05-16-2022 Weekly Updates from Rob VanRaaphorst, Les Parker, Matt Graham, and Allen Pollack

Speaker 1: It's time for Lykken on Lending. Welcome, everybody. Good to have you with us. Welcome to Lykken on Lending, a weekly mortgage market update providing up to the minute information on interest rates, loan programs and hot industry news, all related to the mortgage industry. Brought to you by Transformational Mortgage Solutions. To participate in today's program, our guest call in line is 646 716 4972. Now here's your host of Lykken on Lending, David Lykken. Let's begin.

David Lykken: Welcome to the podcast, everybody. It is Monday, May 16th, 2022. Just happens to be my youngest daughter's birthday. She's an adult. She and her husband are going to have a great time, my wife's going down to spend time with them in Houston and happy birthday, Christina. So let's get into the podcast here. We're so thrilled to have you here with us. Again, we create this podcast. It's created by mortgage professionals and it's for mortgage professionals and we're always grateful to have you as our listener but we're really creating meaningful content. And today could not be any better representation of the content we desire to bring you. I was on a phone call this last week with a good friend, David Kittle. David and I have been friends for many, many years and you're known by the company you keep, so don't judge David badly for him keeping company with me and judge me well for having good company with him. I don't mean to be self effacing, but it's just really good. David Kittle's going to be joining us on the hot topic segment and I'm really excited about the discussion because we're all veterans here and we're going to have a bit of a round table discussion. For you regulars that have been around for years and years listening to this podcast, this would be one of those round table discussions. We have a topic and it's how to make tough decisions in contracting markets such as we're in. And what to be doing about it, what to be focusing on it. So I'm really looking forward to this discussion and the hot topic segment. Again, for those of you listening on a downloaded basis, you'll get that hot topic in the next podcast on your listening device. For those of you listening live, just stay right here. We're going to be having it all in this topic. I want to say a special thank you to Industry Syndicate. They do a great job helping get our podcast published and awareness about it out. So industrysyndicate. com, check out all the podcasts at industrysyndicate. com. Also, say a special thank you to our sponsors. Oh my gosh, we're so grateful for our sponsors. The Mortgage Bankers' Association of America. By the way, what's going on right now, it's a national secondary marketing conference, so many people. It's really a well attended conference in New York. A lot of people are there and I wish all of them that are there, well, enjoy it, can't wait to hear the reports from that. Was going to go, but unable to for some personal reasons. So anyway, kudos to all you that are attending it, can't wait to hear about the good report. Also, Finastra's Fusion Mortgagebot solution. This is an entire platform that's housed in the cloud. And you go yeah, isn't everything in the cloud? Well, the way this is done right now is, it's through open API's. It's open architecture that Finastra has led the way on and maybe that's why they are the number one FinTech company in the world today. That's right. Finastra's, our sponsor, is the number one FinTech company in the world and it's largely because of how they're structuring things and going about things. So be sure to check out Fusion Mortgagebot POS, talk with one of their sales representatives. We had Troy Anderson on just a little bit ago, April 18th, go listen to that podcast. Troy is a great guy and heads up sales nationally in north America, also Lenders One and The Mortgage Collaborative. We're a part of both of these co- ops. Both of these organizations do a great job of you getting up close and personal with your peers and I love what they're doing at The Mortgage Colab. They have the Co- Labs. David Kittle is one of the founders of The Mortgage Collaborative, our hot topic guest today, and we're really excited to be hearing more about the Co- Labs, I'm sure he'll be weaving some of that in. But also Lenders One. Both of these co- ops. We have a good number of our listeners and clients who are members of both co- ops because they have slightly different approaches. I'm excited about our membership of both, encourage you to consider to do so. Again, neither membership does away with the need to be members of The Mortgage Bankers Association of America. The MBA is critical and it's important that we support them through membership as a result of all that's going on. And also as you're there, check out the Mortgage Action Alliance app at the MBA. Also a special thank you to Total Expert for being a sponsor. They're a leading FinTech software company that delivers purpose built CRM and customer engagement for the modern financial institutions, mortgage bankers, the world. The Total Expert experience platform unifies data marketing sales and compliance solutions to provide a cohesive experience across the customer life cycle. And also what they have built into this thing is a piece of the product that's included when you get the license on recruiting. So you got to check it out, Total Expert. Also Knowledge Group do a great job of helping you train your people through a great learning management platform. Check that one out. Also Mobility MMI and Model. Both of these companies help you recruit based on intelligence, real market data of what's actually being done by loan originator's, not what they're purporting to be doing. Not that at a loan originator would ever stretch the truth at all, but it does happen. And that's how you get to the facts. Use both of these. We use both of them and advise you our clients on recruiting. Also Snap Docs does a great job with over 3 million mortgage closings a year and doing so on E mortgages. Check out Snap Docs and all that they can do for you. Also Success Kit does a great job at helping you tell your story on the internet. Also Lender Toolkit, they've got a suite of products that just fit nicely all around your LOS, encourage you to check out all of them. We could mention each one of them, but be sure to check out the entire product suite. Blender Toolkit as well as Form Free. Brent Chandler and the team there is doing so many things in innovative as is simple inaudible. We're so grateful for these sponsors and we're grateful to have you here with us. Special thank you goes out to Rob, Les, Alice, Allen, Matt and Jack for the contributions each week and looking forward to getting into it. So let's head over to the NBA mortgage minute. We don't have Rob Van Raphorse this week, we have a guest speaker. I'm sure Rob's at the conference so let's get the MBA Mortgage Minute.

