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Folks on social media love coming up with so-called “hacks” to excite their followers.In the mortgage realm, this typically means highlighting math that seems unbelievable at first.And it usually revolves around paying down a mortgage ahead of schedule, much to the chagrin of the banks.For the record, the banks probably don’t care that much if at all, since these days they’d probably pay you more if you put money in a savings account instead of toward the mortgage.But I digress – let’s look at the latest hot trend, the 2% mortgage hack.What Is the 2% Mortgage Hack?$400k loan @ 6%Original2% HackPayment 1$2,398.20$2,398.20Year 2$2,398.20$2,446.16Year 3$2,398.20$2,495.09Year 5$2,398.20$2,595.90Year 10$2,398.20$2,866.10Year 15$2,398.20$3,164.41Year 20$2,398.20$3,493.77Year 21-30$2,398.20$0 – paid off!In a nutshell, the 2% mortgage hack requires you to increase your mortgage payment 2% each year.This doesn’t mean just paying an extra 2% based on the original monthly payment.Instead, you pay 2% extra in year two, then 2% more on top of the 2% extra in three year, and so on.Every 12 months, your mortgage payment grows larger, based on the number the year before.For example, let’s look at a $400,000 loan amount with a 6% mortgage rate and a 30-year loan term. Pretty common scenario nowadays.If you were to just make the normal, minimum required payment, it’d be $2,398.20.Now imagine starting in year two, you add 2% to that payment. It’s $2,446.16. That’s not a big jump up. It’s about $48 more per month.For most, this would be manageable, and likely wouldn’t require any lifestyle changes or cutting back.That alone wouldn’t do much though. It would merely shorten your loan term to 28 years and six months.However, it would save you nearly $29,000 in interest. Not too shabby.But where the 2% mortgage hack gets interesting is you compound the extra payments each year.So beginning in year three, we add another 2% on top of the increased payment from year two.That puts payments in year three at $2,495.09. In year four, it climbs to $2,544.99. In year five, it’s $2,595.89.Each year, you’re adding 2% from the year prior. You can do this by multiplying the mortgage payment by 1.02 in a calculator.By year 20, the mortgage payment is nearly $3,500 per month, but it is gradual and knocks down the outstanding loan balance a lot faster.What Does the 2% Mortgage Hack Accomplish?In short, the 2% mortgage hack reduces your total interest expense and shortens your mortgage loan term.Many of the posts I’ve seen about it claim it reduces your loan term by 12 to 14 years, but it depends on the math, aka the loan balance and interest rate.The amount of interest saved will also vary based on those inputs, but the general idea is you can significantly reduce your loan term and save on interest.So instead of waiting 30 years to own your home free and clear, you can own it a lot sooner, assuming that’s a goal.And you can pay a lot less interest in the process.In my example, you’d reduce the loan term by about a decade, so 20 years instead of 30.The interest savings from making extra mortgage payments would also reduce your interest expense by about $135,000.Simply put, you’d have a paid off mortgage in about 20 years and save more than six figures. Nice!You’re Essentially Emulating Inflation by Increasing Your Mortgage Payment AnnuallyBy making a payment that is 2% higher each year, you’re basically emulating the rate of inflation.The dollar’s value erodes each year by around this amount, so by paying the extra 2%, you’re essentially adjusting it to keep pace.This should mean it’s not an extra burden, as your wages/income might also be expected to increase by this amount.And everything else you pay might increase by this amount too, whether it’s your grocery bill or homeowners insurance.It’s also quite common for renters to see their monthly rent get increased by their landlord annually.So if they were paying $2,000 per month, the following year they might be told the new rent is $2,100.That’d actually be a 5% increase, and this illustrates why homeownership can be great. It’s an inflation hedge.You aren’t required to pay more each year with a mortgage, but as this strategy shows, you can save a lot if you choose to.And because 2% is such a small number, it’s a gentle approach to paying extra toward the mortgage without overextending yourself.But is it the best strategy out there?You’ll Save Even More by Paying Extra Earlier OnWhile the 2% mortgage hack is a cool way to reduce your interest expense and shorten your loan term, without a big bump in payment, it’s one of many options.First off, it should be noted that some homeowners may not want to pay off the mortgage early at all.This is especially true for those with low mortgage rates, whether it’s a 2% or 3% rate. For these folks, their money might be better off deployed