One discussion topic here at the MBA’s annual conference, besides how rates are pressing higher, is how wonderful the San Diego weather is. But there are much better places to see autumn colors than coastal Southern California. (The 2021 Fall Foliage Map is a visual planning guide to the annual progressive changing of the leaves in the U.S.; slide the cursor at the bottom to today’s date.) Another discussion topics, besides the spate of new products from vendors, is geography and demographics and housing prices, and the fact that millions of people 25-40 want to own homes have really added to the demand side of the supply/demand equation for housing. What about demand for a house 30 years from now? It isn’t only home purchase figures that are seasonal, as U.S. births have regular annual cycles: They normally increase in the spring, peak in the summer, decline in the fall and are lowest in the winter. The COVID-19 pandemic has affected both the beginning and end of the life cycle for the U.S. population: Births declined and mortality went up, reported the U.S. Census Bureau. Yet the number of U.S. births has declined every year since 2008 (except for 2014) and there are similar patterns in other countries. (Today’s audio version of the commentary is available here. This week’s is sponsored by Triserv, a top national AMC with client-specific, dedicated teams on both coasts that get to know their lenders. Its high-touch, personalized order follow-up means you will always know what’s going on with your appraisal.)

Lender Services and Products

Tech Providers! Attending MBA Annual in San Diego? Connect with the ReverseVision team to learn how their API Integrations that could help you expand your offerings and receive a new wave of requests from your lenders. As the leader in the reverse mortgage industry, ReverseVision continually seeks new ways to empower its tech partners and lenders alike with the fastest way to connect to reverse mortgage lending options and create a seamless user experience across the entire HECM lifecycle. Lenders are repeatedly asking for a reverse mortgage lending solution within their existing technology. Be their go-to provider! It is easy to get started, learn how to partner with ReverseVision today.

Huge Pricing Improvement on all Non-QM/NanQ loan programs from LoanStream! Includes DSCR, Full/Alt Doc, Asset Utilization, VOE, and Bank Statement programs. Loan Amounts up to $5 million. Higher LTVs and Lower FICOs qualify. Check out our Non-QM Programs: Non-QM / NanQ Wholesale Loan Programs LoanStream Wholesale - Wholesale Mortgage Lending - Stand out with the ONE Lender that makes you the ONE to call. Contact your Account Executive today. Visit www.LoanStreamWholesale.com for our great rates and programs.

Ready for IRS transcripts delivered in hours? Service 1st provides key takeaways of the IRS’ modernization efforts impacting your 4506-Cordering process, including OCR software speeding up transcript turn times. Want more? Process last-minute VOE/I using a cascading workflow from automated to manual verifications. With access to 30+ verified database sources (or roughly 4M employers and 150M records) our proven results deliver 1 in 2 reports in less than 12 business hours. Check out S1 turn-times here. Customize and empower your income analysis solution using verified employment and income data with S1’s Income+. Easy onboarding, faster processing, and higher profit margins. Get started today with a no obligation price proposal or schedule a meet up at MBA Annual, Oct 17-20.

Want to easily benchmark your organization’s performance? Establish sales goals based on market potential? Or quickly identify markets where you could expand? Then Black Knight’s MarketShare Vision℠ is for you. MarketShare Vision℠ is an easy-to-use online portal that provides instant access to in-depth market intelligence. Leveraging Black Knight’s current and comprehensive data, this intuitive, online tool enables you to view market activity in a variety of ways, including by geography, property type, loan purpose and much more. Find out how this fast, flexible platform can give you the data you need to help optimize your business performance. Request a demo today.

As refi volumes dwindle and the industry moves toward a primarily purchase market, it is imperative that mortgage lenders shift their focus to margin management. With increasing operational costs, rising interest rates, and growing competition on every loan, profitability will be more scrutinized in the latter part of 2021 and beyond. Luckily, there is an impressive amount of data that exists within the most advanced price optimization tools, enabling lenders to discover new and unique ways to leverage their own personal (and competitor!) data to increase profitability. Contact Nomis Solutions to learn how real-time data and pricing science can be used to manage margin compression and squeeze each available basis point from all aspects of your mortgage operation—from production to fulfillment, through secondary marketing and servicing.

