Uncategorized

Retail lender Crosscountry Mortgage and technology platform Blend embarked on a new partnership this week, as the latter company also introduces a new division focused exclusively  on serving nonbank originators.Among the new features Blend is bringing into its independent mortgage bank unit are branch-level configurations to allow for tailored workflow and branding, the ability to deliver loan disclosure within its loan-origination platform and enhanced security for hybrid closings. Some of the features, built cooperatively with Crosscountry, are already in use at the lender, while others are planned for rollout later this year. "By working together to develop solutions like branch-level configurability and seamless disclosures within Blend, we're not just optimizing our own operations — we're helping set a new standard for the home lending process, making it easier and more accessible for borrowers and communities across the U.S," said Crosscountry Mortgage chief operating officer Jennifer Stracensky in a press release. The lender, which operates entirely in the retail channel, ranked third in the number of originations last year, according to the newest Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data. The 101,894 loans the Cleveland-based national lender originated in 2024 accounted for 1.66% of the total market. Blend's launch of a new dedicated IMB division also marks a "significant strategic direction" for the San Francisco-based originations technology provider, the company said. To lead the pivot, the fintech recently hired mortgage veteran Justin Venhousen as general manager of the new IMB division. Before coming to Blend, Venhousen served as chief operating officer at Illinois-based Compass Mortgage in the previous three years. "Having spent more than a decade at a mortgage lender, I've experienced the challenges our customers face firsthand," Venhousen said. Justin Venhousen, general manager of Blend's IMB division "I understand the operational pressures and the importance of supporting branch-level efficiency within a compliant framework. That perspective helps guide our approach as we design technology solutions that are adaptable, scalable, and built to support the way IMBs operate," he added.  The latest developments come as the mortgage industry finds itself anticipating changes at the top following Rocket Cos.' acquisitions of leading real estate brokerage Redfin and servicing giant Mr. Cooper, with the deal reverberating from lenders to technology providers. The upheaval has both IMBs and their vendors re-evaluating and adjusting business strategies, including servicing arrangements and automation.   Blend could lose between 15% to 20% of its current revenue with the Rocket-Mr. Cooper merger, analysts at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods said shortly after the acquisition was announced last month. Mr. Cooper, which also originates loans, is likely to move off of Blend's platform as it integrates operations with Rocket, they said. Mr. Cooper is currently contracted to use Blend's point-of-sale system through the first half of 2028, with an undisclosed minimum volume commitment. Additionally, Blend generates revenue through an ownership stake in Mr. Cooper's title-agency business. After the Mr. Cooper deal was announced, Blend's leadership noted the fintech had fielded dozens of calls from lenders and others within the mortgage industry, with the merger sparking business interest.Blend's partnership with Crosscountry also comes a few months after it entered into an arrangement to provide technology to PHH Mortgage, a unit of Onity Group.  

There’s growing talk about Fed Chair Jerome Powell being fired by President Donald Trump.Similar to his first term, he has lobbed insults at Powell while arguing that the Fed should lower rates.But would doing so actually lead to lower mortgage rates? Or would it simply make matters worse?It’s important to note that Powell is just one member of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC)And that the Fed only controls short-term interest rates, while mortgages are long-term rates.Can the President Fire the Fed Chairman?First off, we should ask the obvious question, can Donald Trump even fire Jerome Powell to begin with?At the moment, it’s a “probably not,” though a case in the Supreme Court could change that.And Powell noted recently that “we’re not removable except for cause.” Lots of gray there, as the statement indicates.But chances are it’s more rhetoric than reality, at least for now. In other words, Trump laying the groundwork now to get cuts without the actual removal of Powell.Ironically, Trump was the president who appointed Powell in the first place, nominated on November 2nd, 2017 and sworn in on February 5th, 2018.Despite that, Trump has consistently attacked Powell, both during his first term that started in 2017 and now during his second term.However, he has significantly ratcheted up the insults this time around and appears to be more serious about ousting Powell, if he can.In fact, on his Truth Social platform he called him a loser today and referred to him as “Mr. Too Late,” noting that he only lowered rates to help his opponents Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.So clearly the stakes are getting a lot higher, but as noted, Powell is but one of 12 members