elsewhere.For those who do want to pay off the mortgage early, you save more when you pay more earlier on.What if instead of 2% beginning in year two, you just started paying 5% extra per month immediately?Well, you’d reduce the loan term by about 15 and a half years and save $211,000 in interest.So you could save more if you don’t wait 12 months to begin making larger payments, and even more if you look beyond a 2% bump.The 2% increase is only $48 extra. Chances are homeowners can go a little bigger, granted over time that number does get exponentially bigger.But you could still implement say a 3% or 4% increase right off the bat and turbocharge the savings of this strategy.Read on: Should I prepay the mortgage or invest instead? Before creating this site, I worked as an account executive for a wholesale mortgage lender in Los Angeles. My hands-on experience in the early 2000s inspired me to begin writing about mortgages 19 years ago to help prospective (and existing) home buyers better navigate the home loan process. Follow me on X for hot takes.Latest posts by Colin Robertson (see all)

Bing Guan/Bloomberg Wells Fargo took its latest step out of regulatory purgatory on Monday, when the bank said that a 2018 consent order with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been terminated.So far in 2025, the megabank has ironed out six regulatory issues, leaving only three such matters still unresolved. The largest of those remaining speed bumps is Wells Fargo's 2018 asset cap, a Federal Reserve Board restriction that limits the bank to $1.95 trillion of assets.Amid Wells' substantial regulatory progress over the first four months of this year, analysts who cover the $1.9 trillion-asset bank are optimistic that the Fed will remove the asset cap in the coming months."Bottom line: the news will likely reinforce investors' belief that the asset cap could be lifted sooner rather than later," Scott Siefers, an analyst at Piper Sandler, wrote Monday in a research note. The 2018 CFPB consent order stemmed from the bank's alleged violations of consumer-lending rules in connection with a mandatory insurance program for auto loans, as well as in its processes for charging certain borrowers for mortgage interest rate-lock extensions.At the time, Wells agreed to pay a $1 billion penalty, split between the CFPB and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. The OCC's related enforcement action was terminated in February 2025.Siefers wrote that both the CFPB and OCC orders dealt with compliance risk management, which is also a consideration for the Fed as it determines when to lift the asset cap."With the OCC and CFPB now apparently comfortable" with the bank's compliance risk management, "we view the forward progress as a good sign," Siefers stated.The latest consent order to be terminated was the company's last remaining public enforcement action with the CFPB, and the 12th compliance matter to be resolved since 2019, when CEO Charlie Scharf joined the bank.In a press release Monday, Scharf expressed confidence that Wells will complete the work necessary to close its other open enforcement actions. "Today's termination, along with the recent closure of other consent orders, demonstrates that we have completed much of our common risk and control infrastructure work, including work that is required by other orders," he said.Gerard Cassidy, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets, wrote in a research note that he believes the asset cap could be lifted in the second quarter of 2025 "and possibly real[ly] soon."He pointed not only to the bank's brisk progress with regulators so far this year, but also to recent comments by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. Bessent said on a podcast last month that he wants to loosen what he called the "regulatory corset."Meanwhile, Wells Fargo's critics are urging caution about lifting the asset cap, arguing that the scandal-tarred bank hasn't demonstrated enough progress.Late last year, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., wrote in a letter to Fed Chairman Jerome Powell that the seven-year-old cap should remain in place until the bank "can show that it can properly manage the risks associated with running a large bank."And in a report earlier this month, the Committee for Better Banks, which is working to unionize Wells Fargo employees, argued that the Fed should evaluate the bank's consumer complaint trends before lifting the asset cap.In addition to the asset cap, Wells Fargo is operating under a 2015 agreement with the OCC, which states that the bank violated part of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act that deals with the consolidation and management of bank subsidiaries.Also still in place is a 2024 formal agreement with the OCC involving what the regulator called "deficiencies" in the bank's anti-money-laundering controls.