Adam: Hi, I'm Adam inaudible. Welcome to the Mortgage Minute, the latest news from the Mortgage Bankers Association. Last week, the US Senate confirmed several nominees that will affect the real estate finance industry in the coming years. Federal reserve chair, Jerome Powell overwhelmingly secured a second term last Thursday and Philip Jefferson was confirmed to the federal reserves board of governors last Wednesday. He is the third of president Joe Biden's nominees to secure a spot on the fed seven person board, along with Lisa Cook and Lael Brainard. Also last week, the Senate narrowly confirmed Julia Gordon to be the department of housing and urban development's assistant secretary for housing and federal housing administration commissioner by a vote of 51 to 50. At FHA, Gordon inherits a department that ensures over$1. 2 trillion in single family forward in reverse mortgages. FHA has been without a confirmed commissioner since January of 2021. Now that's it for this week. Thank you for joining me.

David Lykken: Not having a commissioner since 2021, what does that say about what's going on on the hill? That's why we have to support the MBA folks. We've got to have them in there supporting us in every way. They do such a good job, Bob Brooks Smith and the whole team, Marsha Davies, they're excellent at what they do. So encourage you to get signed up and become a member. Get signed up also for the Mortgage Action Alliance. Let's get over Les Parker with a TM spotlight and a macro review of the markets. Les.

Speaker 1: TM Spotlight Sound Bites is brought to you by Power Seller, making hedging easy. Turn the beat around, hot or cold bear reaction.

Les: Turn it upside down. Do the bulls have hope? Yes, but the bears are stubborn backed by hot inflation winds. Think about high gas and the war in Europe spread basket. A wet planting season in the US threatens to keep corn prices high. Will first time home buying slow while new mothers seek formula rather than a home with a nursery? Volatility remains wild in mortgage rates and spreads to treasuries. As a result, consumers suffer from sticker shock when they see their new payments. Bulls got to feel some traction. Turn it upside down. These views are my own. Get on the move at tmspotlight. com.

David Lykken: Yeah. Good job. I like that. Gary inaudible and Les Parker teaming up for another good segment. Some really interesting information there. Talking about sticker shock on what's going on. Can't wait to get into a discussion of what's on the calendar, but before we do, be remind you to sign up for the tmspotlight @ tmspotlight. com, you can subscribe for the paid version by going to that link and putting in the word power for power seller and you'll get the paid version for free. Matt Cribbs here with us. Matt is the founder and CEO of MBS Live and he's got a market update and what's on the calendar and what have we got to have going on? Got a little bit of recovery from last week, the 10 years treasures 2. 879 is what your screen says right behind me. What you got Matt?

Matt: Well, that's all I was going to report is that the 10 years at 2. 879. Thank you. Have a great day. You nailed it.

