A VantageScore 710 & a FICO 660 Walk Into a Bar 🍺

Mark Begor would like you to know that nobody — nobody! — is thinking about ‘gaming’ credit scores.

"You use the term score gaming," the Equifax CEO told an analyst on Tuesday's earnings call. "We don't hear anyone thinking about it that way. Why would they do it?"

Why would they do it? Can they even do it? Let me take a swing 🏏 at that one.

Also in today’s edition of The Mortgage Scoop: three lenders account for nearly 10% of all GSE repurchases in Q1, I get pre-approved for a $1.1M home purchase but still fall short & more.

The seller of our dream Brooklyn apartment received our offer at 11:59 a.m, one minute before the deadline. That we even got the offer in at all was a minor miracle. By 11:30 a.m., we hadn’t even received the preapproval from the big depository bank. After a full week of them reviewing tax records, assets, income, P&Ls, & contracts, it looked like it wasn’t going to happen. But they managed to get it done!

That doesn’t always happen w/ the big banks. I received numerous messages from people telling me that they have private client status w/ large banks & it didn’t move the needle for their mortgage needs. "The last house I bought I literally got the quote 2 days AFTER I closed,” said one. “Sad realities of dealing with banks versus IMBs."

Another told me he worked w/ an LO at a big bank on a $2M condo purchase for six weeks & the LO was suddenly let go. And the bank never told him! The loan just sort of fell between the cracks. 

Here in NYC, few IMBs are major players in the co-op game (Rate, CCM do a decent amount of biz here & there’s a few notable broker shops like Guardhill). 

Co-ops represent about half the stock on offer in Brooklyn & Big Banks often have structural advantages in this space.

1) They underwrite both the borrower & building & can approve a loan under their own portfolio standards. That’s huge for "non-warrantable" buildings, weird co-op structures or borrowers w/ complicated income (hi, it me).

2)Banks can also accept thinner mortgage margins b/c they're also often getting checking, savings, brokerage & business accounts as part of the package (the bank we got pre-approved w/ made moving all of our accounts over a condition on the financing.) 

3) Having databases of co-op buildings & their financials also makes it way easier for a big bank to underwrite than an IMB that doesn't lend on enough co-op buildings to justify the operational expense.

“I'm glad you went to a big bank in NYC,” one local bank LO told me. “I spend almost every day talking to borrowers & realtors discussing warrantable vs non-warrantable & assisting the never ending issues w/ building approval. I often feel like Clark Griswold driving around Big Ben — that it's the same conversation.”

Alright, enough reporting waffle, let’s get back to my home hunt (cuz that’s the fun stuff): We stuck w/ the bank LO our real estate agent recommended b/c the bank has done mortgages on this building (415 Argyle Road) & was very comfortable w/ the building financials. We bid $1.1M on a two-bedroom co-op listed at $989K. We waived contingencies, put 20% down & still had v healthy reserves. The 10-year ARM came to 5.625%. In the end, our offer wasn’t enough. There were five other bidders & the seller accepted another offer. We’re the backup offer. A bridesmaid.

We won’t know why the seller went w/ the other offer for a while. Maybe they offered more money, maybe it was cash, maybe they liked the letter they wrote better than the one my wife penned.

It doesn’t matter. The hunt continues, & we have 87 days before the new landlord boots us. What do y’all think about these options?

Email me w/ what you think is best. Reminder: We have two kids (4, 2) & I work from home, so a decent amount of space is important!

Repurchase activity dropped in Q1'26. A total of 1,201 loans, representing $389.3 million in unpaid principal balance ("UPB"), were repurchased during the quarter, down 30.9% from Q4'25.

Repurchases from Fannie Mae made up 58.2% of UPB compared to 52.6% in the prior quarter. Freddie Mac share was 41.8% compared to 47.4% in the prior quarter. Fannie Mae issued 552 new repurchase demands and Freddie Mac issued 644 new repurchase demands in Q1'26.

Of total resolved repurchase demands (repurchased loans + withdrawn demands), 82.9% of Fannie Mae demands resulted in a repurchase, while 58.0% of Freddie Mac resolved demands resulted in a repurchase.

Repurchases were most concentrated among the Q2'25- and Q3'25-issuance loans, which together accounted for 41.9% of total activity. 

Rocket Mortgage, UWM, and Fairway were the largest originators w/ repurchases, w/ a repurchase share of 6.6%, 5.6%, and 3.7% of total reported repurchases, respectively. Those three originators account for 9.2%, 8.1%, and 2.1% of new issuances in Q2'25 and Q3'25.

This report is brought to you by Milliman. Milliman provides strategic and quantitative consulting services across the mortgage market with expertise in origination, servicing and capital investment.

Source: SEC; includes MBS issuances since 2020 and excludes multifamily repurchase activity

A branch manager in Texas walked me through a file recently: same borrower, same tradelines, FICO said 660, but VS 4.0 said 710. So we’re talking 50 points here, right? Under the old math, that borrower eats the FHA rate & the MI. Under the new math, eyyy that’s a conventional borrower! I’m not offering up a hypothetical scenario; this is a closed loan! 

If two federally sanctioned scoring models disagree by 40-50 points, picking the friendlier one isn't some kooky scheme cooked up by Joe Exotic. It’s getting the client a better deal.

Now, having that said, I still find some of Begor’s arguments a bit off.