Certain sales practices for distressed single-family properties that had served as collateral for loans the Federal Housing Administration insures will undergo policy reversals, according to a new mortgagee letter.A 30-day, exclusive advanced sale preference for "claims without conveyance of title" properties must end by May 30. Owner-occupants, nonprofits and government entities have had a preference in those sales, in which mortgagees sell homes without conveying title to HUD.Also, real-estate owned properties listed on the Department of Housing and Urban Development's online Homestore must end a similar 30-day sales preference and revert back to a 15-day period by that deadline. "FHA's evaluation of these policies has revealed the efforts were generally not successful in meeting their intended goals," the administration said in an information bulletin announcing the letter. "Instead, they have delayed sales of foreclosure properties, increased the deterioration of these properties, leading to lower sales prices and increased costs."The data behind the decisionThe mortgagee letter cites numbers showing that 3% or 85 of 2,696 CWCOT sales in 2023 with an exclusive listing period went to owner-occupants, government entities or nonprofits. In 2024, the share was similar at 3% of 4,447 sales. "During the new CWCOT exclusive listing period, very few properties have sold to owner-occupant buyers, and even fewer were purchased by HUD-approved nonprofits and government entities," FHA said in its letter.The share of REO properties that went to owner-occupants inched up after the longer exclusive listing period was added, rising from 44% to 52% at one point over a period of 24 months, but then it fell back to 46% a year later. Most of the sales happened in 15 days, with what appeared to be limited migration into the 15-30 day timeframe."For REO, it's unclear whether the longer exclusive listing period resulted in higher overall sales resulted in higher overall REO sales to owner-occupants or shifted sales from the original listing period," the administration said in its letters.The FHA's two moves mirror another one made recently by the Federal Housing Finance Agency, and is in line with the Trump administration's efforts to scale back government spending."Removing these requirements aligns with the Trump administration goals of reducing unnecessary burdens and saving taxpayer funds," the FHA said in an information bulletin about its mortgagee letter.The backdrop for the changes taking placeThe FHFA in March reversed Fannie Mae's "repair all" owner-occupant attraction strategy involving REO properties and with a similar comment about misalignment between that program's results and its goals.The stakes are even higher for FHA-insured loans, which historically have had more expansive underwriting criteria than mortgages sold to government-sponsored enterprises like Fannie that the agency oversees.FHA loans tend to attract a relatively high volume of lower-income buyers with less of a financial buffer against hardship. As such, the volumes of distressed properties in the FHA sector tends to be higher.March's serious FHA delinquencies at risk of foreclosure were up 63% compared to a year earlier in ICE Mortgage Technology's latest numbers.

