The Institutional Risk Analyst

Truth is, it’s hard to see the leadership of either RITM or UWMC combining with another entity, but the cost pressures in the industry today are driving radical change. 

We expect to see continued consolidation in the world of residential mortgage finance in coming months. The sad fact is that many less competitive businesses in mortgage finance have been waiting for the FOMC to ride to the rescue with lower interest rates. If rate cuts do not materialize in 2025, however, then many of these businesses may not survive.

While GHLD provides a lot of good information about their business, the investor disclosure provided by UWMC is a bad joke, especially when you remember that UWMC is the largest nonbank lender in the US. The Q1 2025 press release is just 9 pages in length and lacks some of the most basic financial information available from UWMC’s peers.

Notice that SQ co-founder Jack Dorsey styles himself as "block head" in the corp roster, a silly affectation that does not help the stock

The Citi decision to exit mortgage servicing perhaps made sense in 2017, but today not so much.

Yellen's proposal for a backstop is merely a canard to help Treasury avoid another fiasco next time a Ginnie Mae issuer fails

If we are marking balance sheet assets to actual market in the age of deflation, what of the heavily modeled world of servicing assets?

We recently added Western Alliance (WAL) and GHLD to our portfolio

The big news this week starts with the poor showing by Rocket Companies (RKT), reporting a loss for Q3 2022 and a big decline in volumes.

The deflation of 2023 is about marking down all types of real assets to the price level that equates with a non-QE world.

Since Block has not yet changed its ticker symbol, perhaps Mr. Dorsey will eventually change the company's name back to Square...

Who is going to acquire and restructure Blend Labs (BLND) before this newbie-fintech-something runs out of cash?

In our view, Guild Mortgage is one of the highest quality businesses in the residential mortgage space.

To paraphrase our friend and fellow mortgage maven Rob Chrisman, ponder a 2022 lending market that’s 75% purchases and just 4.79 million uni

Growing numbers of investors are burned by mortgage stocks. Big question: Will the industry snap back due to now falling interest rates?

The big surge in income and net worth caused by the FOMC last year is rapidly ending. Winter has returned to mortgage land...

We continue to believe that issuers and funds should be accumulating conventional servicing. Rates bottomed in February...

Because of forward liquidity and credit concerns, the window for IMBs to tap the public equity markets appears to have closed for now