How’s your ability to predict the weather? Apparently not good if you’re a groundhog. It is not hard to predict how you’ll hear from the IRS, if you do: The IRS always communicates through the mail, never by email or text. (There’s a scam tip you can pass along to your clients.) And LOs have all seen people incorrectly predicting the direction of interest rates and incorrectly predicting a U.S. recession. President Trump is predicting he will improve housing affordability; Mark Cuban predicts the biggest hit to housing affordability in 2025 is homeowner’s insurance, regulated at the state level of course. That is a safe bet, as it is already a major expense in many areas. There’s a lot of news being thrown at our industry, and much of it was discussed at the MBA’s IMB conference last week. In fact, the subject of today’s Advisory Angle at 2PM ET, presented by STRATMOR Group, is “From the Conference Floor: Actionable Insights for Mortgage Lenders from IMB 2025” featuring Garth Graham, David Hrobon, and Sue Woodard discussing the highpoints and key takeaways from the IMB conference. (Today’s podcast can be found here and this week’s is sponsored by Optimal Blue. OB bridges the primary and secondary mortgage markets to deliver the industry’s only end-to-end capital markets platform, helping lenders maximize profitability and operate efficiently so they can help American borrowers achieve the dream of homeownership. Hear an interview with Outamation’s Devang Kamdar on SOC and ISO accreditations and the future of data in the mortgage industry.)