Financial losses related to cybercrimes of all types increased 33% last year, even as the number of complaints fielded by the Internet Crime Complaint Center declined.Losses totaled $16.6 billion in 2024, with the average per-incident jumping to $19,372 from $14,197 in 2023.The No. 1 complaint to IC3, a part of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, was for phishing/spoofing, at 193,407 reports. Business email compromise, one of the leading causes of losses when it comes to real estate transactions according to CertifID, ranked seventh at 21,442. Real estate cybercrime had 9,359 complaints in 2024.In 2023, 21,489 instances of BEC were reported, while in the year before that 21,832. For real estate, this compared with 9,521 for last year and 11,727 in 2022. But by dollars lost, BEC was second at $2.8 billion; real estate losses were $173.6 million. This is just from the cases which were reported to IC3, CertifID's annual analysis of the data, written by Matt O'Neill, along with the company's Will Looney, noted. O'Neill is the former managing director of the Secret Service's Global Investigative Operations Center.BEC losses were down from $2.9 billion in 2023 but higher than $2.7 billion in 2022. In 2022, real estate losses totaled $397 million, but slipped to $145.2 million the following year.In a separate report released on April 16, after four straight quarters of decline, a higher percentage of mortgage loans had at least one issue which could contribute to wire and/or title fraud in the three months ended March 31, FundingShield found.On average, every problematic loan — whether residential, commercial or business purpose — had 2.5 issues, which is a new record, according to FundingShield. This indicates the lack of appropriate controls by closing agents and lenders to identify and fix issues, according to CEO Ike Suri.In the first quarter, 46.8% of mortgages in an almost $80 billion portfolio FundingShield examined were cited for potential wire or title fraud issues. This was up from 45.5% in the fourth quarter but down from 48% one year ago.During 2024, cyber-enabled fraud added up to $13.7 billion of losses, or 83% of the total, but just 38% of the complaints, IC3 said."While deepfakes, audio spoofing, and other forms of AI-enabled fraud indeed empower fraudsters, the truth is more frustrating," the CertifID report said. "The attacks that are winning aren't new or sophisticated; they're just effective," hitting on a similar theme to the FundingShield report.BEC works because it relies on trust, routine and some distraction, including a spoofed email and a rushed wire transfer. The fraudsters keep using this tactic precisely because it is working. "For the teams that want to combat this threat, that means refocusing on the basics," Looney and O'Neill said.For the sixth consecutive quarter, FundingShield found wire-related errors in more than 8% of transactions during the period, at 8.4%. But more importantly, record levels for closing protection letter validation errors were reached in the first quarter in 10.8% of transactions; this involved data points such as borrower information, vesting/vested parties, non-borrowing parties on title, property addresses, borrower information and more. The government-sponsored enterprises, likely prodded by Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte, are making an additional focus on closing agent risk management for loan sellers, the commentary to the report from Suri said."FundingShield received requests for data from many of its lender clients that sell to Fannie Mae who recently underwent Mortgage Origination Risk Assessment Audits during Q1 2025," Suri said. "Fannie Mae had reached out to our clients, asking them to confirm the risk framework, measurement, and tracking the lender used to conduct transaction-level risk reviews of the closing agent, the title insurance firm, and transaction-specific details at the time of closing on each loan sold to them."The FHFA was looking at whether the lenders did the check at the time the loan closed and it was transaction-specific, rather than just using a list of approved agents which was updated "'X' days, months or years ago," Suri said.The CertifID report compared fraud prevention to mastering the basics, using a play designed by Vince Lombardi called the Packer Sweep as the example. Much like the Tush Push run by the Super Bowl Champion Philadelphia Eagles, even though the defense knows it is coming, it is hard to stop.Lombardi would drill the Packer Sweep over and over. "We will run it, and we will run it again and again, until everybody in the stadium knows we're going to run it — and we'll still gain four yards," the CertifID report quoted Lombardi as saying."Business email compromise isn't new or clever," O'Neill and Looney said. "Yet many organizations still haven't mastered their basic plays to get yards on the fraudsters."

Pennymac's CEO David Spector doesn't agree with limiting mortgage broker choice. The company's executive believes brokers should be free to work with any wholesale lender they choose."It's really unfortunate that we're in a situation where brokers are having to choose who they're going to be aligned with at the expense of somebody else," Spector said. "I look at what's going on in the marketplace and I'm just trying to help brokers not become loan officers beholden to one broker or direct lender."Spector argues Pennymac's infrastructure and technology make it a worthy opponent to United Wholesale Mortgage and Rocket Pro, and with time the CEO sees his company taking the number one slot in the wholesale space. In differentiating itself from competitors, Spector claims that unlike UWM and Rocket, Pennymac does not sell the servicing of brokers and instead keeps these loans in-house. "The retention of servicing is vitally important because the broker cares about their customer and the fact that the customer has a loan closed and the servicing immediately transfers, creates a little bit of disruption that brokers will avoid with Pennymac," he said.The CEO said that, going forward, Pennymac will be more vocal in marketing itself to both borrowers and prospective mortgage broker partners. One of the first steps the company has taken to raise its public profile is sponsoring the 2026 and 2028 U.S. Olympic and Paralympic teams.Read on for more insights from National Mortgage News' interview with Pennymac's executive.

