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Jan. 24: Thoughts on Pres. Trump taking the right approach; Credit issues still with us; Saturday Spotlight: Fairway Home Mortgage

It doesn’t take the current storm sweeping through parts of the U.S. to make us remember that lenders, and everyone, are impacted by the climate and the weather that comes from the climate. You’re not going to have a home inspection when there’s four feet of snow on the ground. Is a borrower going to make their payment if their house was flooded? Americans are concerned about climate change but seem to believe that climate change happens to some other person who isn’t them. A new survey found that 65 percent of respondents said climate change will do a large or moderate amount of harm to the world, 60 percent said it would do moderate or large harm to the United States, 51 percent said the same about their local community and just 29 percent think that climate change would do a large or moderate amount of harm to them personally in the next several decades. That would certainly explain the lack of urgency in making expensive changes. Miami sea levels are rising an inch every three years, which probably doesn’t sound like a lot unless the local road or your driveway is only a few inches above high tide and you want to leave your house to your kids.


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“Unlocking the doors to homeownership for EVERYONE.”


Built for Speed: Fairway Home Mortgage Aligns Technology, Support, and Culture for Today’s Loan Officer, a look at how an employee-owned lender structures its platform to reduce friction, strengthen relationships, and support long-term growth for Originators.

 

Fairway Home Mortgage is a private, employee-owned lender built for Loan Officers who want to scale their business without unnecessary friction.

 

Speed is the foundation of how Fairway operates. When issues or questions arise, they are handled with urgency. Calls, texts, and emails are answered typically within minutes, including early mornings, late nights, and weekends. That responsiveness creates a smoother experience for borrowers, referral partners, as well as Loan Officers, and is a key reason Fairway consistently ranks at the top of Customer Service and Employee Experience surveys.

 

Technology is also where that speed shows up. Fairway’s systems allow Loan Officers to take a pre-approval application in the morning and have the file fully underwritten with a money-back seller guarantee by that afternoon. With that level of certainty, closings can happen in as little as 10 days. Fairway’s tech stack includes tools such as Candor, AccountChek, Argyle, Finicity, etc., all designed to reduce friction, increase accuracy, and make the process easier for borrowers. Fairway also provides access to a secure Enterprise ChatGPT environment, allowing Loan Officers to safely and effectively use AI-driven scripts, document review, and prompts.

 

Fairway’s retained servicing model gives Loan Officers a long-term advantage. Because Fairway services most of its newly originated loans, clients maintain access to the Loan Officer who originated their mortgage. That means stronger relationships, better visibility leading to future opportunities, and more control over the database.

 

Loan Officers who want to create additional income without losing connection with their clients have multiple options inside the Fairway ecosystem. Programs such as the Made for Home credit card, Fairway Home Insurance, Fairway Home Connect, and Fairway Home Services allow Originators to add value for clients while building additional revenue streams.


What does your company do to help elevate your employees’ growth? Describe any mentoring programs, outside classes or training, in-house training. How does the company help people develop?

 

Growth is supported through Fairway’s internal coaching platform, Ignite. Loan Officers participating in Ignite average roughly double the production of those outside the program. Ignite coaches are Fairway teammates, and the level-up pairing process ensures each Originator is matched with a coach who fits their goals and working style. Fairway also hosts focused growth groups, weekly and monthly workshops on timely topics, and a weekly National Sales Call where top producers openly share the exact strategies, tools, and programs they are using to win right now.


Tell us about what type of volunteer work employees are encouraged to engage in, or charities your company supports, and why?

 

Fairway’s culture is grounded in a simple belief: “Mortgages are what we do, not who we are.” The company actively gives back through the American Warrior Initiative, which has provided more than 430 service dogs to military veterans, and Fairway Cares, which supports teammates facing critical illness, trauma, or loss. Fairway also donates disaster relief funds to families in need across the country.

 

Fairway is built for Loan Officers who care about how their business runs day to day. Speed, access, accountability, and long-term client relationships are not layered later; they are embedded in how the company operates. For Originators who want a platform that supports growth without adding complexity or distance from their clients, Fairway provides a structure designed to keep the focus where it belongs: serving borrowers well and running a growing, strong, sustainable mortgage business.



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A story by Michael Derby in Reuters summed up capital markets personnel’s thoughts. “Experts say $200 billion bond-buying effort unlikely to significantly lower housing costs… Trump administration trying to offset impact of Fed asset runoff… Fed officials see supply issues, not financing, as main Housing market challenge.


