“To the person who stole my glasses. I will find you; I have contacts.” Here in Cleveland, much of the mortgage talk involves conjecture about where we’ll find the Agencies in a few years. If you’d like some “inside baseball” knowledge about what may happen to Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, you should listen to yesterday’s interview with ex-FHFA Director Mark Calabria. What may happen with conventional conforming interest rates, gfee changes, privatization, the appointment & approval of a new director, net worth changes, capital buffers, the current strength of the Agencies, and so on. The Director of the FHFA, which oversees the conservatorship of Freddie and Fannie, is a position that the president selects and is approved. Interesting, given the spate of cabinet and other posts that are coming out of Mar Largo, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump demanded last Sunday that Republican lawmakers bypass the U.S. Constitution and allow him to appoint key officials without a Senate confirmation vote, aiming to block the little remaining power Democrats have to stymie his administration. Whether this happens, or happens with financial services posts, remains to be seen. Stay tuned! (Today’s podcast can be found here. This week’s is sponsored by Floify. Floify is an easy-to-configure point-of-sale platform that allows each branch or loan officer to customize its look and feel to meet the needs of their lending team, homebuyers, and market. Today’s features an interview with Castor Financial’s Brooks Champagne on how blended income qualifications are getting more borrowers into homes.)