of the FOMC.Removing Powell Could Actually Lead to Higher Mortgage RatesI wrote recently that high levels of uncertainty have been bad for mortgage rates lately, despite bad news often being good news for mortgage rates.For example, if unemployment is rising and economic output is slowing, it can be a positive for mortgage rates because it means inflation is likely falling.Lower inflation allows interest rates to come down to promote growth, consumer spending, hiring, etc.But that hasn’t been the case lately due to the idea of stagflation, where you have slowing economic growth combined with high interest rates.That’s what we saw in the 1970s and early 1980s, when inflation and unemployment, typically inversely related, both increased at the same time.While times might be different, there’s a thought that lowering interest rates again when it’s unwarranted, could lead to similar conditions.One could argue that monetary policy today isn’t overly restrictive, especially considering how bad inflation has been the past few years.If the Fed were to lower rates prematurely, or lower them too quickly, inflation could rear its ugly head again and push long-term mortgage rates higher with it.Remember, the 30-year fixed hit 8% in October 2023 as the Fed was battling the worst inflation in decades.After getting that under control, we saw rates on the popular loan type come down to as low as 6% in September 2024.And before Trump’s tariffs arguably raised mortgage rates, we were knocking on 5% mortgage rates’ door.Simply put, the market doesn’t like his level of upheaval, and it would not surprise me to see mortgage rates shoot higher in the event of a Powell firing.Especially if he were removed and the Fed kept its policy playbook unchanged. Or made it further restrictive.Mortgage Rates Could Come Down if the Fed Restarted QEThe only real scenario where mortgage rates would come down due to Fed action is if they restarted Quantitative Easing (QE).Remember, the Fed doesn’t control mortgage rates, even though many people (including maybe Trump) think they do.The reason mortgage rates hit all-time lows in early 2021 was due to QE, when the Fed bought trillions in Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities (MBS).But that was an unprecedented event related to a global pandemic. And the earlier rounds of QE in 2008 and 2012 were because of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC).With the Fed as a major (and guaranteed) buyer of MBS, demand for mortgages became red-hot and lenders were able to lower interest rates significantly.In short, when you have increased demand for bonds, their price goes up and associated yield (or interest rate) goes down.That’s what we saw under QE, which resulted in those 2-3% mortgage rates. Of course, it also led to the Fed’s balance sheet growing exponentially.And that eventually required Quantitative Tightening (QT), which is the unwinding of all those purchases via run off.Instead of having a buyer of MBS like the Fed, you have more supply and one less very big buyer.That has been one reason why mortgage rates went up as much as they did, fueled by inflation from the many years (if not a decade) of easy money policies.So while the Fed could potentially restart QE and begin buying MBS again, which would sharply lower mortgage rates, the consequences might be disastrous.It could lead to longer-term problems, including another inflation fight that consumers might not be able to absorb.For the record, the Fed is currently projected to cut its fed funds rate up to four times by December as it stands, as seen in the chart above from CME.Meaning they’re already expected to cut rates quite a bit this year, though again ironically, they are perhaps in a holding pattern due to Trump’s ongoing trade war.Do We Need Lower Mortgage Rates Right Now?Lastly, one could argue that mortgage rates aren’t the problem right now. Sure, some recent home buyers would love to refinance into a lower rate.But prior to the election in November, mortgage rates were already in the low-6s and many quotes were in the 5s.In fact, there were even quotes in the high-4s for certain VA loan scenarios where the borrower was paying a discount point.Had we stayed on that course, millions of recent home buyers would have been able to take advantage of a rate and term refinance.And many more prospective home buyers would have been able to make the leap to homeownership.Instead, we were handed uncertainty related to tariffs, trade wars, tax cuts, and so on, all of which seemed to derail the lower mortgage rate trajectory.So one could argue if we simply got back to the pre-election status quo, or were able to establish a middle ground on trade, mortgage rates would follow suit.Ironically, this could allow the Fed to cut rates as Trump desires, likely resulting in lower mortgage rates at the same time. 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)