David Lykken: We're always encouraging be short, sweet and to the point.

Matt: Okay. I can expound just a bit. To that point, 2. 879 is a nice place to be after staring down 3. 2 at the start of last week. So really a pretty substantial move off the highs. The higher we go in rates, the bigger the impulse gets to move back in the other direction for technical reasons. And that doesn't necessarily connote a long term pushback toward lower rates, but it definitely makes for volatile little swings that can be friendly at times. So last week we really went into it with a heavy focus on CPI, the consumer price index, one of the two biggest inflation reports and of course inflation being the key issue for the fed right now and the fed being the key issue for rates. So there was a lot riding on this and it was a little bit of a mixed response and an interesting one, if you ask me. So let's talk about it. So CPI last week, there's two different key components of CPI's, the audience may or may not know. There's the headline, which includes everything and then there's the core, which factors out food and energy chiefly, oil in this case. So when you factor out food and energy, the line's a little bit less volatile. That's the one the fed likes to look at more than the headline. And sometimes it makes for interesting considerations as to how they are behaving differently. So headline level, let me see, I have my notes here. Headline month over month, 0. 3 versus 0. 2. So that's a little bit hotter, but it is down significantly from 1. 2 last month, so very, very big mud last month. Arguably sideways, maybe even slightly positive, but the market was expecting that result. The core rose a little bit versus the forecast and that concerned me when it first came out. And I think it concerned the bond market when it first came out because the initial response was for rates to shoot higher and for stocks to shoot lower. And that's exactly the inaudible, ink blot that we expect to see when something happens in economic data that is likely to lead the fed to be less accommodative or to consider hiking more quickly or pulling back on bond buy more quickly. Not that they're going to make significant changes based on one report, but if subsequent reports were to sing a similar tune, then the market might start to be afraid of that bigger picture year over year. We had a nasty month of inflation drop out of the calculation and so that allowed the annual numbers to decline from previous levels. The core, still a little bit higher than expected 6. 2 versus 6.0, but it's down from 6. 5, hurray. And headline 8. 3 versus 8.1 forecast, down from 8. 5 previously. So movement in the right direction, subsequent months will need to start to beat their forecasts a little bit better in order to continue those trend. And market finally decided after, I don't know, I think it was 20 to 30 minutes of weakness, that this was not bad enough to freak out over and stocks recovered and bonds recovered. And then stocks and bonds did what they did for most of the week, which was to do that conventional wisdom lock step correlation where stock prices and bond yields generally followed each other. Looking at things tick by tick, second by second, it seems that the stock market set the tone to a greater degree and that bonds were just biding their time last week and following stocks. Notably, when stocks suggested that the bond yields should continue to rise at a faster pace on Friday, bonds instead just held their ground and didn't really follow stock prices higher in a very panicked way. So that was the most encouraging moment of the week, in my opinion, simply that bonds didn't take an excuse for rates to correct back toward even higher level. We stopped before tenure, went back over 3% and now at the start of the new week, even though stocks are holding steady, bonds are rallying. A big touchstone for analysts right now is global growth concerns as it has been at other times in the past, especially concerning China and COVID related lockdowns and just the general economic fallout that is expected from global central banks doing what they need to do to combat inflation. Some central banks have been arguably behind the curve and that's one of the reasons that the dollar is as strong as it is, because the fed is really leading the charge. And as other central banks do that, it alleviates a little bit of the burden from the fed to be as aggressive and it also implies slower global growth and that is ultimately good for rates. Yeah. Do we have a chance to level off? Is this the ceiling we've been looking for? We'll remind everybody that we've had at least three really solid attempts to carve out such a ceiling and none of them have really panned out in a way where we're like, yeah this could be the one. The same story here right now. We haven't seen enough to say this could be the one, but looking at some bigger picture technicals and if bonds were to rally this week and next week, then it's going to be a lot more compelling, especially if we break below some key technical targets in treasuries. And these technicals don't predict the future, but they would help confirm that something is happening. And the ones I'm looking at specifically would be 2. 83 and 2. 72. So pretty close to that first one right now and not quite as close to that second one. Mortgages in a world of their own, spreads are very blown out and that is partly due to the fed's balance sheet normalization. But one of the feathers in the cap of the bond market last week, and especially for mortgages, was the fact that several fed speakers reminded us that hey, we're normalizing the balance sheet but that's a finite process. We'll get to a certain point where we're not needing to do that anymore and the level of reserves will level off and then we will be back to reinvesting the proceeds from the bond market. It remains to be seen what they do with MBS. They probably won't be reinvesting MBS or they will be reinvesting MBS into treasuries, but that's still better than just letting it roll off completely. The most interesting comment in that regard was the balance sheet leveling off in the one to$ 2 trillion range. So what's a trillion dollars between friends. It might be one, it might be two, but it'll level off somewhere around there. Yeah, just goes to show you the magnitude that the words of these people and the decisions of the fed members can have in the global economy. This week, nothing too crazy coming up, that I can see anyway, as far as what's on the schedule in terms of economic data. I think we're just watching how traders are trading this out and how technicals are shaping up. We do have a good amount of housing data. I wouldn't consider that to be market moving in this case. The biggest potential market movers from a traditional sense would be retail sales morrow but that hasn't been a big market mover recently, Philly said on Thursday, and that's about it as far as upper shelf reports. Other than that, just the smattering of housing data builder confidence and housing starts on Wednesday, existing home sales on Thursday and with us as always, MBA apps every Wednesday morning at 7: 00 AM. That's all I got for today.

