Feb. 21: Ideas on one vs. three credit scores; AI & social status; the gov't & lending; Saturday Spotlight: Flyhomes Buy Before You Sell
“I hate it when people subtly brag about where they went to college. I have this friend who went to Harvard, and he just won’t shut the hell up about it. He’s always been like this, even when we were in college together.” Nature abhors a vacuum, and if students don’t want to go to college in their own countries, where are they going to go? The environment for people around the world coming to the U.S. has changed, whether for college or to live, impacting to some degree the demand for housing. Meanwhile, Russia has been working to shore up geopolitical relationships with countries in Africa and has made moves to increase its soft power there. There are over 32,000 students from Africa currently studying in Russian universities, and the number of scholarships directed to the continent has tripled since 2020. One interesting element of the push has been a religious angle: the Russian Orthodox Church has expanded from presences in four African countries (South Africa, Morocco, Tunisia, and Egypt) to 34 countries in just three years. The church has also ramped up the number of clergy to 270 across 350 parishes and communities. Interesting times for the United States on the world stage.
Saturday Spotlight: Flyhomes
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Power up homebuyers: bigger budgets, winning offers, only one move.
Flyhomes is the industry leader in solving one of the biggest challenges in real estate: how to buy your next home without having to sell your current one first. As the #1 Buy Before You Sell solution provider in the U.S., Flyhomes DREAM Solutions is helping top LOs:
· Deduct current mortgage from DTI and remove home sale contingency.
· Retrieve down payment from equity before selling
· Enter next home mortgage-free
· Act like a cash buyer, winning in competition and closing as fast as cash.
· Move with $0 out of pocket with up to 105% LTV
We operate on a wholesale-only model, empowering loan officers and real estate agents with a variety of Buy Before You Sell solutions available in all 50 states. More than 5,000 buyers have already used Flyhomes to move seamlessly. With $2.2B in funded loans and a growing partner network of 160+ lenders and 30,000+ MLOs, we’re expanding quickly and are proud to offer our solutions now nationwide.
Our products give borrowers real advantages: buy with $0 down, reduce their DTI by up to 50%, and make cash-equivalent offers that close in as little as 10 days. And because we’re wholesale-only, there’s no competition with loan officers or agents. We exist to help them win more deals and build stronger client relationships.
Another key difference? Low costs. We’re proud to offer the most affordable Buy Before You Sell solutions in the market. Our programs start with a tiered flat fee, and our loan product pricing is tied to the loan amount, not the departing home’s sale price. This structure keeps costs fair and transparent, giving borrowers access to the tools they need without creating an extra financial burden. It’s a true win-win for both families and the professionals who serve them.
Join our live webinar on Feb 25. We’ll walk through how Flyhomes products empower you and your borrowers to buy their next home before selling the current one, reduce DTI and help them qualify for up to 50% more, and remove home sale contingencies and make stronger offers.
Don’t miss out, save your spot now or book a call to learn how this could benefit your borrowers and help you close more deals today.
(For more information on having your firm’s extracurricular activities, employee growth, and your charitable side featured, contact Chrisman LLC’s Anjelica Nixt.)
AI, college, and letting humans stand on their own
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People in our biz wonder if AI loan officer assistants should be licensed or are they really any different than common questionnaires used now. From a broader perspective, will AI cause a reliance on status in lending or in society? Some very talented people I know in residential lending never went to college… does it matter?
Professor Toby Stuart’s new book, Anointed: The Extraordinary Effects of Social Status in a Winner-Take-Most World (Simon & Schuster, 2025), “lifts the curtain” on how often we judge quality by association rather than intrinsic attributes. As a result, people who go to an elite university or win a prestigious prize are much more likely to continue racking up accomplishments even if others are equally qualified.
As Stuart, who has studied the subject for 30+ years and is the Leo Helzel Distinguished Professor of Business Administration, puts it, “Status begets more status.” The upshot: Our society is less meritocratic than we would like to think. Social status influences nearly every part of our lives, but will AI make reliance on pedigree even more pronounced?