Internet insecurity has reached a new milestone: More web traffic (51%) now comes from bots, small pieces of software that run automated tasks, rather than humans, according to a new report. More than a third (37%) comes from so-called bad bots — bots designed to perform harmful activities, such as scraping sensitive data, spamming and launching denial-of-service attacks — for which banks are a top target. ("Good bots," such as search engine crawlers that index content, account for 14% of web activity.)About 40% of bot attacks on application programming interfaces in 2024 were directed at the financial sector, according to the 2025 Bad Bot Report from Imperva, a Thales company. Almost a third of those (31%) involved scraping sensitive or proprietary data from APIs, 26% were payment fraud bots that exploited vulnerabilities in checkout systems to trigger unauthorized transactions and 12% were account takeover attacks in which bots used stolen or brute-forced credentials to gain unauthorized access to user accounts, then commit a breach or theft from there.For the report, researchers analyzed bot attack data for more than 4,500 customers, 53,000 customer accounts and more than 200,000 customer sites. So this report is not a complete representation of all internet activity, but experts say it matches what they are seeing in the field.  "The findings are directionally correct but not surgically precise," said Gary McAlum, former chief security officer at USAA and former chief information security officer at AIG. "Imperva's dataset is very large, so good enough. Banks have been dealing with bots for years, particularly regarding account takeover and credential stuffing attacks." The idea that 51% of web traffic is coming from bots was not surprising to him."The real value proposition of bots, both good and bad, is they provide speed and scale," McAlum said. "While good bots serve important roles like indexing sites for search engines or monitoring website performance, the surge in malicious bots shows the growing sophistication and scale of cyber threats. The rise of AI is only going to make this worse."Valerie Abend, global financial services cybersecurity lead at Accenture, said she is also seeing the growing threat of AI in these figures. "Bot deployment is the classic whack-a-mole issue," she said. "It's not a new issue, but it's grown in volume and pace."AI driving the rise of bad botsThe rise of bad bots over the past few years, from 30% of all web traffic in 2022 to 33% in 2023 to 37% in 2024, was largely driven by the adoption of AI and large language models, according to Imperva researchers' analysis. Attackers now use AI not only to generate bots but also to analyze failed attempts and refine their techniques to bypass detection with greater efficiency, the report said. "A few years ago, there were bot-driven hacks, but they were bots designed by human beings, a bad guy who would sit there and analyze a given set of APIs, like banking APIs, and then figure out, 'How can I write a bot that would mimic that?'" said Kevin Kohut, founder of API First, LLC and former senior manager of cloud security at Accenture. "Now what we're seeing is, you don't need to be as smart as the bad guys. You can just go to an AI model and say, how would I write something to open a new bank account?"Some bad bots can mimic legitimate traffic coming from a residential address, which makes detection more challenging. According to the report, 21% of all bot attacks using internet service providers were conducted through residential proxies.The report also looked into which generative AI models are being used to create bad bots. More than half (54%) are developed using Bytespider Bot, according to the report. Just over a quarter (26%) were made using Apple Bot, 13% with ClaudeBot and 6% with ChatGPT. "ByteSpider's dominance in AI-enabled attacks can largely be attributed to its widespread recognition as a legitimate web crawler, making it an ideal candidate for spoofing," the report said. Experts interviewed for this article were most struck by the rise in bots attacking APIs. "People used to say APIs are the new perimeter," Abend said. "I would also say they are the supply chain of the bank increasingly. These APIs are enabling application-to-application data flow. The idea that you have automated bots going after automated API calls – that's the future of cyber warfare."What banks can do about bad botsBanks typically apply a combination of detective and preventive controls in the fight against bad bots, McAlum said."This is an arms-race problem, so the ability to detect and differentiate bot traffic is key," McAlum said. "Traditional rules-based systems based on velocity and frequency will not be enough."AI-generated bots can bypass even advanced Captcha screens, he said."Advanced capabilities within web application firewalls along with a strong cyber threat intelligence sharing model will help," McAlum said. "Securing APIs is critical and enforcing strict authentication protocols along with rate limiting [setting limits on the number of requests a user can make to a server or application within a specified time period] and anomaly detection to prevent exploitation." Traditional threat detection techniques, such as watching for abnormal upticks in web traffic, can help organizations realize that site traffic could be artificial and potentially malicious, said Tracy Goldberg, director of cybersecurity at Javelin Strategy & Research. More threat intelligence sharing of suspicious IP addresses would help organizations better identify bad bots, she said."Honeypots, which remain a great tactic for deception in detection, also play an underappreciated role in detecting bots," she said. Honeypots are generally enticing-looking but fake datasets that are put out in