David Lykken: So how are those apps looking right now?

Matt: Refi apps are as you would expect, near long term lows. Not as low as they were in a distant past but as low as they've been in the past decade or so. And purchase apps have declined from the highs but they were doing that even before the rate spike and still in respectable territory, which is what we normally see during rate spikes, which is for the purchase market to show some sign that it cares, but not to freak out like the Refi market.

David Lykken: Right. That's the point I wanted to bring out. That's very, very good. Jack Nunnery, let's get your comments as you do each and every week on this economic data. Thoughts?

Jack: Well David, all I can say is Matt did a comprehensive job of reviewing last week and what's become in the marketplace. He touched on everything that was germane to potential market moves. We'll see a little less volatility this week, knock on wood, since we've got a lot of Capital Markets folks at the Marriott marquee on Broadway. So hats off to Matt David, I think he, he touched everything.

David Lykken: Yeah, he does. I love what you're doing, bud. You do a great job. You're bringing up the most critical information, you present it in a way and then we can just wheel around and look at it or have it up on their screen, on their mobile device, on their iPad. But in market times like this, how do you live without MBS live. net, nep. net. So anyway, Matt, appreciate you. I get a lot of feedback. What's so much fun about some of the feedback I'm getting on you is listen, it Matt's just coming alive on this podcast and his personality's delightful.

Matt: You called me Eeyore so now I got to compensate in the other direction. I got to bring it back.

David Lykken: But you still have that dry Matt Graham sense of humor, which is dear God, don't ever let that go. Anyway, thank you so much for your contributions each and every week and thank you for the service you provide. People you can get signed up listeners for an extended trial period without a credit card if you put in LOL at the signup as a signup code at mbslive. net. Matt, parting words? Anything you want to say?

Matt: Thank you, Dave, for having me every week and it's a pleasure to be here.

David Lykken: I appreciate you. Let's get over to Alice Alvie. She's here with a legislative update. Alice is master CMB, vice president of education training at Union Home Mortgage. Alice, good to have you here, what you have for our legislative update?

