Wall Street torched PennyMac on Friday, erasing roughly $3B in market value after earnings badly missed expectations. PFSI’s Q4 profits fell more than 30% when analysts were expecting double-digit growth, while revenue rose just 14%—less than half the projected pace. The selloff spilled into Monday before shares finally found footing.

Is it a sign that the aggregator-servicers aren’t so bulletproof after all, or an isolated incident that will soon be corrected? We explore those very questions in today’s edition of The Scoop, and it’s only for Mortgage Scoop Insiders🔒 (scroll to the bottom👇 plz).

Plus, we’ve got a fun rumor on a real estate-mortgage consultancy marriage (I do!?), the implications of lead generators getting scooped up, my old trivia team finally becoming relevant in mortgage (sort of), rent-to-own Trump Homes™, a $400M team moving & more. 

(🙏 If you like what you’re reading, tell a fellow mortgage junkie to sign up here.)

Experian is acquiring mortgage marketplace Own Up, the latest top of funnel play in mortgage.

Experian intends to scale Boston-based Own Up, which essentially serves as an advisor for customers & matches them w/ lenders. Own Up started as a brokerage that quickly evolved into a very data-driven platform that Rocket, Better, loanDepot, NAF want to do business with. They also maintained a flow of leads that smaller lenders could also tap into, said Next Belt Strategies’ Jeremy Potter.

Shoppers using Experian Marketplace will be able to access Own Up’s tech to get a preapproval or a rate lock w/o leaving the platform. Consumers will also be able to compare mortgage offers & receive advisement throughout the loan process.

Own Up, which is backed by Move Inc. among others, says its mission has been to ensure that no borrower overpays for its mortgage. Does publicly traded Experian believe in that?

One commenter, Andrew Whatley, said the deal could create a “data monopoly.” His concern is that Experian would prioritize lenders that pay them the highest fees over the ones offering customers the best rates. By keeping you in their ecosystem, you’re less likely to find better deals elsewhere, he argued.

Whether you agree or not, I think this is yet another sign that consumer finance shops see cross-sell opportunities in mortgage. FWIW this is just the most recent M&A deal for a mortgage marketplace since the trigger lead bill was passed. New-look Opendoor bought Dan Green’s Homebuyer.com in January & the Robinhood-Sage deal turned some heads too.

Editor’s Note: This story was updated at 2/4 at 6 pm ET to clarify prior investors in Own Up. Experian was not a prior investor.

Lennar & Taylor Morrison are among the builders that are heeding the Trump call to sell entry-level homes into a proposed rent-to-own program funded by private investors, Bloomberg reported. It’s colloquially known as “Trump Homes.” 

One idea is that investors would rent out the homes to tenants, whose monthly payments, after 3 years, would be counted toward the down payment. The particulars are still fuzzy & it may not happen, but a source told Bloomberg that builders are aiming for 1M new homes, which would deliver $250B(!) worth of housing.

The private investors would bear any initial losses & it’s unclear what role the GSEs would play, if any. Industry players pitched the plan last year to the administration & are continuing to refine the details, sources told Bloomberg.

I’m glad the Trump administration is finally focusing on the supply issue rather than pushing demand-side wall spaghetti, but this sounds like a moonshot. I’ll eat my socks if this one happens 🧦 🍽 .

That 👆was the name of my trivia team a few years back. We even won a tournament at Pinebox Rock Shop in Brooklyn. That factoid is not remotely relevant to this news item, but I thought I’d share anyway.

OK, so the story here is that Bed Bath & Beyond, which is Still a Thing apparently, signed an agreement to acquire Tokens.com. They’ll be creating a personal finance platform, which will include a partnership w/ Mike Cagney’s Figure Technologies. The partnership w/ Figure will bring access to mortgages, HELOCs, reno loans, etc. to the platform. It’s pretty easy to see some top-of-funnel stickiness coming from platforms like Figure attaching directly w/ bigger retailers going forward.  

Speaking of Figure, they have a new partnership w/ servicing platform Valon. Figure said its early results on the Valon platform have been “compelling.” Partner loans serviced using Valon’s tech showed a 40% improvement in delinquency outcomes vs the control group, Figure says.

PFSI generated $37M in servicing net income in Q4, way down from the $157M in Q3 & still a stark decline from $87M a year prior.

PennyMac did not make an executive available on Wednesday, but executives on the earnings call said that competition hurt margins & prepayment speeds accelerated. Q1 is already looking better & biz should improve over the course of ‘26, CEO David Spector told analysts. 

"While production segment income was approximately double the levels reported in the first 2 quarters of this year, the growth from the 3rd quarter to the 4th quarter did not offset the runoff of the portfolio," Spector said. "We are positioning ourselves to better capture the significant opportunities presented by lower mortgage rates & further increase production income in comparison to MSR runoff." 

Outside of the obvious point about how important recapture is, there are a few things we should talk about in this sector. Become a Mortgage Scoop Insider today to get the full scoop.