Al Drago/Bloomberg Two former Democratic members of the National Credit Union Administration are suing senior leaders of the Trump Administration after they were fired by President Donal Trump in April, a suit whose outcome could have implications for removal protections at other independent agency boards, including the Federal Reserve and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. The suit, filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by former NCUA board members Todd Harper and Tanya Otsuka, argues that President Trump, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, NCUA executive director Larry Fazio, remaining Republican Board member Kyle Hauptman and White House staffer Trent Morse exceeded statutory authority and threatened financial stability by politicizing the previously bipartisan agency body."The President terminated the terms of Plaintiffs Todd M. Harper and Tanya F. Otsuka in the middle of their fixed terms as members of the Board of the NCUA, without explanation and without any cause," the lawsuit said. "That termination disregards the protections Congress established to preserve the Board's independence and threatens the integrity of a vital federal financial regulator."The Treasury did not immediately respond to American Banker's requests for comment on the lawsuit. The NCUA declined to comment. NCUA, the credit union industry's deposit insurer, was established in 1970 through the Federal Credit Union Act as an independent agency. While the agency was initially set up with a single director, the 1978 Credit Union Modernization Act modified the agency to consist of a three-member board whose members serve staggered six-year terms with no more than two members belonging to the same political party. NCUA manages over 4,000 credit unions around the country, which hold over $2 trillion of assets. The administration's decision to remove the two Democratic board members ahead of their terms' expiration is the first time a president has removed an NCUA board member since the board's modern structure was established in 1978."In 1978, Congress clearly determined that a credit union watchdog operating with three members — instead of a single administrator — was the better way to insure deposits, protect consumers, charter new credit unions, and maintain the system's safety and soundness," Harper argued in a statement on the lawsuit Monday. "This structure promotes continuity, expertise and independence. Dismantling the existing system of checks and balances established by Congress to protect credit union consumers and their deposits, as well as taxpayers from losses to the Share Insurance Fund, is risky, ill-advised and imprudent."Monday's lawsuit asks the court to rule on the legality of Harper and Otsuka's removals and whether or not their termination notification sent to them by the administration is legally valid. The suit also calls for the judge to halt any official action at NCUA taken by the administration in the removed members' absence and provide court fees, relief, wages and benefits to the removed members if the court deems they were improperly removed. Former board member Todd Harper was appointed by Trump in 2019 and he later served as the NCUA board Chair under President Biden, after being nominated to a six-year term. Tanya Otsuka, who was the first Asian American to join the board, was nominated by President Biden in 2023 and unanimously confirmed. Harper and Otsuka's terms would have extended until 2027 and 2029, respectively, before their removals in April. At the time of their removal, the two members were sent identically worded emails informing them their positions were terminated immediately and did not mention reasons for the firings. The legal filing states that the President overstepped his statutory authority when he removed the members without cause, and added that their removal leaves the board — which now consists of chair Kyle S. Hauptman, who is also a defendant in the suit — without a quorum, hindering NCUA's ability to fulfill its statutory responsibilities. The plaintiffs cite a Supreme Court precedent established in the 1935 case Humphrey's Executor v. United States, which provided members of multimember independent agency boards removal protections. "Congress created the NCUA Board to be independent, because whether your money is safe in a credit union shouldn't have anything to do with politics. This administration's actions fundamentally undermine the NCUA's independence and its ability to protect our financial system [and] has implications for other independent financial regulators like the FDIC and the Federal Reserve," Otsuka said. "Everyone who puts their money in a credit union or a bank has a stake in this lawsuit."In Humphrey's Executor, the Supreme court ruled the President could not remove members of boards at independent agencies — specifically the Federal Trade Commission in that case. The precedent established in 1935 has been interpreted to apply to all such boards at independent agencies, but President Trump has been challenging the doctrine for some time. The President is already facing a similar legal challenge after he fired FTC board members Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Alvaro M. Bedoya in March.The lawsuit also argues that the lack of quorum on the board makes any actions taken by the defendants illegal, citing the 1996 Swan v. Clinton case in which the D.C. Circuit court ruled NCUA board members are removable only for cause and that the 1978 restructuring of the board supported an "inference of removal protection" during board members terms. "In creating the NCUA, the FDIC and the Federal Reserve, Congress adopted organizational protections to insulate financial institution regulation and supervision from partisan politics and preserve the integrity of our financial markets," said Harper on Monday. "These actions could pave the way to the consolidated regulation of credit unions and banks and lead to the demise of our nation's vibrant credit union movement focused on its mission of meeting the credit and savings needs of members, especially those of modest means."

