Over the next decade, the housing market will have excess demand of 25 million units even as the baby boomer generation ages and dies, the Mortgage Bankers Association said.

California lender Synergy One recently rolled out Synergy GPT, an enterprise AI bot, and is looking to further expand its technology use cases in 2025.

Loandepot rolled out Project North Star, an initiative designed to position the company as “the leading lending partner of choice for homeowners.”

Low supply and production volumes, though, have left values competitive, with two segments in particular holding promise for favorable returns, a new report said.

Bonds Brace For Election Results

It was an interesting round trip for the bond market today as overnight weakness gave way to even higher yields after the ISM Services PMI.  ISM was legitimately stronger than expected, and other than the direction of the move, it was good to see bonds remaining willing to react to econ data.  But there was a greater willingness to react to “other things” in the afternoon.  One of those may have been a well-received Treasury auction considering yields dropped shortly thereafter.  A separate move in the 2pm hour accounted for an even bigger rally, and that’s the one without any clear scapegoat.  Chalk it up to pre-election positioning and count on substantially bigger volatility tomorrow.

Econ Data / Events

S&P Services PMI

55.0 vs 55.3 f’cast, 55.2 prev

ISM Services

56.0 vs 53.8 f’cast, 54.9 prev
employment 54.0 vs 48.0
Prices 58.1 vs 58.0

Market Movement Recap

10:16 AM Weaker overnight and selling more after data.  MBS down a quarter point and 10yr up 6.9bps at 4.354

01:03 PM Decent 10yr auction, but not a big market mover.  10yr up 5.6bps at 4.34% and MBS down 2 ticks (.06).

02:08 PM Better gains now.  MBS unchanged and 10yr up only 3.3bps at 4.318

04:50 PM Fully recovered now, and then some.  MBS up 9 ticks (.28) and 10yr down half a bp at 4.28.

Last week could easily have left us with the impression that the bond market’s love affair with economic data was put on hold until after the election.  One could even claim that Friday’s jobs report was ultimately ignored in favor of “something else” that drove weakness after the initial gains. 
Now today, a fairly straightforward beat in the ISM data is resulting in a straightforward sell-off in bonds.  The headline PMI was the highest since late 2022, when it was still on the way down, and the employment index was the highest since late 2023–important validation for the balmy NFP number, even if ISM only garnered about half the trading volume of NFP.
To be sure, we don’t expect this–or any–data to be the dominant market mover by tomorrow.  Surely, those boots will be filled by the election, whether it’s resolved or not.  Still, this is important confirmation that data remains important, as long as it’s the right data with a big enough departure from forecasts. 

I think that I read somewhere that there’s an election today (in addition to the Boeing strike ending). Certainly, the sun will come up tomorrow, and people will still want to own a home. For me, this morning involves a flight to Minneapolis for the Fusion 24 Event. Mortgage technology will certainly be on tap at the event, and coincidentally in today’s Advisor Angle Zoom call, STRATMOR’s Garth Graham, Nicole Yung, and Brett McCracken will share trends from the latest Lender Intelligence TIS module including the proprietary Lender Loyalty Score® Analysis measures and how it can help lenders choose their technology providers. (Today’s podcast can be found here, and this week’s is Sponsored by Calque. Partner with Calque to offer better loan solutions. Scale your business with a partner that puts your brand first and empower your clients to buy before they sell. Hear an interview with TidalWave’s Diane Yu on AI technology that reduces the cost and time of loan origination by automating tasks traditionally handled by loan officers.) Lender and Broker Software, Services, and Products Imagine receiving daily, data-driven insights to transform your mortgage risk management… All at the click of a button. The Position Assistant in Optimal Blue’s CompassEdge hedging and loan trading platform offers critical daily insights into changes in risk exposure by automatically summarizing the top drivers impacting hedged mortgage pipeline positions. By analyzing factors such as loan volume changes and hedging adjustments, this AI-driven solution provides a comprehensive overview that helps lenders quickly assess and adjust their risk. Traditionally, secondary marketing managers must manually sift through numerous complex data points to analyze risk positions, a process that is both time-consuming and labor-intensive. With Position Assistant, lenders have the information they need to manage risk exposure proactively, which is essential for maintaining profitability across changing market conditions. Position Assistant is another step in Optimal Blue’s steady stream of no-cost product enhancements backed by advanced technology. Read more in the press release.

More often than not, mortgage lenders only set rates once a day. Their decisions are based on trading levels in the underlying bond market.  Even though bonds are constantly moving, it doesn’t make sense for lenders to make a change unless a certain threshold of market movement is surpassed.  The result is what the industry refers to as a “mid day reprice.” The AM hours saw a handful of lenders reprice for the worse (i.e. toward higher rates) as bonds lost ground after the ISM Services report (a closely-watched economic report that tends to influence the bond market if it comes in much higher or lower than forecast). Today’s ISM data was much stronger, thus pushing bond yields higher. The afternoon hours were not as easy to connect to root causes and obvious motivations.  One can only assume that we continue witnessing a substantial amount of pre-election volatility in the bond market.  While that’s mostly worked against rates, the opposite was true this afternoon.  The improvement allowed most lenders to update their rate offerings. All told, the average lender moved from what were just barely the highest levels in months this morning, back to just a hair below yesterday’s levels.  As you’ve probably heard, it’s election day and while this remains the biggest source of potential volatility, that volatility won’t begin to play out for rates until tomorrow morning at the earliest. 

Even as home equity withdrawals hit a two-year high, utilization rate remained less than half of normal, ICE Mortgage Technology said.

The joint venture with Smith Douglas Homes will expand Loandepot’s market presence in states including Georgia, Alabama and Texas.