the open to lure attackers into a trap and watch how they operate.Another way banks can help protect themselves is by investing in developing a model context protocol, or MCP. "What a development portal would be to human developers, an MCP server would be to AI agents," Kohut said. "So the idea is, instead of having AI agents take a wild guess at how they're supposed to consume our APIs, we will create an MCP server that will give them the information they need."There is a catch-22 to this, Kohut said, because for a given AI model to properly consume MCP, the model has to know what the MCP protocol is. Banks also need to make sure the API systems they are using are secure and locked down, Kohut said. Securing APIs is a "classic challenge of ensuring that the API inventory is maintained, that it's accurate, and then that all of that is encompassed in that gateway," Abend said. "Just like authentication and authorization are important and role-based access control and least privilege, encryption and protecting your keys, testing and scanning, threat modeling, and doing all the things you would do for other areas." Meanwhile, the bot problem continues to grow, McAlum said. "While banks and financial institutions are fighting this problem on the receiving end, until internet service providers take more aggressive action to help identify and filter this traffic, it will continue to be an uphill battle," he said.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's former headquarters in Washington, D.C., with its signage removed.Catherine Leffert A federal judge on Friday prohibited the Trump administration from carrying out a mass firing at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, saying the CFPB's leadership was "thumbing their noses at both this court and the Court of Appeals."At a hearing Friday morning, U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jasckson blocked the CFPB's leadership from issuing any reductions-in-force, or RIFs. She halted the firings of more than 1,400 employees in a written order, and scheduled an evidentiary hearing for April 28 to determine next steps. "It is incumbent upon the court once again to preserve the status quo," Jackson wrote in the seven-page order filed Friday afternoon. "The announced RIF of the 1408 employees … may NOT be implemented or effectuated."Jackson did not mince words in calling out the CFPB's leadership for ignoring an appeals court ruling on Monday that allowed some firings but prohibited RIF notices."There is reason to believe that the defendants simply spent the days immediately following the Circuit's relaxation of the order, dressing their RIF in new clothes, and that they are thumbing their nose at both this Court and the Court of Appeals," the order reads. The Department of Justice, representing the CFPB, voiced no objection to her directive. The CFPB did not respond to a request for comment. She suspended a reduction in force that was announced Thursday under Acting Director Russell Vought and prohibited the defendants from discontinuing any employee's access to work systems until a future ruling.  Jackson wrote that email and internal platforms "may NOT be discontinued at 6:00 pm today."Deepak Gupta, an attorney for the National Treasury Employees Union, said he was pleased that the court "put an immediate halt to this violation today and we look forward to continuing to press our case in court."Gupta on Thursday filed an emergency motion for an order to show cause with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He asked the judge to determine why the CFPB's leaders should not be held in contempt for violating portions of an injunction upheld by an appeals panel.  The legal fight between the union and the CFPB's leadership under the Trump administration began in February when Vought issued a stop-work order and the union sued. Since then, the legal battle has been focused on whether the bureau followed the law in conducting mass firings and if it could, in effect, shut down or drastically reduce the agency's capacity without running afoul of Congressional directives.Jackson cited six declarations filed by CFPB employees and NTEU members that she said "paint a dramatically different picture" of the CFPB's mass firings compared with declarations made by Mark Paoletta, the CFPB's chief legal officer. Gupta said in his motion that the CFPB had failed to comply with the appeals court ruling and that it was "unfathomable" that the CFPB's leadership could make an assessment of the performance of nearly 1,500 employees in just three days to comply with the court's orders. The bureau cut "90% of its staff in just 24 hours, with no notice to people to prepare for that elimination," Chopra said in the motion to show cause filed with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Paoletta countered by filing a declaration with the court on Friday claiming that he and two other CFPB attorneys, on an unspecified date, had "conducted a particularized assessment to determine which employees are unnecessary for the Bureau to perform its statutory duties," as required by the appeals panel. The CFPB appeared to be preparing for the mass layoffs and seeking to justify them by sending a memo to staff Friday outlining the priorities for the agency, which halted nearly all enforcement supervisory functions and oversight of