The national home price index has become one of those gauges everybody watches even while knowing full well that real estate is local. One metro can be surging while another is rolling over, and sometimes that divergence exists within the same state. But the broader national trend right now is unmistakable. The market is weakening and continuing to weaken. Year-over-year appreciation has steadily decelerated, with really only one bright patch left in the country, the Midwest.

For much of the past two years, the mortgage industry has operated with one eye on the present and the other fixed firmly on the hope of a return to the market conditions that defined the post pandemic boom. The assumption underneath many strategic decisions was that lower rates would eventually arrive, refinance activity would reappear, margins would recover, and the industry could resume operating under a familiar playbook. Increasingly, however, that assumption is giving w

What’s striking about the current environment is just how many different forces are hitting the mortgage market at the same time, and how little room there is for clean, simple answers. You’ve got geopolitical tension driving energy prices, a pending Fed leadership transition that people keep trying to assign too much importance to, and ongoing shifts from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that directly impact execution. And through all of that, capital markets teams still have to d

Q: With midterms approaching and housing affordability still a major concern, do you expect the Trump administration to step up its focus on the mortgage market? A: There’s already a noticeable push from Washington, and not just from one party. Policymakers across the aisle are trying to address affordability, which is encouraging. The recent executive actions and announcements from the Federal Housing Finance Agency are part of that effort, and they’re tackling substantive i

For much of the past century, the concept of the “starter home” served as the foundational entry point into homeownership, offering a predictable path in which households could save, purchase modestly, and gradually trade up over time. That model relied on a housing market where entry-level inventory was abundant and prices moved in relative alignment with income growth. Today, those conditions no longer hold. Home prices have persistently outpaced wages, supply remains struc

At first glance, “lender choice” sounds like an unambiguously positive development. More choice typically implies more competition resulting in better pricing and improved outcomes for borrowers. In the context of mortgage credit, however, the reality is more complex. What appears to be a straightforward modernization of credit scoring may, in practice, introduce inefficiencies, shift risk in unintended ways, and ultimately increase borrower costs. For more than two decades,

The rush to embrace and adopt artificial intelligence technology solutions to make mortgage operations faster, better and leaner has primarily focused on operational cost savings. Some lenders are entranced by the vision of the promise of reduced labor costs, increased operational efficiency, and modernization. There is also an inherent concern about competitive disadvantage as lenders see their peers adopting new AI tools where they have none. I have addressed AI regulatory

The F-16 was designed to be aerodynamically unstable. Without fly-by-wire systems making continuous corrections, the aircraft literally could not fly. This instability was not a flaw but a deliberate design choice. An unstable airframe, properly controlled, is extraordinarily agile, always on the edge of chaos, continuously caught by a system that manages motion, not state. The instability is the feature, and it shows. Over half a century since entering service, the F-16 rema