The narrative this week was dominated by policy uncertainty rather than concrete action, beginning with President Trump’s long-teased $200 billion mortgage-backed securities purchase plan, which arrived at Davos with few details and little immediate market impact. Mortgage rates ended up less than 10-basis points from below pre-announcement levels, underscoring the growing consensus among economists and Fed officials that housing affordability is constrained by supply, not fi

One day of bond market move can wipe out any price benefit from the Agencies buying $200 billion of Agency MBS. In his Davos speech yesterday at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, President Trump argued that homeownership is central to the American dream and criticized large institutional investors for driving up prices, saying “homes are built for people, not for corporations,” and touting an executive order aimed at restricting such investors from buying single-family

Agentic AI, the use of autonomous systems capable of independent decision making in support of customer service and sales efforts, is sneaking up on the mortgage industry. The thought of replacing employees with AI generated “bots” who are programmed to interface with consumers carries serious regulatory and compliance concerns which may limit their usefulness in external operations. In considering agentic AI we must understand the difference between using automated platforms

While “Sell America” goes on, or at least the perception of it, outside our borders, leading to bond prices going down and rates going up, in this country we are learning the difference between a pardon, a commutation, and clemency. I continue to hear how fraud, especially occupancy fraud, in residential lending is on the upswing. President Donald Trump commuted the five-year prison sentence (freed, but conviction stands) of a New York real estate manager convicted of fraudul

Generative artificial intelligence (genAI) did not arrive quietly in the mortgage industry. It burst onto the scene with accelerated timelines and forced uncomfortable questions about relevance, speed, and survival. For many leaders, AI remains a buzzword or a vague mandate handed down from the boardroom. For others, it has become an existential inflection point. The difference between those two perspectives is not technology. It is mindset and this gut-based belief that radi

For consumers paying attention to housing news lately, it probably feels like the industry and policymakers are throwing everything they have at the affordability problem. 50-year amortization mortgages. Penalty-free access to 401(k) funds for down payments. Prepayment penalties reintroduced as a way to lower interest rates. And now, proposals from the White House to ban large investors from purchasing homes. Each of these ideas has made headlines over the last several months

“Rob, last year the press seemed convinced that President Trump’s tariffs would lead to inflation which would hurt mortgage rates. That proved not to be the case. Now comes word that President Trump’s quest for Greenland is a personal retaliation of him not winning the Nobel Peace Prize, and that the tariffs will, once again, drive inflation and mortgage rates higher. Is this true?” Geopolitical events can impact interest rates, but let’s hope the uncertainty and impact is

While underwriters are abuzz about the Trump administration delaying its plan to withhold wages for student loan borrowers in default, in other news mixing politics and the lending business, forget about President Trump complaining about Joe Biden using autopen, which has been used by presidents since WWII. What about voices? Plenty of people (humans) can imitate Donald Trump. So can AI, and Fannie Mae admitted his voice was AI generated in Fannie’s new commercial . Yes, Fan

Yeah, I know that this is a daily commentary on the world of mortgages, often about how companies are evolving, leveraging technology, and constantly changing their product in their pursuit of customers. How about the opposite business model? Unlike just about every other online business today, Craigslist is a completely honest, straightforward business. There is no hidden toll or price (your data) for “free” (the company makes revenue elsewhere) and the transaction is straig

How are we halfway done with January already? Wasn’t it just New Year’s? Some lenders slow down in the winter, but I am hearing reports of great Decembers and Januarys. Wanna fire up your sales team? Here’s an article: “The golden handcuffs are slipping in the U.S. housing market.” As industry vets knew they would eventually, borrowers with “once-in-a-lifetime” rates are refinancing, or selling houses with those mortgages on them. There is a lot of news and change, both loc

Last week, Donald Trump floated a proposal that immediately grabbed headlines: a one-year federal cap on credit card interest rates at 10%. Markets reacted quickly. Bank stocks sold off. Trade groups pushed back. And the debate over consumer affordability versus credit availability reignited almost overnight.(Source: CNBC – https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/10/trump-calls-for-one-year-cap-on-credit-card-interest-rates-at-10percent.html ) At first glance, this looks like a story sq

“Last weekend I was invited by a female janitor to smoke some weed in her apartment, but I politely declined. I can’t deal with high maintenance women.” While rumors swirl that Jerome Powell is paying his own legal bills while dealing with the DOJ, and the Administration is ruminating on using 401(k) or 529 funds to buy a home (no one needs cash when they retire, or money for higher education, right?), in the land of “concrete news” the office-to-apartment and condo conversio

Is There Even a “Referral” Back at All? Dry January? We open 2026 after a couple short week holidays [1] and amid discussion of the inverted food pyramid and challenging efforts to achieve a “dry January”. [2] But, here at the Levy School of RESPA Compliance (LSRC), we like to invert your RESPA understandings and make RESPA anything but a dry topic. So, I’m going to start the Musings off this year with a detailed explainer about a percolating RESPA issue and finish with a

“There is going to be a merger between FedEx and UPS. Yep, they're going to be called ‘FedUp.’” Perhaps Saks , which declared bankruptcy last night, will merge or be acquired by another retailer. In our world, no one expects lender and/or vendor mergers and acquisitions to diminish in 2026, and in today’s Mortgage Matters at 2PM ET, presented by Lenders One, Garth Graham, Senior Partner at STRATMOR Group , will break down key M&A trends, recap the pivotal developments of 202

The National Association of Local Housing Finance Agencies has released its 2026 National Policy Agenda, outlining policy priorities aimed at preserving and expanding the tools local housing finance agencies need to address the nation’s affordable housing crisis. The agenda emphasizes proactive engagement with Congress and federal agencies to strengthen affordable housing finance, renewed advocacy for robust staffing and capacity at the Department of Housing and Urban Develop

The past several weeks have served as a timely reminder that mortgage markets rarely move in clean, linear paths. They respond to a mix of policy signals, shifting supply and demand, and headlines that can influence sentiment well before fundamentals catch up. What we are living through now is not a single inflection point, but a convergence of announcements, proposals, and signals that together are reshaping how originators and capital markets teams think about rates, spread

Today’s Capital Markets Wrap (3PM ET) will cover how mortgage rates may be impacted by the lack of a traditional flight to quality despite rising international unrest, alongside proposed limits on institutional SFR purchases, rate sheet changes, recent presidential commentary on GSE bond buying, and… the proposed credit card interest cap. “Rob, yesterday’s Commentary had a piece on President Trump’s proposal to cap credit card interest rates at 10 percent. Will it impact len

Have you ever heard of Lotus Bakeries? Me neither. It is a good lesson for lenders in taking one successful product, or division, and expanding it. Or for individual originators to take their skills and expand them to help clients. Lotus is responsible for Biscoff cookies , which many mortgage road warriors know as an in-flight snack from American and especially Delta Airlines, the latter of which serves 70 million packets of Biscoff cookies annually and counts it as its mos

Forget the U.S. Government focusing on the Fed’s Lisa Cook or New York’s Letitia James. President Trump and Bill Pulte (on Bloomberg this morning) say that they know nothing about this, but federal prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and members of the Fed have been subpoenaed. The official reason is regarding the renovation of the Fed’s headquarters . But it may be more directed at Fed independence, and Powell publicly