nonbanks — all of which are major statutory functions required by the Dodd-Frank Act that the Trump administration chose to stop. The response from Jackson was swift. She wrote that Paoletta's declaration did not mention any consultation with the heads of the various offices that were terminated. For example, no managers in the bureau's Consumer Response unit were consulted by agency leadership about the level of staff needed to perform its duties, which were explicitly part of the both court orders. There was no explanation, the judge said, for "how the RIF would affect its ability to respond to the thousands of consumer complaints and inquiries from banks that it receives."Instead, the RIF notice would have reduced the statutorily-mandated Consumer Response Office from 135 employees to eight."Once again, the Court is confronted with evidence that gives rise to concerns that there will be no agency standing by the time it gets to consider the merits, by the time the Court of Appeals rules on the legality of the preliminary injunction, or even by the time it holds a hearing on the motion to enforce the Order," Jackson wrote. "The Court has significant grounds for concern that the defendants are not in compliance with its Order as it was refined by the Court of Appeals."By Friday night, the CFPB had sent notices to the employees who it just fired stating stating that the district court had issued a stay order for "temporary relief," in what employees saw as yet another jab at their jobs."If you received a RIF notice, you will not be placed on administrative leave, and your computer access will not be shut off," according to a message to an employee who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation. During the saga of the beleaguered agency, the Trump administration initially fired then was forced to rehire about 200 temporary and term employees. Those employees have now been fired and rehired again, at least temporarily, along with nearly the entire bureau staff.

Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte has signaled he will be reviewing methods for forcing the return of mortgaged funds for misrepresentation with no elaboration."FHFA, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac will be evaluating ways to 'recall loans' that have been obtained fraudulently," Pulte said in a pinned post on the X social media platform.The comment, which followed an earlier Pulte post about a new FHFA fraud tip line, could mean the two government-related loan buyers will be doing more to get lenders to repurchase loans when there's deception. But it also may indicate more interest in holding consumers or others responsible.Neither Pulte nor the FHFA had responded to requests for clarification at deadline.Although it was not immediately clear what context Pulte was using the term in, across lending in general a "loan recall" refers to a situation where the return of borrowed funds are requested in response to breaches for financing contracts that can include fraud.Pulte's use of the term "recall" may be in line with his roots in the homebuilding market, where it's used more commonly in financing arrangements than in single-family mortgages, where it can refer to a variety of circumstances.In the single-family market, "loan acceleration" can be more commonly used and associated with what occurs in the foreclosure process. Recall also may be a term used in connection with a borrower's right or rescission, but that's unlikely in this case.Single-family lenders in the United States may specifically recall mortgages from borrowers in certain instances when actual property use changes and becomes mismatched with what is represented in the loan documents within a certain timeframe.Rarely does a need to change the status of a property down the road raise an issue that can't be worked out upfront in consultation with lenders, real estate agents and attorneys in drawing up contracts; particularly in the non-qualified mortgage market where loan terms are more flexible.But historically, recalls have occurred in the mainstream mortgage market when a primary residence or a second home has changed status in certain ways less than 12 months after closing, if this is specified in a contract and a waiver has not been issued.If the borrower signed a document promising to occupy the property for a minimum one year and the collateral instead becomes used as an investment property, this could be a concern for lenders because they often assign different terms for the latter type of loan. They may seek to recall it in response.One industry source who asked to speak on background said Pulte's comment could be related to a FHFA referral to the U.S. Attorney General alleging New York AG and Trump foe Letitia James misrepresented her occupancy status and committed mortgage fraud. She has not been charged.Sam Antar's White Collar Fraud, a blog published by a convicted felon who faced securities fraud charges in the 1980s but later came to advise law enforcement agencies on crime, first reported on the referral. A spokesman for James, who previously obtained a $454 million real estate judgment against the Trump Organization, told the New York Post and other outlets she "is focused every single day protecting New Yorkers, especially as this administration weaponizes the federal government against the rule of law."