“There's scant evidence so far that U.S. President Donald Trump's bid to make housing more affordable by purchasing mortgage-backed bonds has had its desired effect, and to the extent it has, broader geopolitical anxieties driven by his administration look set to make borrowing more expensive over time.


“The targeted $200 billion of purchases appears likely to make borrowing costs cheaper only at the margin, while a wide range of experts agree the key to making homes more affordable is to bolster housing supply. And in the near term, broader market tumult could push borrowing costs higher. The purchases are "mostly an exercise in burning cash," said Joseph Brusuelas, chief economist at RSM US LLP. ‘The U.S. does not have a demand or financing problem within the housing complex," he said, "it has a supply problem and $200 billion in (mortgage bond) purchases is not going to do anything to bring relief to Americans on the housing front.’


“Patricia Zobel, former manager of the New York Fed group that implements monetary policy and now head of macroeconomic research and market strategy at Guggenheim Investments, said: ‘It's not clear to me how much this will materially lower housing prices for consumers, but we'll see.’ Zobel, however, noted that mortgage bond yields and 30-year residential mortgage rates have both narrowed somewhat relative to Treasury bonds. Benchmark 30-year mortgage rates have been retreating for some time largely as the Federal Reserve has cut its short-term interest rate, with U.S. central bankers seeking to balance efforts to aid a weakening job market while keeping downward pressure on inflation.


“After peaking at just shy of 8 percent in the fall of 2023, the average rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage was 6.15 percent at the end of 2025, data from Freddie Mac shows. After Trump ordered Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-owned housing finance companies, to start buying back some of their bonds, the rate briefly dropped to its lowest level since 2022 at 6.06 percent, before edging back up to 6.09 percent as of Thursday.


“Meanwhile, data from the Mortgage Bankers Association showed its measure of 30-year mortgage rates slipped last week to the lowest level since September 2024. The association said cheaper borrowing costs had pushed refinancing activity to its highest level since September 2025.


“Trump administration officials have said the mortgage bond purchases have begun, but they have provided few details. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said earlier this month that one aim was to offset the Fed's long-running effort to allow mortgage bonds bought in large scale during the COVID-19 pandemic to mature and not be replaced. Bessent said the expected pace of buying would ‘roughly match’ the roughly $15 billion in mortgage bonds that roll off the U.S. central bank's books each month. This ‘sterilization’ of that Fed runoff rests on an uneasy understanding of the dynamics of the central bank's balance sheet.


“Economists and many central bankers generally agree the biggest market impact from Fed balance sheet changes tends to come from so-called announcement effects when the plans are unveiled. Most analysts agree the modest pace of the central bank's mortgage bond runoff, which has taken those holdings from about $2.7 trillion in mid-2022 to $2 trillion, is creating no measurable upward impact on home borrowing costs, which raises the question of why there would be a need to offset it.


“Fed officials indirectly have expressed skepticism that the administration's efforts would do much for housing. ‘I do think that a lot of the housing affordability challenges are about more than just financing, and there's a supply and demand issue that has persisted in many major markets,’ Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic said in a January 9 interview with Florida radio station WLRN. Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari later echoed that sentiment, saying, ‘The biggest barrier for the housing market is supply… Anything we can do to help get out of the way of allowing more supply to come online, to build the homes and the units that families need, that will help the housing market probably more than anything else,’ Kashkari said in a virtual event.


“Getting mortgage rates down also confronts a fresh challenge from rising yields in longer-dated government bonds. Those yields have spiked amid a big selloff in Japanese bonds. And Trump's own actions, including threats of tariffs or other measures to force European officials to agree to the sale of Greenland to the U.S. and his lashing out at allies more broadly, have dented the appeal of U.S. assets, including Treasuries, potentially adding a headwind to further drops in mortgage rates. The 10-year Treasury note yield, which heavily influences mortgage rates, rose earlier this week to its highest level since August, and remains close to it.”


Credit issues continue to simmer

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Will the “no score prequal” option circulating put all this debate to rest? The Mortgage Bankers Association sent out “Why Moving to a Single-file Credit Report Framework Is a Win for Consumers and Lenders.” Certainly costs have increased, there’s a lot of finger pointing, borrowers who actually close pay for borrowers’ credit who don’t, the system is being gamed. This was in response to…


The Community Home Lenders of America (CHLA) released an Addendum to its 2024 White Paper on Mortgage Credit Score Markets and Pricing that expresses concerns about proposals to create a single credit bureau pull model. The CHLA Addendum states that CHLA does not support a single credit bureau pull, for a variety of reasons. The CHLA believes that costs will likely not be reduced (and could increase), a Single Bureau Credit Pull model could disadvantage veterans, rural families, and first-time homebuyers, costs could increase for consumers that shop for mortgage rates, a switch to a single bureau model could make it harder for aggregator/investors to price loans, leading to risk premiums in loan pricing that raise rates, and so on.