Alice: Thanks. I have two things actually. One is a bit of legislation and the other one is a follow- up on appraisal quality monitoring. So the first one is house bill 7735 and Senate bill 4208, both coming out at the same time with no text, but there was a summary from one of the congressmen involved, who's publishing this. And this is trying to get VA to allow appraisal waivers more frequently and desktop appraisals. So it's always interesting to me when I get a bill that is coming in from both chambers. And then we now have that there'll be some extension on both sides of the Congress and the Senate so that we can maybe actually see something get through on this one, wrapped around the idea that this is good for veterans. So anytime you put that wrapper on it, of course it gets a little more attention. But VA has some of the same procedures that they did when I got in the business at 1982. Do they still have the same net residual income number that they did back then? Now I don't know about you, but my costs have gone up since then, but we still qualify them the same. So I was hoping for some other stuff being thrown in here, but maybe we can open it up to more appraisers. But it doesn't have any of that, it's just focused on being able to streamline some of the appraisals. Interesting that it takes legislation in order to get VA to change. I'm sure they need some money so part of getting the legislation approved would be to also see if they can get some money appropriated in the budget to help them do that and have the access to the technology. So we'll see, but that's one piece of legislation that we're going to watch for you. Another thing that I wanted to advise folks on, Fannie Mae published their appraiser quality monitoring just this month in May and it's an FAQ. Now, they talk about appraisal monitoring all the time but the original memo on this topic is from 2013. And what's really interesting in this FAQ is as lenders, you've got to have a heads up, loan officers, everybody out there has really got to be aware that yes, Fannie Mae maintains a list, but they also have direct contact with our appraisers. So they go straight to them if they have an issue at the same time, they may not tell us if they have an issue with a particular appraiser until it's gotten really bad. So there's lots of really important information in this FAQ. If you're on the QC side or you're on the writing side, make sure you read this, review it because they're saying not only are we looking at appraisers more closely, but we expect you to also. Now, we aren't necessarily seeing an increase in appraisals. Transaction fraud still is number one it looks like, but I think an interesting FAQ to make sure everybody doesn't miss that. Time to get your dust off your appraisal fraud and all kinds of mortgage fraud training, it's a good time of year to catch up on that. So that's my report Dave, back to you.

David Lykken: Yeah. It's a good point that you bring up the mortgage fraud because we're seeing a real surge in it. And every time we have one of these tightening cycles, we see this resurgence of fraud and it's, why do people go there? And so I'm really looking forward to your participation on the hot topic segment, because how do you manage in tough times, what's where to be talking about, in a contracting market. Watch your fraud. What are you doing? Stressing it, communicating inaudible. So Alice, I'm interested in what your better practices are there at Union Home and what you're doing to reinforce that. So looking forward to your contribution in the hot topic segment. Alice, thank you so much for being here each and every week.

Alice: You're welcome.

David Lykken: Let's get over to Alan Pollick. Good to have you on your friend. What do you got for the tech update for us?

Alan: So I'm going to take it easy today. First David, let me bring up Google. So 97% of people, I don't know if you can say you're in that percentage, use Google as your spell checker.

David Lykken: No, I don't. Really interesting.