Russell Vought during a Senate Budget Committee confirmation hearing on January 22, 2025.Al Drago/Bloomberg WASHINGTON — The Trump administration began layoffs at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, with reduction in force notices sent to more than 1,400 employees just days after acting Director Russell Vought outlined ways to cut enforcement and supervision at the bureau. All offices at the agency were hit, led by enforcement, supervision, research, technology and fair lending, according to current and former employees who spoke on condition of anonymity and received the notices. Fox Business News first reported the layoffs, which the outlet put at 1,500 to 1,700, and which would leave the agency with roughly 200 employees. Vought said in a note to laid-off employees that the changes are "necessary to restructure the Bureau's operations to better reflect the agency's priorities and mission.""Anybody should expect a letter at any time for the rest of this administration," one CFPB staffer said Thursday. "It's the sword of Damocles." The layoffs come just days after a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia issued a partial stay of a preliminary injunction that had prohibited the agency from issuing reductions in force. The panel ruled that future CFPB firings must be subject to an "assessment" of whether the workers are "unnecessary" to perform the bureau's legally mandated duties.The day before, CFPB's Chief Legal Officer Mark Paoletta scaled back the scope of the agency's work in a memo to the staff listing 11 priorities for the year. Paoletta in the memo said the bureau would refocus its efforts on supervising large banks over nonbank competitors. It's not clear where the courts will ultimately fall on the CFPB's statutory requirements on supervising nonbanks. The Dodd-Frank Act states specifically that the bureau "shall require reports and conduct examinations on a periodic basis" of non-depositories within its jurisdiction.The move to terminate the bulk of the CFPB's staff drew criticism from consumer groups, who said the layoffs amount to essentially shuttering the bureau. "Sabotaging the CFPB by firing almost 90% of its remaining civil servants who protect Americans from corporate crime is hardly the 'individualized' or 'particularized' assessment that the court required the CFPB to undergo," said Erin Witte, director of consumer protection for the Consumer Federation of America. "These mass layoffs combined with the April 16 memo provide a blueprint for would-be cheats and lawbreakers about which laws they can violate without being held accountable by our nation's supposed consumer finance watchdog."Demand Progress Education Fund said the layoffs have "effectively killed the CFPB." "What they're doing is systematically gutting all efforts to protect service members, and all Americans, from fraud and scams while simultaneously letting Wall Street, Big Banks and Big Tech off the hook," said Emily Peterson-Cassin, corporate power director at Demand Progress Education Fund. "The CFPB has heard hundreds of thousands of complaints from service members, veterans and their families and has returned nearly more than $180 million back to those communities. If the administration actually cared about them, they wouldn't have fired most of the people responsible for protecting them."

The state and local tax deduction — the subject of one of the most contentious fiscal fights in Congress — is a write-off that most Americans will never claim, even in the districts of the lawmakers fighting hardest to increase the tax break, data analyzed by Bloomberg News shows. Congress will draft its multitrillion tax cut proposal in the coming weeks, and the priorities of a small minority of high-earning constituents in a handful of districts in New York, New Jersey and California will almost certainly be reflected in the final version.Republicans led by President Donald Trump, who vowed to expand the SALT cap on the campaign trail, are on track to increase the $10,000 cap on the deduction. The president in his first term limited the deduction — which is claimed by the roughly 10% of people who have itemized their taxes in recent years — as a way to pay for other tax cuts.But SALT has become a politically important tax break in key areas, and it's receiving such outsize attention because of legislative math. The House cannot pass a tax bill this year without placating a handful of swing districts, where the local taxes and property values are high enough that the SALT deduction is a big deal.Six House Republicans — Mike Lawler, Nick LaLota, Nicole Malliotakis and Andrew Garbarino of New York, New Jersey's Tom Kean Jr. and California's Young Kim — have vowed to oppose any bill that doesn't sufficiently raise the SALT cap, and that a proposal to raise it to $25,000 falls short. Lawler introduced a bill to hike the threshold to $100,000. The data shows that even in these SALT-heavy districts, the average person isn't much affected by the cap. For all six Republicans who are members of the bipartisan SALT Caucus, the average amount of state, local and property taxes paid on itemized returns is far below $10,000 per year.Most taxpayers don't have enough deductions from $10,000 in SALT, mortgage interest write-offs and charitable donation tax breaks to itemize. Instead, about 90% of taxpayers opt for the standard deduction: $15,000 for individuals or twice that for joint filers in 2025. It's only about the 10% of taxpayers who itemize who are even eligible to claim SALT — many of them with expensive homes, high incomes and large property tax bills. That means they can't claim SALT, though advocates note that a higher cap would mean it would make financial sense for more people to itemize.The need to include a SALT cap increase to benefit these taxpayers means that other tax breaks likely will have to be curtailed or spending cuts increased to keep within a maximum $5.8 trillion deficit increase target.Support from the six core Republicans standing firm on the SALT issue are crucial to the success of the tax bill, which Republicans are looking to ram through Congress this summer without the help of any Democrats. The GOP's razor-thin majority means they can only lose a handful of votes on any piece of legislation.Republicans will also likely need to hold these seats in the New York City and southern California areas if they are to retain control of the House in the 2026 midterms, a reason Trump has cited for the necessity to raise the SALT deduction.