Where does social status come from? “There are three kinds of status. Ascribed status, which is assigned at birth, is the unearned status we get (or lack) from factors we inherit, such as family background, gender, and physical characteristics. Achieved status is recognition we earn by doing something that’s exceptional or good for the group. And conferred status is transferred and always shifting. When UC Berkeley admits a student, for example, the institution bestows its status on them.”
Why do we often assign value based on association rather than intrinsic qualities? “It’s way easier to size up the associated person or organization than the thing itself. For example, you can’t really determine how good a Berkeley degree is in advance based on what you’ll learn. What you can figure out is where the university sits in the prestige hierarchy. The problem with this is that some ascribed identity characteristics are hierarchically ordered. So, we could incorrectly rely on sociodemographic characteristics (e.g., white male, celebrity’s child) to assess the quality of people’s contributions. It will be increasingly difficult to make distinctions among people on the basis of their work output.”
How will AI influence the status system? “It will have an enormous effect. It will be increasingly difficult to make distinctions among people on the basis of their work output. But companies still want to hire the best talent; universities still want to admit the most capable students. How do we determine who those are when we no longer have, say, the written word to help us sort people?”
How will this phenomenon play out? “In the short term, at least, expect a resurgence of reliance on status symbols: elite diplomas, warm intros, old-fashioned references, ZIP codes, race, gender, and maybe even family names. Whether we end up in a world of more distributed opportunity or more unexamined pedigree may depend on our appetite for doing the harder work of verification or on our willingness to treat outputs of artificial and human creators as the same. Until we acknowledge the latter, or we develop new methods to assess and authenticate human capability, the democratic potential of these technologies will be overshadowed by the hierarchies they otherwise might have helped to dissolve.”
The intertwining of government and lending
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Sure, the Supreme Court ruling against the current tariff plan made headlines, but... The House Financial Services subcommittee held a hearing on the secondary mortgage market and related topics. The “House Committee on Financial Services Subcommittee on Housing and Insurance” convened a hearing to examine homeownership and the role of the secondary mortgage market, with a focus on the ongoing conservatorship of government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) (i.e., Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) and related policy implications.
For the benefit of those outside our industry, the committee memorandum described the secondary mortgage market as being comprised of lenders who sell completed mortgages to third parties, which then pool them into mortgage-backed securities to be purchased by investors, thereby dispersing risk and replenishing capital for the lenders to make new loans.
House Financial Services Committee Chairman French Hill (R-AR) explained that, while GSEs play a critical role in enhancing mortgage affordability, poor oversight and unchecked mission creep have historically resulted in serious costs being imposed on taxpayers and the U.S. economy. The committee also heard from several expert witnesses from the housing finance industry regarding policy proposals that could strengthen the secondary market.
Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) President and CEO Bob Broeksmit, CMB, testified at the legislative hearing before the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Housing and Insurance. The MBA noted, “Hearing details can be found here. Click here for Broeksmit's written statement.”
Recall that MBA's President and CEO Bob Broeksmit, CMB, released the following statement on Federal Reserve Vice Chair for Supervision Michelle W. Bowman's speech titled, “Revitalizing Bank Mortgage Lending, One Step with Basel,” in Orlando, Florida:
“For years, MBA has advocated for regulatory reforms that better align capital requirements with the actual risk profile of mortgage lending and servicing.
“We welcome Vice Chair Bowman’s remarks today outlining a path toward revitalizing bank participation in mortgage lending. Her recognition that aspects of the current capital framework have discouraged banks from competing for mortgage origination and servicing activity is an important step forward. A more appropriately calibrated approach, particularly with respect to mortgage servicing rights and mortgage loans, will strengthen banks’ ability to serve creditworthy borrowers while maintaining safety and soundness.
”The MBA is eager to review the forthcoming proposal and engage through the formal comment process, and we stand ready to work with the Federal Reserve and other regulators to advance a balanced framework that supports sustainable mortgage origination and warehouse lending, robust servicing capacity, and continued access to affordable home financing.”
Meanwhile, jockeying, squabbling, arguing, and spirited debate continues about credit reporting policies and procedures. There is a video out there from the recent IMB conference with MBA President Bob Broeksmit addressing the credit score debate of a 1 score vs. 3 score credit report. The CHLA has weighed in, as did Greg Sher in this post with the video if you want to take a look.
