An Independence Home Loans LO offered some provocative—and likely illegal—advice to a prospective borrower: skip 4 mortgage payments.

A retail LO shared an email w/ The Scoop that showed Moe Aljebori on Oct. 14 saying the FHA borrower will have their payment “automatically” go down in 6 months after on-time payments.

“As someone who loves this career, it kills me to see stuff like this go on, and it needs to be brought to light,” the retail LO said.

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Brokers at AIME Fuse, which held its flagship event at the Grand Ole Opry, told The Scoop that the tactic crossed a line. They believe Aljebori is telling the borrower he will refi them again in 6 months & is collecting enough pre-paid interest on both loans to avoid making payments (which would require a lot of money upfront & necessitate a big drop in rates). Aljebori & Independence president Eric Katz did not return calls & emails Friday afternoon.

Brokers at Fuse said it’s also sometimes a free-for-all at some of the call center broker shops. Whoever answers the phone first takes the application, even if they’re not licensed in the state the borrower is buying a home in. They’ll transfer it to a manager who is licensed in the state & the initial LO will get paid on referral. Such a practice may not harm the borrower, but it’s a very gray area, lawyers & industry veterans told The Scoop.

There are others things to watch for.

“The most dangerous LO for a broker-owner is the one who does 1 loan every 3 months,” added UMortgage’s Todd Bitter. That LO has rent/mortgage to make, car payments, food that needs to be put on the table. “What will he do to close the loan?” 

The wholesale channel “is the wild west, man,” one top mortgage brokerage leader told The Scoop. The highs are very high in the channel. There are loads of skilled brokers who win in their communities, save borrowers money & land repeat business b/c their real estate agent partners trust them. They’re growing market share for a reason & many are doing important work to help minority borrowers achieve the American Dream.

But others work in call centers as “1003 takers” who can’t spell “TRID” & aren’t licensed in some states yet are still doing loans. Sometimes they claim to be from the lender or the FHA or VA. Anything to get the loan.

“Too many bad actors in the space hurt credibility for the rest of us,” the brokerage exec said. “The call centers don’t want them [the workers] to be smart.”

Hey, everybody! The Mortgage Scoop launched about 2 months ago & I’ve been blown away by the support. Thank you 🙏 so much. I wanted to share an important update about the business. We’ll be moving to a paywall pretty soon.

Paid subscribers will get exclusive MWF newsletters packed with scoops, analysis & insights you won’t find anywhere else (plus some bonus content). Founding Members can lock in the price for 2 years for $240. Monday editions will remain free & open for all subscribers. Hit me up w/ any questions you might have. - James Kleimann

Bill Pulte said on social media this week that the FHFA is reviewing the LLPAs. The effort is being led by MBS Highway founder Barry Habib, who joined Fannie’s board of directors in July.

The fees were first instituted in ‘20 by ex-FHFA Director Mark Calabria, hitting borrowers w/ a 50 bps fee on refis. The Biden administration sought to make big tweaks in ‘23 by reducing/eliminating fees for FTHB & low-to-moderate-income borrowers & changing the weights on borrowers w/ lower credit scores & higher down payments. They pushed a new LLPA on DTA north of 40%, which caused a bit of a shit storm. Sandra Thompson was forced to pull parts of it. 

However, many of the risk weight fees remain in place. The industry says the GSEs made it too expensive on borrowers at a time when affordability was already arguably at a crisis point. And given how much money the GSEs have made on the LLPAs & the low rates of delinquency, perhaps they should tweak the pricing matrix (or get rid of it altogether). 

It’s important to note that the LLPAs on investment properties/2nd homes straight-up did not have the intended effect. Like, it just didn’t work. 

Pulte hasn’t detailed what fees would change, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that UWM announced in April that they’d “eat” agency LLPAs on 2nds & investment properties. 

The larger question is this: The fees have helped the GSEs grow their net worth; how much does the Trump administration really want to change that dynamic as they attempt to take Fannie & Freddie ‘public’?

There were quite a few whispers at MBA Annual about a relatively new MI player poised to make a big splash. Delaware-based Anza Mortgage Insurance is in talks with at least 1 of the GSEs to insure new flow production, sources told The Scoop. If they receive approval, that would make 7 MI companies permitted to insure GSE-bought loans. The industry hasn’t seen a new entrant in more than a decade.

The fear is that the new company would strike a deal w/ the GSEs that is materially different than the one the incumbents have. 

But a high-level source in the MI space said that didn’t make sense to him. The GSE enterprise capital framework is very clear about what a new entrant would need to do to in order to get into the MI Club 🪩 . The standards for approval are very high, the biggest hurdle 🦘 being that a new entrant needs at least $500M in the bank. Because the other MI firms have far more capital than that & strong credit ratings, they’d receive more favorable terms from the GSEs than a company w/ the minimum requirements & no credit rating, he said.

Little is known about Anza, which describes itself as a fintech (who doesn’t these days?) & is backed by Josh Birnbaum’s Tilden Park Capital Management, per documents filed w/ the North Carolina insurance commission. 

“The Company plans to begin writing mortgage insurance business on January 1, 2026, focusing exclusively on insuring loans guaranteed by the GSEs, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,” the NC insurance commission docs say. “The Company is required to obtain GSE approval and invest capital totaling $500,000,000 to begin writing insurance coverage for GSE backed loans. The Company’s license is currently restricted to ‘No Direct or Assumed Business.’”

The Scoop reached out to Anza’s listed corporate email address & the email bounced 🤷 . Executives also did not immediately return requests for comment. If Anza were to get approval, they’d likely need to raise quite a bit of money (shouldn’t be insurmountable w/ a hedge fund lol). As of June ‘24 they had $10.7M in the bank & there’s been no news since then…

It wouldn’t be a Fuse w/o some new announcements from UWM’s Mat Ishbia. He rolled out 3 new tools for borrowers.

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