The on-again, off-again volatility behind President Trump's tariffs is already leading to higher material costs for homebuilders even though some are on pause and others include carveouts, the industry's biggest trade group said. A series of separate policies targeting cross-border trade with Canada and Mexico, Chinese products, all steel and aluminum imports and nations imposing counter-tariffs amounts to a source of confusion pushing prices upward, researchers at the National Association of Home Builders found.  Supplies for new-home construction have risen an average of 5.5% since the beginning of Donald Trump's second term, NAHB reported. At the same time, the remodeling industry reported an even higher spike of 6.9% after the president was inaugurated in January. "The uncertainty caused by the mere announcement of tariffs can have an adverse effect on the behavior of consumers and even businesses," wrote Paul Emrath, NAHB vice president for survey and housing policy research, in a statement. While tariff implementation did not begin until March, the threat led some companies to increase prices as early as fourth quarter 2024. Although reciprocal tariffs are now paused until summer and exemptions given for some products, including Canadian lumber, "significant uncertainty about the final outcome" still exists, prompting suppliers to hike prices. Current tariff levels stand at 10% for most products from Canada and Mexico and 145% on Chinese goods. A blanket 25% tax on all steel and aluminum imports also remains in place. "In the meantime, economic uncertainty can adversely affect consumer confidence and make prospective home buyers hesitate," Emrath added. Uncertainty from tariff developments contributed to an ongoing drop in homebuilders' sales expectations this year, according to NAHB's monthly surveys. But even if homebuilding materials can be obtained domestically, any sign of tariffs on the horizon will apply upward pressure across the board, regardless of their source or exemption status, economic analysts have noted. U.S. metal manufacturers also rely heavily on imports to produce finished goods that are sold to the construction industry. Many builders continue to use Canadian sourced lumber in new construction, while other components that go into residential structures frequently are made in China. The effect of tariffs on consumer behavior is already evident, according to a study from Redfin. Almost a quarter, or 24%, of U.S. residents are canceling plans for major purchases like a home or car due to Trump's policies, according to an April survey conducted by the real estate brokerage. The developments also caused 32% to delay such purchase plans. "Consumers are tightening their belts because they are rightly nervous about their job security and the prospect of paying more for everyday expenses," said Chen Zhao, Redfin economics lead, in a press release. But the threat of rising prices also led 8% to make their large purchase sooner than expected, with another 9% accelerating plans to avoid full tariff impact, Redfin said. A recent analysis from real estate data provider Cotality found tariffs could add between $17,000 to $22,000 to the cost of a newly built home over the next year. The pullback in consumer spending, though, could hold a potential silver lining for home buyers, Zhao said. "The drop in demand could cause home prices to stay flat, or even fall, and there's some chance mortgage rates could drop in the next few months."