President Donald Trump suggested Sunday that his sweeping tariffs would help him reduce income taxes for people making less than $200,000 a year, as public anxiety rises over his economic agenda.Trump has previously argued that tariff revenue could replace income taxes, though economists have questioned those claims."When Tariffs cut in, many people's Income Taxes will be substantially reduced, maybe even completely eliminated. Focus will be on people making less than $200,000 a year," he said Sunday on his Truth Social network.Trump's tariff stances have roiled markets, led to fears of higher prices for Americans, prompted recession warnings and sparked bouts of concern about the U.S.'s haven status — a fear that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent questioned in a Sunday interview."I don't think that this is necessarily losing confidence," Bessent said on ABC's This Week. "Anything that happens over a two-week, one-month window can be either statistical noise or market noise."Trump's administration is "setting the fundamentals" for investors to know "that the U.S. government bond market is the safest and soundest in the world," he said."We're going to make a lot of money, and we're going to cut taxes for the people of this country" through income from tariffs, Trump said on his way back to Washington from his golf club in New Jersey. "It'll take a little while before we do that," he added.For now, a CBS News poll released Sunday said 69% of Americans believe the Trump administration wasn't focused enough on lowering prices. Approval of Trump's handling of the economy in the poll declined to 42% compared with 51% in early March. Trump wants to extend reductions in income taxes that were approved in 2017 during his first presidency, many of which are due to expire at the end of 2025. He also has proposed expanding tax breaks — including by exempting workers' tips and social security earnings — while slashing the corporate tax rate to 15% from 21%. Trade dealsBessent said the administration is working on bilateral trade deals after Trump imposed so-called reciprocal tariffs on many countries in early April, which he subsequently paused for 90 days for all affected countries except China.The effort involves 17 key trading partners, not including China, Bessent said on ABC."We have a process in place, over the next 90 days, to negotiate with them," he said. "Some of those are moving along very well, especially with the Asian countries."Bessent reiterated the administration's argument that Beijing will be forced to the negotiating table because China can't sustain Trump's latest US tariff level of 145% on Chinese goods."Their business model is predicated on selling cheap, subsidized goods to the U.S.," Bessent said "And if there's a sudden stop in that, they will have a sudden stop in the economy, so they will negotiate."Trump has said the U.S. is talking with China on trade, which Beijing has denied. Bessent said he didn't know if Trump and Xi had spoken. He said he saw his Chinese counterparts when the world's financial officials gathered in Washington last week "but it was more on the traditional things like financial stability, global economic early warnings."Bessent said he thinks there is a path forward for China talks, starting with "a de-escalation" followed by an "agreement in principle." "A trade deal can take months, but an agreement in principle and the good behavior and staying within the parameters of the deal by our trading partners can keep the tariffs there from ratcheting back to the maximum level," he said.In Congress, the framework for a bill that Republicans agreed on in early April would allow for as much as $5.3 trillion in tax cuts over a decade. Trump trade advisor Peter Navarro has suggested Trump's tariffs will generate more revenue than that, while most economists project that they will bring in significantly less. 