Greg Sher, Managing Director at NFM Lending, writes about a topic on the mind of many lenders. Namely, credit. “Under the Mortgage Bankers Association's single-file credit push, a sample consumer qualifies for one of the best mortgages around, with their 734 Experian score, with some of the lowest risk built-in for default.


“But underneath the veneer, a storm is brewing. This same consumer has run up their credit card balances near the limits, and worse, they fell behind in their payments by 60 days within the last 6 months. These two credit card companies reported the delinquencies to TransUnion and Equifax, and those scores plummeted to 662 and 580, respectively. But they didn’t report to Experian, who has this borrower in the A+ range.


“In today’s world, which requires a tri-merge report in order to sell a loan to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, this borrower never gets that stellar rate with no risk. In the new world the MBA is proposing, they fly right through, setting up a nasty chain reaction with serious ramifications.



“Here's why: The lender/loan officer makes the loan, potentially gamifying the system to reflect the one best score/credit report. The loan is underwritten to Fannie Mae guidelines and delivered, it's then sold to the servicer, who thinks they’re getting a cream of the crop borrower…and they book servicing revenue for 5 years.


“But then things go awry. Several months later, the borrower’s struggles continue, and they can't make their new house payment. The loan defaults, and everything unravels. The mortgage lender is asked to return their loan proceeds and has to sell the loan ‘scratch and dent’ at 80 percent of its loan amount, costing them a fortune. It doesn’t end there though… it is only the beginning.


“Fannie Mae goes looking for answers, and eventually adds to its LLPA matrix to account for this new-world uncertainty, as defaults start to climb, making it more expensive to buy a home. The servicer is upset as well, and decides to pay less for servicing moving forward, which puts an immediate strain on IMBs, and puts some on the brink of extinction.


“This credit profile and scenario is NOT an isolated instance. This is a real consumer, and the industry sees thousands of credit profiles like this every day. The MBA says this is the only way to fight back against cost increases… but it’s not clear how. What would prevent the 3 bureaus and FICO from continuing to raise prices? Absolutely nothing… and that’s exactly what will happen if this goes through.


“The MBA says the Residential/Single Family Board of Governors (RESBOG) voted unanimously in favor of this, but I can assure you, not one single person among the 46 who are able to vote would want this loan on their books. Not one, and I encourage you to look at who is on this board, and to share your viewpoints with them.


“I encourage the MBA to take a step back and to reevaluate this idea and engage more with the mortgage community. Together we can reach a real consensus.” Thank you, Greg.


The intersection of politics, the U.S. economy, and lending

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Last Saturday this Commentary had a letter by Robert Rubin expressing his thoughts on the “free speech” health of business leaders during the current Administration. Rubin’s opinions prompted George Charles to send his thoughts over.


“I’ve written a brief response, not to rebut, but to add perspective, on why some readers and business leaders may be reacting differently than your recent framing suggests. I’d welcome the opportunity for that perspective to be shared with your readers in tomorrow’s newsletter, in the same open and thoughtful way you’ve long encouraged inquiry and debate.


“1. Claim: Business leaders are ‘silent’ because they are intimidated. Rubin’s view: Executives fear retaliation (regulatory, legal, financial) so they choose acquiescence over speaking out, weakening democracy and free markets.


“Another deeper insight: Business leaders aren’t silent. They’re selective. Many learned during the previous administration that public political speech carries asymmetric risk: DEI mandates, ESG pressure, and speech enforcement came largely from cultural and regulatory institutions, not Trump.


“CEOs who spoke against progressive orthodoxy faced employee walkouts, consumer boycotts, shareholder revolts, and reputational attacks. Silence today is less about fear of Trump and more about fatigue with politicization and a preference for operational stability. In short: Silence may reflect rational risk management, not cowardice.


“2. Claim: Trump is asserting ‘unprecedented federal control’ over the economy. Rubin’s view: Tariffs, pressure on companies, and intervention undermine free markets and constitutional norms.


