Who’s Laying Off In Mortgage Right Now

Mortgage’s layoff 🌊 is getting harder to ignore.

NewRez, Lakeview, NAF & at least a half-dozen others have all cut staff recently, according to my sources, as lenders & vendors reckon w/ a purchase market that never delivered what many were staffing for & a 10-year in the 5s 🤮.

In today’s edition of The Mortgage Scoop, I’ve got the latest on the various industry RIFs, why several execs say these cuts were months in the making & what tech/offshoring has to do w/ it.

Plus, Wells Fargo just handed ICE a monster MSP win, & Karen Postiglioni asks a deceptively simple question: Does anyone actually know what they’re paying for credit? And much more!

If you’re not already a paid subscriber, I humbly ask that you consider upgrading & support independent reporting. Click this link to get 10% off an annual subscription to The Scoop. I promise you won’t find anything else like it! OK, let’s get to it!

By Karen Postiglioni

Ask 10 LOs what it costs to pull credit and I guarantee you’ll get 10 different answers. I’m always a little fascinated when someone knows the number down to the penny.

$147.43.

Really?

When I was running a lending business, I couldn’t have given you one number. It changed every month. Because… what are you paying for?

Let me count the ways.

Soft pull. Hard pull. One bureau. Two. Tri-merge. One borrower. Two borrowers. New report. Reissue. Refresh. Supplement. Monitoring.

And that’s even before we get into who you buy it from, whether you order it through LOS or direct, what you negotiated & what else is bundled into the price.

Fannie Mae’s own documentation distinguishes individual from joint reports & new reports from reissues. Xactus lists single-, two- and three-bureau products, soft inquiries, supplements, monitoring & reissues among its credit offerings. Freddie Mac notes that reordering a merged report may result in an additional fee.

So when one person says credit costs $130 & another person says $200, my first question isn’t, “Who’s getting ripped off?”

It’s, “Are we even comparing the same thing?”

And while we’re asking questions, when was the last time somebody actually reconciled the invoice against the contract & the orders?

Because that’s the part that doesn’t happen everywhere.

Your contract says one thing, but your rate sheet says another. The invoice lands w/ hundreds or thousands of line items: different products, different borrowers, different charges. Maybe a reissue here, a refresh there, a duplicate order somewhere else.

Someone has to make sure the math actually works.

The good news is that in ‘26, this should be easier than ever. AI can already read contracts, rate sheets & invoices, compare them & flag discrepancies. Add the actual order data & a whole lot of ugly manual reconciliation becomes exception management.

So yes, keep arguing about FICO v VantageScore. Keep arguing about bureau pricing. Keep arguing about what credit “should” cost.

But first, make sure you know what you’re actually buying, & what you’re actually being charged.

Growing up, your mom told you to eat your vegetables.

I’m telling you to reconcile your invoices. Period.

I gotta tell you: it absolutely sucks to report on RIFs. I have worked as a professional journalist my entire adult life & have been personally laid off on two occasions. The anxiety of what I would do after my meager severance was exhausted literally gave me ulcers.

That said, I also feel a deep responsibility to share the good, the bad & the ugly about the mortgage industry. We can only change the industry for better when we are honest about what’s really going on. (It’s why I launched this publication.)

So here’s my update on who’s laying off staffers. It’s a lot, unfortunately, & I’m certain there are some I have missed. Side note: I’ve placed probably 20 people in jobs over the last few years (totally for free btw) & am happy to connect industry pros w/ my network of solid employers. Feel free to email me at [email protected].