The "Sell America" trade that gripped markets this month has left a potentially lasting dent in investors' willingness to hold the US government's longest-maturity debt, a mainstay of its deficit-financing toolkit.For bond managers at BlackRock Inc., Brandywine Global Investment Management and Vanguard Group Inc., the problem is that as President Donald Trump approaches his 100th day in office, he has generated a growing list of unknowns, forcing traders to focus on a broad array of issues beyond just the likely path of interest rates.To name a few: What do Trump's trade war, tax-cut agenda and scattergun policymaking mean for already weakening economic growth, sticky inflation and massive fiscal shortfalls? Will he again threaten to fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell? Is he actively seeking a weaker dollar?The result is a heightened notion of risk that's leading bond buyers to question the traditional haven status of US government debt and require higher yields on longer maturities. By one measure, that added cushion, which traders dub the term premium, is around the highest since 2014. "We're in a new world order," said Jack McIntyre, who with his team oversees $63 billion at Brandywine. "Even if Trump backpedals on the tariffs, I think uncertainty levels are still going to be elevated. So that means term premium stays elevated."Of course, some of the angst around Treasuries could well fade should Trump strike trade deals or continue to signal that he's wary of a full-fledged rout in bonds. But as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent prepares to unveil how the government plans to fund the latest borrowing on Wednesday, he faces the added task of calming investors grappling with a growing host of concerns. All the uncertainty is leading McIntyre to stay roughly neutral to his benchmark. It's also changing how he sees the long bond behaving in the event of an economic slowdown. In a nutshell, he says yields would remain higher than he'd otherwise expect.No FlightIt's not as if investors are fleeing Treasuries wholesale. JPMorgan Asset Management sees them as a better bet than European government bonds. And this month's 30-year Treasury auction showed that there's appetite for the maturity — at the right price. The result allayed fears of a buyers' strike, and long-bond yields have eased back from their recent peak. Sentiment, however, remains fragile. For example, while Trump last week said he had "no intention" of firing Powell, his criticism of the Fed chair leaves some investors worrying about the central bank's independence. Pacific Investment Management Co., which likened this month's episode of triple-weakening in the dollar, US stocks and Treasuries to something one might expect in emerging markets, has also been buying Treasuries. But it's been limiting how far out the yield curve it goes. The $2 trillion bond manager currently favors maturities from five to 10 years.There are other signs of investor anxiety around the long bond: After adjusting for inflation, 30-year yields this month reached the highest since the financial crisis. Although they've since receded, they remain higher than when Trump announced his plan for sweeping tariffs on April 2. Yields on US 30-year nominal debt were poised to snap a four-day run of declines, rising four basis points to 4.74% on Monday.For Vanguard, there's scope for the extra insurance being built into longer maturities to swell further, especially if widening federal deficits lead to more bond issuance."Term premium is no longer low, but you can't make a case that it's historically high," said Rebecca Venter, senior fixed-income product manager at the roughly $10 trillion asset manager. "When you see the fiscal risks in the background, term premium can build over time." Vanguard expects US growth below 1% this year, which would be the weakest since 2020, and Venter said "that does not bode well for the US budget deficit."Next ChapterWhen the Treasury releases its latest bond issuance plans this week, Wall Street expects steady auction sizes over the next three months. With Republicans debating how to pay for their tax-cut bill, the fiscal story is the next chapter for the term premium. One reason a fatter premium matters is that every fraction of a percentage point in extra yield counts for the government at a time when it's paying upwards of $1 trillion per year to service its debt.At BlackRock, which oversees almost $12 trillion, the broad slide across US asset classes earlier this month magnified its concerns around the government's finances post-pandemic, and how US bonds were vulnerable to shifting investor confidence.The selloff in US markets "suggests a desire for more compensation for risk and brought that fragile equilibrium into sharp focus," BlackRock Investment Institute said in a report. George Catrambone at DWS Americas sees how the term premium might recede, but only so far, given all the shifting signals out of the White House on tariffs and other policies. "Once greater clarity is given and agreements are reached, I'd expect term premium to abate," said the firm's head of fixed income. "Although not back to the lows of the past decade as fiscal will be an ever-present concern."