Alan: Yeah. And the first word to ever be auto- corrected was teh. So instead of the, T- H- E, T- E- H was being misspelled that was the first word to ever been auto- corrected. I know, crazy news but let's talk about some other things. So I was scrolling through some of the podcasts that we've done in the past and I just went back all the way to March of 2018. Yeah, we were talking about the same things, David. Data and analytics, AI, what is blockchain security, how to transform legacy systems and even what is your tech strategy, right? These are all things that we were talking about. And fast forward, many years later and geez, we're talking about the exact same thing. So let's talk about some of those things today, right? I want to bring up one thing I mentioned last week, I actually got a phone call, sometimes I just get text messages or emails, I got a phone call from somebody that said, you have to mention that again because it's one of the smartest things you've ever said, which is the comment about user interface. Why don't elevators have better UI interfaces. So think about, you're a consumer, you're in an elevator and you hit the wrong button and man, you are going to wait, right? You can't un- click the button and you can't get out because the doors have closed. So user interface, think about the elevator experience as you're trying to figure out what you're going to put out there. But even more important, I think David, with these times, right? A lot of layoffs in the industry. By the way, if you're looking for work, please contact me. But a lot of layoffs in the industry right now, a lot of focus on process and procedure and a lot of focus on cost. But we also should be focusing on training, right? We should be focusing on who the customer is and it's not always the homeowner, the customer is our loan officers, it's our operational staff. Have you ever thought about sending them a survey? So instead of them just telling you when things go wrong and whisper down the lane and then you hear that someone's complaining about your technology and they hate it. Or they came from another system and they refuse to use what you have, right? You've heard all that before. Survey them, figure out where the data, the numbers bring you to and where are the most important areas that you may need to train? It may not be you need to buy new technology. You may have everything you possibly need. You're working on the integration strategy but you don't have your teams trained correctly. And you may open up holes where you may have to make some revisions or changes to how things work. I'll give you a perfect example. It may be that you have a point of sale technology and you're emailing support for things. If you contacted that vendor, if you knew that that was a pain point for your staff because of how many people are getting access and removing access to different systems, maybe if you had administrative access or you dedicated one person, everybody's experience would be a lot better and people would be happier because your loan officers would realize that the customer service you're providing them is much faster. Sometimes little things mean a lot, right? So training, I think is huge as you think about your tech strategy and remembering what the strategy was and the mission and helping your staff reengage with that. Let's move on. David. I want to talk about one other thing, fraud. So fraud continues to be huge, not only for your staff, and I know that you usually probably have your yearly or biannual security reviews where they have to join a Zoom meeting for an hour and watch a presentation about a guy telling you things that most people already know, but fraud us up. People getting text messages saying that your Amazon account was hacked or actually, even better, they're more mischievous David. They actually do things like click here to view your receipt. And you didn't buy something and you're wondering why you got a message that says that. You click on it, it asks you to enter your information to confirm and now they have your Amazon information, right. And people are doing that with iCloud, people are doing that with anything. And then also it's a good time to remind your borrowers, right? And I think David, one of the weeks that you were at a conference Jack was hosting on his own, I think I brought up one topic which had to do with password security, right? So that's important. But more importantly, you have to help your customers, your borrowers remember that those email accounts they have, they're being scanned and they've been scanned for years and their passwords, more than likely, is their dog, their address or just because you have a one in an exclamation point at the end or two at symbols, doesn't mean that that's not hackable. And the second that a loan transaction or something of worthiness to that hacker comes through, that's when they enact on access to your account. And that's the time that they've been prepared and waiting for your borrowers to decide that, we're going to wire money somewhere. And those scams, if you Google it, they still go on every day and sometimes they can't get that money back. So now's a good time to think about your tech strategy but more important, think about your customers, which is internal customers and external customers. And that's it for today. David.

David Lykken: Good job. Yeah. Regina Lowry's got a great product on that and we'll talk about that in just a minute, David Kittle knows that person really well. David, what's the name? I'm going to turn on your mic and just say what's the name of Regina's company again that covers that so well? Dytrics. Thank you. Refreshing my memory, I should know that. They do a great job of covering that risk. You bring up a really, really good point, Alan. We've got to be watching the mortgage fraud, it's going up, up, up and away. So looking for those opportunities, quick money and it's gone, you cannot get it back. Very rare. There have been a few cases where it's gotten clawed back, but very, very rare. Very good Alan. Can you stick around, hopefully participate in the hot topic segment? I'd love to have your participation.

Alan: I wouldn't miss it

David Lykken: All good. Excellent. Well folks that wraps up the weekly mortgage update. Folks, next week we have Andrea Lightfoot coming on of Simple Nexus, along with Celine inaudible of Thrive and I'm really looking forward to this discussion, talking a lot about what's going on. And Andrea's bringing on Celine is because of what successes Thrive is having. So we're going to be getting in and talking about with the mortgage letter again, this is one of the things that TMC does at the Co- Labs real well and they bring in and they talk with each other about what's happening on. So listen in next week on the hot topic segment as Andrea and Celine will be talking about things that are making it work for Thrive and how they're doing it with Simple Nexus. Yes, they're a sponsor, but it's important tips that we can get in here about what's happening. A special thank you goes out to all of our sponsors. Finastra, Lenders One, Mobility MMI, Modic, MBA, Knowledge Coop, Mortgage Collaborative, The Snap Docs Group as well as a Success Kit, Lender Toolkit, Total Expert, Form Free, Simple Nexus, we appreciate all of them. And we thank you listeners for being here with us. Have a great week and look forward to having you back here next week.

Speaker 1: You've been listening to Lykken on Lending, a weekly mortgage market update with your host David Lykken on transformational mortgage solutions. Join us next week and thanks for listening.