If you have a portfolio of charge-offs collecting dust and questions about how to collect the debt, Computershare Loan Services (CLS) can help. With 14 years of success in debt recovery, they can answer all your questions—like: How much can you expect to recover? Does the liquidation rate vary between legacy/vintage charge-offs and recent charge-offs? Does CLS’ recovery approach differ between securitization and whole-owned pools? Read their full FAQs for more. The CLS team is ready to review your charged-off portfolio, build a cash flow model, and provide an estimated liquidation rate so you know what you can expect to get back. Get the answers you need!

Have you seen us yet?! Certified Credit’s got a whole new look coming just in time for the MBA!  If you haven’t made plans to stop by booth #801, make sure to get it on your agenda! We work in every stage of the mortgage origination lifecycle from pre-application to post-close. By streamlining the information-gathering process, Certified Credit helps lenders and mortgage brokers reduce risk, comply with secondary market requirements, make informed decisions, and grow their business. Certified is excited to share our technical solutions and perspectives, grounded in our dedication to helping lenders and borrowers with their transition to a digital mortgage landscape. Our new website is live and ready to show you more about our robust suite of solutions that propel business growth for mortgage lenders. Email sales@certifiedcredit.com or reach out to schedule a meeting with our team today!

Caliber Home Loans is committed to providing our mortgage brokers with the best tools and resources to support their borrowers. That’s why we’re proud to share some exciting improvements to our pricing technology, specifically pay ups. These enhancements to pricing provide additional opportunities to improve your best execution for your borrowers. Incredible savings can range on average from 16 BPS on conventional loans to 28 BPS on government loans. Our brokers also benefit from the cost-effective offerings for loans that meet characteristics and make it less likely to refinance. Get Approved with Caliber: By becoming an approved lender with Caliber Wholesale, you will be working with a company that invests in cutting-edge technology and innovation to ensure the best experiences for our brokers and borrowers. Reach out to Whslcontactus@caliberhomeloans.com today to learn more about how you can advance your business.

Wholesale Updates

There is just one more day until Rocket Pro TPO’s big announcement. I’m sure you’re like me and can’t wait to find out what it is! The lender has said they will roll out new tools, tech, connections to help brokers grow, strengthen, and protect their businesses. Austin Niemiec, Rocket Pro TPO’s EVP, will be explaining how they are breaking down barriers and removing obstacles for brokers in an exclusive streaming event tomorrow, October 19, at 2PM ET. All brokers are encouraged to tune in so they can hear the news firsthand. I know I’ll be watching!

Newfi, a technology driven multi-channel mortgage lender, today announced the execution of a definitive agreement to sell a majority shareholder interest to Athene (NYSE: ATH) from Warburg Pincus, a leading global growth investor. The investment in Newfi will be managed by Apollo (NYSE: APO). The transaction will help Newfi to expand its footprint and compound its expertise in the non-agency mortgage space. This transaction comes at a time of significant momentum for Newfi, which continues to experience record earnings growth and volume in 2021. Newfi will continue to invest in its infrastructure and look to capitalize on the significant growth opportunity. Founder and CEO Steve Abreu will continue to lead Newfi and will retain his equity position. Co-founder Michelle Constantine will also remain as the Company’s Chief Risk Officer. Expect the transaction to close in the first quarter of 2022 subject to satisfaction of customary closing conditions including state mortgage and other regulatory approvals.

Sprout Mortgage is strengthening its robust line of automation tools for a fully digital mortgage experience with the release of its third originator-focused mortgage tool, iAnalyze, the first non-QM bank statement analyzer tool of its kind. iAnalyze helps mortgage brokers and correspondent lenders receive immediate analysis of a borrower's qualifying income, analyzes up to two years of bank statements to determine qualifying income in a process that can take less than an hour. It is designed for third-party loan originators to eliminate the tedious and time-consuming process of income analysis required for bank statement-based loans. Sprout will unveil iAnalyze at the annual gathering of the Mortgage Bankers Association in San Diego, CA, October 17-20; expect it to be widely available to the Sprout client network in early November.