Storm clouds are brewing in the spring home buying market. The 1.15 million available homes for sale nationwide in March was the most since the onset of the pandemic in March 2020, according to Zillow. Last month's figure coincides with home value growth of just 0.2% in March from the prior month, the slowest spring growth from one year to the next since 2018. Additionally, the real estate platform reported price cuts on more than 23% of its listings in March, the highest share for the month since 2018. "Buyers — especially first-timers without equity to pour into their down payment — continue to struggle with affordability and now are facing even higher levels of uncertainty," said Zillow Chief Economist Skylar Olsen in a press release. President Trump's tariff negotiations have sent mortgage rates on a roller coaster ride, with double-digit fluctuations in recent weeks and the average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage sitting closer to 7% as of Thursday. That has dampened the traditional spring home buying surge the industry anticipated would prove more fruitful than recent years. Sellers last month put more homes on the market than were sold, according to Zillow, with 265,000 listings moving into a pending sale versus 375,000 new properties on the market. Other market research posted Thursday painted a similarly difficult start to spring. Redfin indicated annual median home price growth of 2.6% for the four weeks ended April 13, alongside the number of total homes for sale rising 12.3% compared to the same time last year. The real estate brokerage said a third of Americans are delaying plans to make a major purchase over Trump' s tariff policies.  Fannie Mae, in a brief update to its Home Price Index, also reported home prices rising just 1.4% in the first quarter of 2025 compared to the end of 2024. While prices are still rising on an annual basis, the first quarter's 5.3% annual growth was just a tick above the prior 5.2% mark. A Remax report found silver linings in the housing market, despite sales down 1.4% in March against the year ago period. The brokerage attributed a 23% surge in sales in March from February to that growing inventory. "With a relatively good supply of homes for sale, and rates holding with signs of some improvement, many buyers are finding current market conditions to be the most favorable they've seen in the past few years," said Remax Holdings CEO Erik Carlson in a statement. Homes sold in March had a median sales price of $435,000, according to the company, an average increase of $8,000 from February. Most major U.S. housing markets are still seeing home value increases, according to Thursday's reports, although inventory is skyrocketing in some locales. Remax discovered active listings soaring 25.3% in Washington, D.C. from February to March; Zillow reported a 35% year-over-year listing increase for the city. The nation's capital could be feeling the impact of the Trump administration's cost-cutting measures. Although hiring in February was up nationwide, the numbers may not reflect the local impact of widespread government cuts and other tariff-induced variability.

After two years of net production losses, independent mortgage bankers ended 2024 in the black on their originations; however, for smaller lenders, it was a different story, the Mortgage Bankers Association said.In another piece of good news, net servicing income also increased year-over-year. It is only the third time since 2018 both sides of the business made money in the same year."Production revenues improved, and per-loan costs decreased as volume picked up, particularly in the second half of the year," said Marina Walsh, vice president of industry analysis in a press release.IMBs and bank mortgage subsidiaries made an average of $443 per loan produced during 2024, up from a loss of $1,056 during 2023. The annual profits came in a mixed-bag year for IMBs, as they lost money on production as a group during the first and fourth quarters.Origination profitability was not universal, Walsh added."For example, for the sub-group of lenders with an annual production volume of less than $500 million in 2024, average net production losses continued for the third consecutive year," she said. "It has been difficult to spread the fixed costs of originating loans over lower volume."How mortgage originators performed in 2024Originators made an average 10 basis points on every loan, versus a loss of 37 basis points in 2023. That was still below the historic average (since 2008) of 47 basis points of profit.Production revenues were $11,520 per loan in 2024, up from $10,202 in 2023, while expenses decreased to $11,076 compared with $11,258 over the same time frame.Mortgage bankers lost $645 per loan originated in the first quarter, before turning profits of $693 and $701 in the subsequent two periods. But in the fourth quarter, industry participants dropped back to an average loss of $40 per loan, according to the quarterly data releases from the organization.How mortgage servicers performed in 2024On the servicing side, net financial income, which includes net servicing operational income, mortgage servicing right amortization plus gains and losses on MSR valuations, was $301 per loan last year, up from $263 for 2023.Across the IMBs in the study, 68% reported pretax net financial profits in 2024, taking into account all of the business lines. This is almost double the 36% in 2023 and above the 53% in 2022.But without the money made on servicing, only 56% of IMBs would have been profitable last year, the MBA said.