismatch widens to a record 630,000 . (Of course this is depending on pric

In industry news, the big are getting bigger and CrossCountry has stepped in to buy Two Harbors (much more below). But on a more micro-level, Lenders, which include loan officers and underwriters, always have their collective eyes on income, debt, net worth, and personal finances. Did you know that at least 73 out of 100 sitting United States senators have a median net worth of over a million dollars, a financial feat that ordinarily applies to just seven percent of the popul

“I told my wife I wanted to be cremated. She made me an appointment for Tuesday.” There is plenty of humor between men and women, and also some things that aren’t so funny. Some of these exist in the mortgage industry and Bri Lees published a Chrisman LLC Thought Leadership piece titled, “The Month Mortgage Remembers Women Exist” worth reading. It is something to keep in mind, and I’ve received a fair number of emails about the piece. Something else worth thinking about is h

What’s new out there? Well, United Airlines is talking about having couches in the air . There’s always something new in compliance, and there are firms that specialize in it including Feewise , Truework , Asurity , RiskExec , TENA , ACES Quality Management , Firstline Compliance , and LicensingStore.com listed in the Marketplace. There’s always something new impacting mortgage rates. “Rob, I know that short term rates have gone up more than long term rates. Doesn’t an i

March is the only month this industry feels bad about what it does to women. The other 11, it doesn't think about us at all. I've been in mortgage long enough to know the calendar, long enough to smile in the right photos and say the right things and be visible enough to matter and small enough not to threaten anyone. I learned that early. Every woman in this industry does, because the alternative has a cost and we aren't the ones who decide when it gets paid. It was March, a

The mortgage process still treats key parts of homeownership as separate conversations: borrowers focus on interest rates and monthly payments, while insurance, taxes, and other costs often appear later as surprises that reshape the true cost of owning a home. Yet the economics of homeownership have shifted dramatically in recent years, and that fragmentation is becoming harder for consumers to navigate. One solution is to integrate related financial products like insurance d

I’ve been doing some flying recently, and have not seen the terrible security lines that the press has mentioned. Then I found out why . And there’s this perspective . On a more serious note, this week I was in Virginia, and the Commonwealth appears poised to follow Utah and become the second state in the country to approve plug-in solar , which are convenient panels that plug directly into a home’s electrical system through a standard wall plug and can significantly reduce e

Sometimes life comes down to a coin toss . Here in Virginia Beach, at the Southern Trust Mortgage Sales Summit, a conversation topic is originators not leaving their business to chance. Pricing practices are rarely left to chance, and Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) sent a letter to the CEO of Fair Isaac Corporation (FICO), to inform the company of his investigation into FICO’s pricing practices in the mortgage credit scoring market. Public policy is not left to chance either,

For years, trigger leads have been one of the mortgage industry's worst open secrets. A borrower applies with one lender, their credit gets pulled, and suddenly their phone lights up with calls, texts, and competing offers from companies they never asked to hear from. That's exactly what the Homebuyers Privacy Protection Act was designed to curb. The law was signed on September 5, 2025 and took effect on March 5, 2026. It amends the Fair Credit Reporting Act to sharply limit