Capital Markets

Redwood Trust announced its Q3 results, demonstrating strong volume across both mortgage banking businesses, funding $639 million of business purpose loans and locking a record $4.7 billion of residential loans. (The lock mix was 59 percent purchase money loans and 41 percent refinances.) RWT completed three securitizations across Residential and Business Purpose Lending, including two inaugural transactions: SEMT 2021-6 backed by $449 million of jumbo residential loans, the market's first non-agency residential mortgage-backed securitization leveraging blockchain-based technology, and CAFL 2021-RTL1 backed by $272 million of bridge loans, CoreVest's first securitization of residential transitional loans, structured with a feature to allow reinvestment of loan payoffs for the first 30 months of the transaction. RWT also completed the first-ever securitization backed entirely by residential Home Equity Investment (HEI) agreements, issuing approximately $146 million of securities through a transaction co-sponsored with Point Digital; ongoing relationship with Point includes flow agreements to purchase HEIs that will benefit Redwood's investment portfolio. Finally, it distributed $2.4 billion of jumbo residential loans through whole loan sales.

Turning to rates, and summing up last week’s economic data, it was all about consumer spending and inflation, both of which ticked up in September. U.S. retail sales increased by for the month and are up 13.9 percent from one year ago. Consumer prices rose, driven higher by energy prices which have risen almost 25 percent over the last twelve months. Excluding food and energy, consumer prices have risen 4.0 percent during the last year while core producer prices increased 5.9 percent. Meanwhile, initial jobless claims finally dipped below the 300K mark for the first time during the recovery and are expected to return to a “normal” level by the end of the year. 

Recent data continues to drive market expectations that the Fed will begin to taper the Treasury and MBS purchases that have been in place since the beginning of the pandemic following their November meeting. Mortgage rates, which have slowly inched up over the last month, are expected to continue to gradually increase over the coming year as well.

Treasury yields and mortgage rates ended last week on the rise, largely due to a much better than expected Retail Sales report for September. Demand for merchandise was resilient, though likely aided by inflation, posting an increase of 0.7 percent when expectations were for a -0.3 percent decline. Consumer sentiment, however, fell unexpectedly in early October to the second-lowest level since 2011, as Americans grew more concerned about inflation. The reading was nearly as dire as the lows that were registered last year following the shutdown of the economy at the onset of the pandemic.

This week’s economic data sees less of the first-tier variety than last week with updates on industrial production/capacity utilization, housing starts and building permits, and existing home sales. It is also the last week for Fed appearances before they go into blackout ahead of the November 2/3 FOMC meeting. The calendar gets underway later this morning with September industrial production and capacity utilization, the NAHB Housing Market Index, and a lone scheduled Fed speaker: Minneapolis’ Kashkari. With regard to MBS, the Desk is scheduled to purchase $5.8 billion of 30-year 2 percent and 2.5 percent. Also potentially impacting MBS trading volumes at the start of the week will be MBA’s Annual Convention in San Diego from Sunday to Wednesday. We begin the week with Agency MBS prices worse .125-.250 and the 10-year yielding 1.61 after closing last week at 1.58 percent, no surprise given the fretting about inflation and tapering.

LO Jobs and Transitions

Congratulations to the team at Mann Mortgage for being recognized as the #1 company listed to Top Mortgage Workplace by MPA (101-499 category). This is the third year the hometown lender has won this award for their culture. “It’s our coworkers who make this an incredible place. They’re amazing at helping people in their community find a great mortgage and making Mann Mortgage a healthy and fun workplace,” says CEO Jason Mann. With a workforce of 400 people spanning 44 locations, this recognition comes from positive feedback from employees. Mann Mortgage was recently ranked #12 Best Place to Work in 2020 by Outside magazine, #1 Top Workplace in Montana by Lee Enterprises, a Top Workplace by The Oregonian, and a Scotsman Guide Top Mortgage Lender. Mann Mortgage is actively seeking new branch locations. If you’re ready to work for a top ranked workplace, contact Cassidy O’Sullivan.

The Executive Team at VIP Mortgage recently announced the promotion of a key member of the team, Eric Kilstrom, to the position of National Sales Manager, following his accomplishments as the Producing Branch Manager for the North Valley Branch of VIP Mortgage for nearly a decade. He will continue to bring best practices to all segments of the company, as well as to explore strategic opportunities to support the firm’s growth.

Nationwide Mortgage Bankers announced today that Nate Hernandez has joined as Chief Operating Officer to focus on supervising all daily operations while working with leadership to set company performance goals.

Lenders One announced that Tricia Migliazzo is its SVP of Origination Sales where she will head the company’s membership and product offerings, including CastleLine risk management and insurance, Premium Title title and settlement, Trelix mortgage fulfillment, Springhouse appraisal, and valuation services.