The rise in home equity lending should continue through the end of next year as conditions feeding current growth in the product will drive the market, a new study from the Mortgage Bankers Association has found. In 2024, the total combined HELOC and outstanding home equity loan debt grew 10.3%, according to the MBA’s 2025 […]
Home equity products set to grow in 2025, 2026, study finds Read More »
Bill Pulte, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) recently roiled the mortgage market with a post on X, writing “Fannie [Mae] and Freddie [Mac] will ALLOW lenders to use Vantage 4.0 Score with no current requirement to build new infrastructure (stays Tri Merge).” Not only is it highly unorthodox to be making huge policy decisions
Pulte’s tweet hands credit bureau an unfair edge Read More »
In 2023, Steve Thomas started a new correspondent lender, Futurewave Finance. His three decades in the mortgage industry include servicing as the senior managing director of mortgage capital markets at the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago, as well as time at Fannie Mae. From his time in the FHLB system, Thomas learned that community
Why Futurewave bets on bank-focused non-QM loans Read More »
Five Senate Democrats are raising concerns about the potential risks of using unconverted cryptocurrency assets in mortgage underwriting, urging the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) to tread carefully. In a letter addressed to FHFA Director Bill Pulte, the senators reacted to his social media post from late June, in which Pulte said the agency is
Senate Democrats press FHFA on crypto use in mortgages Read More »
Enjoy complimentary access to top ideas and insights — selected by our editors. Bill Pulte, the Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), announced on July 8, 2025, that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would accept Vantagescore 4.0 credit scores for mortgage underwriting. This decision was communicated via Pulte’s social media account on X
Credit scores are not the issue Read More »
Douglas Elliman, the nation’s sixth-largest real estate brokerage, is the latest firm to unite home sales and financing under one roof. The company has entered into a “strategic alliance” with Associated Mortgage Bankers, Ronkonkoma, New York, to create Elliman Capital. “By bringing mortgage services in-house, we’re creating an unprecedented level of convenience and oversight to
Douglas Elliman forms mortgage venture with AMB Read More »
The share of mortgage loans with issues that could indicate fraud declined in the second quarter of 2025, although it is still above levels seen in the second half of last year, Fundingshield’s Wire Fraud Analytics report said. During the period, nearly 46.63% of transactions analyzed in an $81 billion residential, commercial and business purpose
Existing lender controls lacking to detect mortgage fraud Read More »
A little more than a month after it agreed to sell all of Title365 to Covius Services, Blend Labs is entering into “an expanded partnership” with Doma to use its artificial intelligence-powered instant decisioning technology. “This partnership with Doma reinforces our core focus: delivering innovative, software-driven solutions that create real value for our customers,” said
Blend, after Title365 sale, expands partnership with Doma Read More »
The FHFA’s nod to VantageScore 4.0 — and silence on FICO’s rival 10T model in a recent X post — has reignited a bitter fight over the future of mortgage credit scoring. A B of A Global Research report dated July 11 on the agency RMBS market pointed to the imprecise language in the post
FICO challenges FHFA’s VantageScore decision Read More »
Editor in Chief Sarah Wheeler sat down with Bill Packer, chief operating officer at Longbridge Financial, to talk about the ways his company is using AI to serve reverse mortgage borrowers. Packer has worked in the consumer lending space for four decades, with deep expertise in technology and operations. This interview has been edited for
Longbridge COO Bill Packer on how technology is influencing workflows Read More »