“Another, deeper view: Federal control expanded far more aggressively under prior administrations, especially through COVID emergency powers, trillions in stimulus distorting capital allocation, mandated shutdowns deciding ‘essential’ vs. ‘non-essential’ businesses, and ESG enforcement via regulators, pension funds, and banks. (ESG enforcement refers to regulatory actions and legal challenges holding companies accountable for their Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) claims.)


“Trump’s approach is transactional and visible, not bureaucratic and opaque. Markets can price tariffs; they cannot price ideological enforcement embedded in regulations. The key distinction is that market friction is not the same as market capture.


“3. Claim: Trump undermines the rule of law. Rubin’s view: Selective pardons, attacks on institutions, and pressure on the Fed erode legal norms.


“Consider this counterargument. Many Americans and executives believe the rule of law was already politicized, particularly through unequal enforcement of immigration law, selective prosecution and non-prosecution, intelligence and law-enforcement entanglement in political processes, and COVID-era suspension of constitutional liberties by executive fiat. From this perspective, Trump’s actions are seen as confrontational corrections, not lawlessness… messy, yes, but reactive to institutional drift.


“4. Claim: Immigration enforcement harms the economy and universities. Rubin’s view: Trump attacks legal immigration, higher education, and talent pipelines.


“Deeper insight: Why did the previous administration allow millions upon millions of illegal entrants, many undocumented, unvetted, or using fraudulent claims? Downstream effects now being “fixed” include wage suppression for low-income workers, housing shortages and rent inflation, overwhelmed courts, schools, hospitals, identity fraud, benefit fraud, and document laundering, and loss of public trust in legal immigration systems. From this view, enforcement is not anti-immigrant. It is pro-credibility. Legal immigration collapses politically when illegal immigration appears tolerated.


“5. Claim: Tariffs and trade actions are reckless and economically irrational. Rubin’s view: Tariffs distort markets and raise consumer prices.


“180° counterargument: For decades, the U.S. tolerated asymmetric trade regimes with forced technology transfer, currency manipulation, state-subsidized competitors, and hollowed-out domestic manufacturing. Tariffs function here as a negotiating tool, a national-security hedge, and a re-industrialization signal. Short-term inefficiency may be the cost of long-term supply-chain resilience, especially after COVID exposed fragility.


“6. Claim: Trump weaponizes government against critics. Rubin’s view: Threats of retaliation chill dissent.


“Another, deeper view to consider. Many in business believe government weaponization preceded Trump, including financial de-banking, ESG pressure campaigns, regulatory punishment for non-alignment, and lawfare through agencies rather than legislatures. Trump’s rhetoric is blunt, but prior administrations’ enforcement was quiet, institutional, and harder to contest.


“7. Claim: Free markets require free speech, free press, and honest elections. Rubin’s view: These are inseparable from prosperity.


“Agreed, but many believe those freedoms were already compromised by coordinated content moderation between government and tech, media-institution homogeneity, election rule changes without legislative approval, and suppression (not debate) of dissenting views

From this angle, Trump is not threatening liberal norms. He is exposing how brittle they already were.


“8. Claim: Leaders have a moral duty to speak out. Rubin’s view: Silence equals complicity.

 

“Have you considered that executives’ primary duty is fiduciary, not performative to employees, to shareholders, to customers, and to long-term enterprise viability? Political speech from corporations often polarizes customers, alienates workers, invites regulatory scrutiny, and produces little real policy influence. Quiet lobbying, capital allocation, and operational resilience may be more responsible than public denunciation.


“9. Claim: Authoritarianism is the ultimate threat. Rubin’s view: Unchecked power leads to national decline.


“How about that many see the GREATER threat as managerial authoritarianism: Rule by agencies instead of legislatures, permanent emergency powers, cultural enforcement through institutions, and economic planning via incentives and penalties. Trump’s style is confrontational, but his power is bounded, visible, and electorally accountable, unlike entrenched bureaucratic authority.


“Final thoughts… Rubin is correct about one thing: A society cannot thrive if fear replaces judgment. Where many disagree is who created the fear, when norms were broken, and which silence is more dangerous: Silence in the face of aggressive executive rhetoric, or silence during years of institutional overreach, border collapse, monetary distortion, and cultural enforcement? The divide is not about democracy vs. authoritarianism. It’s about which form of power people trust less, and which risks they believe are more reversible.” Thank you, George.



Have you ever seen a group of mortgage lenders on the last morning of a 3-day conference? Well, here is the equivalent in the animal kingdom.



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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