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These are the dog 🐶 days of mortgage summer, my friends. I know this because the most popular LinkedIn post on my feed last week was about… hand dryers in bathrooms(?!).
So we’re doing it Quickies-style today: an assortment of scoops, rumors, personnel moves & other weird/interesting shit I’ve heard or seen over the last week or two. Plus, agency delinquencies are creeping up & mortgage rates just hit their highest level in more than a year. Fun!
Finally, as I mentioned last week, The Mortgage Scoop is launching a podcast 🎙 in the fall. If you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to me at [email protected]. More details to come in September!
What's On Tap - August 31
Summer Scoops, Tidbits & Other Interesting Stuff
The FHA is expected to go live in January w/ VantageScore 4.0 & FICO 10T alongside FICO Classic, HW reported. This is not exactly a shock to anyone who’s listened to Bill Pulte & Scott Turner’s
weirdunusual press conferences. The hot industry rumor though, is that 10T will also be coming to Fannie & Freddie early next year…Well, that was fast? After just a few months as the CEO behind broker tech startup Origna8, Dan Sogorka has moved on. He’s the new CEO of Informed, a verification & fraud detection platform. Meanwhile, Mike Fawaz-led Origna8 now owns Rapid Home Loans, which has origna8’d $158M in mortgages YTD, mostly via UWM (duh).
There was apparently quite a bit of latency on Encompass last week, frustrating customers, several sources told The Scoop.
New MI company Anza is raising capital, according to sources. The new firm was expected to debut in late Spring/early summer, but didn’t even have licenses as of a couple months ago, sources said. But I think they’ll be here pretty soon...
NAF just snagged a huge team ($370M) from Atlantic Bay in North Carolina. Will Mullinix is taking his group to Rick & Patty’s shop…
Motto Mortgage is No Mo’? RE/MAX, recently acquired by REAL Brokerage, apparently isn’t a big fan of having a bunch of different in-house mortgage companies to deal w/. They’re ending investment in Motto Mortgage & handing the mortgage reins to One REAL’s Kate Gurevich. There are a couple decent-sized Motto branches — they’ll probably be sold though I can’t imagine they’d fetch too much for REAL.
As if you needed further proof that everybody’s impacted by the economic environment, Lennar's average incentive spend per home, per ResiClub research: Q3 2022 → $12K Q2 2026 --> $55K.
One interesting angle to the NEXA-UMortgage deal is the potential impact on AIME. Anthony Casa is running against Edge’s Tom Ahles for the position of director of membership. As of a few days ago, Ahles was prevailing w/ 70% of the vote. If NEXA can get out the vote, its size (4K LOs) will make it difficult to overcome. (Only paid members can vote in AIME elections.) The voting ends Sept. 13.
Community Mortgage Corp. is the fastest-growing correspondent lender & I don't know anyone who's even heard of them. Per Milliman, they went from 0.8% in Q1 to 3.4% of correspondent volume in Q2.
I’m putting together another list of parties for MBA Annual next month. There’s a couple invites already circulating. I’m definitely going to hit up the Lodestar/Vesta/Lender Toolkit/Blend, etc. party. Multi-Bank Securities is also hosting a party w/ Huntington Securities, Ameris Warehouse Lending, DocMagic & MeridianLink.
I’ve been trying to find out which musical act Freedom has nailed down for MBA Annual. But even sources at Freedom don’t know or won’t say. Freedom sponsored Pitbull in San Diego on the USS Midway & did Maroon Five in Philly a few years ago. Usually they find big names that are a bit past their hit-making days but are still uptempo. My picks? Gwen Stefani or Joe Jonas (who’s from my hometown of Wyckoff, NJ!)
Jamie Cavanaugh of reAlpha is the new CEO of Broker Action Coalition.
Andy Casadei is the new managing director at The Loan Store.
HomeServices of America's mortgage unit, Prosperity Home Mortgage, is breaking into loan servicing. Prosperity has done about $9.5B in mortgages over the past year, per RETR.
Goodbye, Appraisal Vision, hello Alpha7x? Jim Cutillo denied rumors of 3.6 issues at the legacy appraisal tech firm Appraisal Vision & says they are simply moving to a7x’s new platform, an effort two years in the making. "It will render appraisal order management platforms obsolete," he told me. Bold!!!
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Mortgage Rates Near 7% 😿
Short-dated yields rocketed on Friday after Fed Chair Kevin Warsh signaled an increased likelihood of rate hikes aimed at curbing inflation. That led to a selloff that extended into Monday. Per MND, we reached a 52-week high for mortgage rates today: 6.87%.
The 10-year yield hit 4.75% on Monday for the first time since January ‘25 & five-year yields also hit their highest levels since early last year. Brutal! “The market is volatile and competitive,” one AE at a top wholesale lender told me. “The loans I am seeing all have an angle or challenge. I don't see many ‘normal’ or ‘easy’ loans anymore.”
Anecdotally, the rate surge is giving rise to more ARMs. I’m buying a condo right now & managed to score a 5.37% 7/6 ARM from a big bank. Yes, there’s a risk that the rate could be a very scary number in like nine years but I don’t expect to have this mortgage in 2035.
Agency Mortgage Delinquencies Rise in Q2'26 📈
At the end of Q2'26, 30-day+ delinquency rates (30+ DQ) for total outstanding agency securitizations increased to 3.7% of outstanding unpaid principal balance (UPB) compared to 3.5% at the end of Q1'26 and 3.2% at the end of Q2'25. Early-stage delinquency rates (30–59 days) were 1.7% of outstanding UPB, while serious delinquency rates (90+ DQ) stood at 1.6% of outstanding UPB. The 90+ DQ rate was 50 basis points higher than in Q2'25.
Some of the increase in delinquencies can been attributed to a policy change related to trial payment plans for FHA. The reported 90+ DQ increased between Q2'25 and Q2’26 from 3.91 to 6.46% for FHA loans in GNMA securities. As noted by the CPL, the new loss mitigation policy requires borrowers to complete a trial payment plan before receiving home retention options from FHA. Borrowers in the process of their trial payment plan are reported as delinquent, therefore driving up 90+ DQ rates for FHA. VA loans rose 17 basis points to 2.28% (from 2.11%) while Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac 90+ DQ rates were flat year-over-year at 0.31% and 0.33%, respectively.
Source: Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Ginnie Mae MBS Data Disclosure
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