Kris W. writes, “The industry is wondering how the MBA believes investors in the secondary market would handle a move to one score, a move which the MBA vehemently supports. If the minimum score for eligibility is say, 700, and the one score they pull is 700, how do they know whether the other two scores are above or below the score they use (unless it’s the mid score)? Someone loses in both of those scenarios. If the other two scores are below 700, the investor just bought an asset that wasn’t actually eligible for purchase, and it carries a much higher risk than anticipated. On the other hand, if both scores were higher, the borrower just missed out on a potentially lower rate due to the higher LLPA at 620 that would have been less at say, 720.
“If investors must accept a one score product, who is to say they won’t either raise the minimum credit scores required for various products in an effort protect themselves, resulting in lower borrower eligibility & less loans made? Or will they add higher LLPAs for the unknown risk which will result in higher rates for those borrowers who qualify? Both are unintended consequences when the industry is trying to support ways to increase affordability, reduce costs to lenders/borrowers, and offer more options to homebuyers.
“Creditors are not required by law to report credit history to any repository. It’s optional. Because of that, many creditors only report to one or maybe two repositories, resulting in three potentially very different FICO scores. If someone (I am not sure who) would change the rules for creditor reporting and either require them to report to all three repositories, or none at all, the algorithms for all three should result in much more consistently close FICO scores, allowing higher confidence in using just one of the three scores. Which begs the question: Why do we need three repositories? Why not select one, and require all creditors to report to that company so there is one, solid FICO score that all creditors can rely on for credit decisions?
“Yes, that would result in the demise of two of the repositories but… Do we really need 3? The answer would be no, whether we require any creditor who wants to report does so to all three, or they require all creditors to always report to at least one. Instead of taking options and eligibility away from the borrowers or asking investors to assume more of the risk, why not change the laws so they are more favorable to everyone involved in the transaction?” Thank you, Kris.
A broker from Florida wrote to me, saying, “Rob, most of my business now is non-QM. If there is a proposal this for ‘agency’ loans at a 700 FICO score, that borrower would only have to pay for a single score product. But if that same 700 FICO borrower that I am working with applied for a jumbo or other non-Agency loan, they would have to pay for a 3-bureau report. Is that fair to the same credit-worthy borrower? RESPA compliant?
“Unless the entire ‘lending world’ adopts this one score model (and that won’t happen), don’t you think the originating lender that I am brokering to will always just include the price of a tri-merge buried into their $850 admin fee, just in case the loan flips from Agency to non-Agency, so they don’t have to redisclose and start over? Again, who wins? It can’t just apply to one single segment of business… that’s not how mortgage lending works. And with non-QM and other non-agency products growing at my shop and nationwide, why wouldn’t a lender just cover themselves, which results in no savings to the borrower in the end?”
The broker finished with, “It’s a novel idea but there are so many things to consider. I would suggest it should be vetted with a broader audience (brokers/bankers, aggregators, insurance funds, REITs, private money lenders, etc..) to see how feasible it really is if it’s going to be the hill you die on.”
Visit www.ChrismanCommentary.com for more information on our industry partners, access archived commentaries, or subscribe to the Daily Mortgage News and Commentary. You can also explore the Chrisman Marketplace, a centralized hub connecting mortgage professionals with trusted vendors and solutions. If you’re interested, check out my periodic blog on the STRATMOR Group website. This month’s piece is titled, “Helping Borrowers in a Market Defined by Complexity and Change.” The Commentary’s podcast is available on all major platforms, including Apple and Spotify.
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(Market data provided in partnership with MBS Live. For free job postings and to view candidate resumes, visit the Chrisman Job Board. This newsletter is intended for sophisticated mortgage professionals only. There are no paid endorsements by me. For the latest mortgage news, visit Mortgage News Daily. For archived commentaries, or to subscribe, go to www.ChrismanCommentary.com. Copyright 2026 Chrisman LLC. All rights reserved. Paid job & product listings do appear. This report or any portion hereof may not be reprinted, sold, or redistributed without the written consent of Rob Chrisman. The views and opinions in this newsletter are mine alone unless otherwise specifically stated herein.)