The Top Producers Survey is open to individual loan officers who work at depository, nonbank and mortgage brokerage firms in the United States. The Top Producers survey has been in existence for 27 years and is the successor to those conducted by Broker magazine and Origination News (former National Mortgage News sister publications) as well as Mortgage Originator Magazine, which Arizent owns the content rights to.Submissions were made by the participants or their representatives. The information was verified to the best of our ability but National Mortgage News cannot claim the absolute veracity of the data. Some entries might have been removed due to submission errors or following the check on the data.Check back on National Mortgage News for Top Producers 150-51, 50-1 and the full list to be published in the following days. Additional cuts of data, including top women, top originators by region and by loan type will be published shortly thereafter.

Digital mortgage loan closings have become ubiquitous, if not quite universal, in the real estate finance business as 90% of lenders state they offer some form of the process to their borrowers.That is an improvement from 74% in 2023, according to a study conducted by National Mortgage News and its parent company Arizent for Snapdocs of 100 lenders in February and March. Snapdocs was not identified as the sponsor of the research.Digital closings have been around for a long time, noted Todd Maki, vice president of customer experience at Snapdocs. Garth Graham, now of Stratmor Group, did a pilot digital closing on his own mortgage in 1999, Maki pointed out. So even though they have been possible for several decades, digital closings are still in their growth phase, he said. The needs created during the pandemic so real estate transactions could take place has served as a catalyst for further growth.In looking at the survey results, "The biggest surprise is the gap in what's being offered [in terms of digital closings] to the level of adoption in the industry," Maki said. It is also a matter of being able to meet customer expectations at a time when other parts of the economy are digitizing.Of the lenders which do offer digital closings, several have multiple formats available. The most cited, by 61% of the respondents, is for a hybrid closing combined with the use of an e-note, with 55% have a stand-alone hybrid closing available. Remote online notary was available at 25% while a "wet" closing was used by 37%; in this scenario, the borrower receives and reviews the documents electronically but a physical meeting takes place to sign and notarize them.In the 2023 survey, 44% of lenders had e-note capabilities, while 11% offered RON. On the other hand, 26% had no digital offerings while 53% of the respondents' had a wet closing process.Still, actual usage of digital closing proceedings still lagged in popularity. A minority percentage, 31%, confirmed that six-in-10 or more of their loans closed electronically; at the 80% mark, the share slipped to 14%."Lenders who are not achieving high adoption levels often miss out on the full value of their investment," a comment in the report added.Cost was the biggest barrier to adoption of e-closings, cited by half of all respondents. Meanwhile, 42% found the lack of adoption by other stakeholders in the process was an impediment, followed by 41% who claimed "issues with digital closing technology."Yet other studies have shown that eClosings actually reduce transaction costs. A 2022 finding from Notarize put the cost savings for lenders at $444 per loan.Still, even with the cost conundrum, 60% of the non-digital lenders plan to adopt some form of this technology in the future.For 2025, 48% of the lenders said automation and artificial intelligence integration were their No. 1 priority in their general technology goals."There are different types of AI that are appropriate for different tasks," Maki said. "Particularly in mortgage lending, particularly in closing related and back office tasks, the accuracy and precision of AI models needs to be extremely high because we're dealing with transactions where errors can prevent a successful close [and] can cost significant sums of money [and more], which is why there's such a focus in the industry on ensuring accuracy of documents right and reducing errors."Snapdocs, for example, has a variety of AI technologies as part of its offerings, including those that help to reduce the "stare and compare" for loan documents, reducing errors.When it comes to digital closings, 49% wanted to have an increased application of the hybrid process in their portfolio. Next on the list, implementing a new digital closing technology was one of the primary goals for 44%. Maximizing e-note adoption and offering RON were each named by 41% of those asked.