A scammer called my great aunt and told her that he had all her passwords. She got a pen and paper and said, “Thank God for that. What are they?” So much tech, so little time. Page down for a write up on LOs & technology. STRATMOR’s 2026 Technology Insight® Study Lender Intelligence Survey is now open, giving mortgage lenders a chance to share their firsthand experience with the technology that powers their businesses, and to help shape a clearer picture of what’s working, what isn’t, and where the industry is headed. The study reflects actual lender experience, providing an independent view of user satisfaction and Lender Loyalty Score® across a wide range of mortgage technology categories. Complete the survey and receive the results free of charge, giving you valuable intelligence you can use to understand how your technology experience compares across the industry. (Today’s podcast can be found here. This week’s ‘casts are sponsored by Experian. From lenders and landlords to employers and consumers, Experian helps connect the housing ecosystem with the data and insights needed to make faster, confident decisions. Lead a smarter housing journey with Experian. Today’s has an interview with Figure’s Alysse Guitar on marketing lending products in a digital environment where both trust and attention spans are waning.)
Employment and transitions
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Senior Mortgage Underwriter: First World Mortgage! Ready to join the best team in the industry? First World Mortgage is hiring a Senior Mortgage Underwriter for a permanent, full-time role with remote work potential. If you’re self-motivated, thrive with autonomy, value work/life balance, and want to help make homeownership dreams come true, we want to talk to you. What you bring: 5+ years in mortgage underwriting, including 3+ recent years on forward mortgage loans, FHA Direct Endorsement required, non-QM underwriting, strong knowledge of DU/LP feedback evaluation, USDA underwriting experience a plus; Encompass proficiency desired, and sharp attention to detail and excellent communication skills. What you’ll do: underwrite first mortgage loans to agency/insurer compliance, decision files promptly and communicate with loan officers and processors, and review conditions and appraisals, propose restructuring alternatives, and submit for MI approval. Join a growing company that values long-term commitment and a paperless, efficient workflow. Apply today! Please send resume to Feliks Viner.
ServiceLink is expanding its Origination Sales Team by adding four industry leaders. Joining a premier provider of tech-enabled services for all phases of the mortgage lifecycle, are Mike Barker, Cheryl McKenzie, Sara Nakae, and Rick Trew as national sales executives within its origination division, responsible for driving client growth strategy and forging new lender partnerships. Congratulations to all!
Loan originators are quietly exploring their options on mLOOP anonymously. See which lenders you match with and reveal your name only when you’re ready. Join them on mLOOP.
The Chrisman Job Board is the go-to platform for employment opportunities across the mortgage industry. For employers, adding a job listing is easy. Simply create an account and drop in your existing application link, or forward the details to our team and we’ll take care of it for you. For job seekers, joining our Talent Community is completely free. Upload your resume to be visible to hiring companies across the industry and stay connected to new opportunities as they go live.
Broker and lender products, software, and services
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Traditional CRM is dead… Total Expert just said so, out loud. Not as a rebrand, but as a category shift: CRMs were built to log tasks and manage transactions, and they start losing value the day you deploy them. Total Expert’s Customer Operating System works the opposite way, getting smarter with every interaction by pairing a system of context—Customer IQ—with a system of action—AI Sales Assistant, Journey Orchestration—so rate opportunities, tappable equity, and life-event signals get caught and acted on automatically, with loan officers stepping in only when a customer actually needs their expertise. One top 10 lender used it to drive over 1,000 HELOC originations in six weeks. Total Expert has enabled more than $7 trillion in funded loan volume since 2016. Read the full breakdown.
“AHL Express Processing! American Heritage Lending (AHL) is helping brokers spend less time chasing documents and more time growing their pipelines with AHL Express Processing, available on all loan products. For $895 per loan, a designated AHL Account Manager works directly with the borrower, vendors, and third parties to help move the loan toward closing. Support includes borrower communication and document collection, verifications of mortgage, rent and employment, payoff statements, title and CPL, taxes, insurance, and other required documentation. It’s a done-for-you processing solution that gives brokers more time to build relationships, generate new business, and keep producing. AHL Express Processing: Let us process. You keep producing. Contact AHL today to learn more. Contact James Gueltzow or visit www.ahlendtpo.com.”
Every Broker-Owner started as an originator with a notepad full of questions and nobody to answer them. The NMP Webinar Build-A-Broker Summit, September 1st at 12 p.m. ET / 9 a.m. PT, is the roadmap most wish they’d had, a live virtual event for originators ready to open their own shop and for owners who want to confirm they built it right. Nathan Udomsri of Lurn Lending explains how a 100-plus-unit originator stood up a brokerage built around education, Brian Cooke of World Home Loans shares how he opened his doors while closing nearly 1,000 units as the top VA originator, and 8Twelve Mortgage’s Gary Fooks walks through bringing a $2 billion Canadian operation across the border. Barbara Yolles Ludwig covers brand, Gordon Chin covers credit and VantageScore, and everyone covers the mistakes nobody warns you about. If you ever wanted to become a broker, or want to make sure you did all the right things when setting up your brokerage, register here.
Affordability pressure doesn’t disappear when the loan closes. It comes back later as repurchase risk. Your borrowers are stretched, leaving less room for errors in the file. Truework, a Checkr company, verifies income, employment, and assets before you close, replacing error-prone processes with fast, automated reports pulled directly from sources. Lenders see up to 50 percent cost savings on verifications, with faster turn times and higher accuracy. Learn more.
Are loan officers spending too much time on NMLS CE? Is 8 hours of CE taking days to complete? Are they getting information that could actually help avoid costly mistakes? What if you could spend those required 8 hours in one day preparing for real-world problems before they become costly compliance mistakes, and actually enjoy it? Mortgage Education Institute (MEI) provides that solution. MEI, led by Andrew W. Conner, a nationally certified mortgage professional with decades of industry experience, delivers high-energy, live, interactive classes that hold attention, bring material to life, and deliver real takeaways loan officers can apply immediately, all while making CE fun. See what students are saying. Live CE and training include webinar, in-person, and private classes. Andrew is also a requested keynote speaker. Beyond CE, MEI provides compliance support services, including BSA/AML audits. Your mortgage education and compliance experts. Mortgage Education Created to Engage, Energize & Empower You.
Forta Solutions is excited to announce the successful launch of another client on the Agility platform, bringing the total number of live banks to seven. Together, these institutions have now funded more than $20 billion through Agility, marking another important milestone in the platform’s continued growth and adoption across the warehouse lending industry. With Agility’s robust integration capabilities and workflow automation, banks can streamline the funding process and fund loans in less than a minute, delivering greater speed, efficiency, and scalability.
“Rethinking Mortgage: Grow Volume Without Expanding Staff! The market is shifting. After years of boom-and-bust cycles, mortgage volume is stabilizing, creating a rare opportunity to modernize. At the same time, technology has matured, opening the door for automation powered by trusted, verifiable data. Now is the moment to act. Gateless Smart Underwrite® helps lenders increase volume without adding headcount, automating document review, verifying borrower data, and clearing conditions in minutes, not weeks. Eliminate bottlenecks. Remove repetitive tasks. Expand capacity without adding a single desk. This isn’t just a better process… it’s a self-scaling way to lend. Our clients are reporting meaningful gains in operations while reducing processing time. Automate Intelligently – Scale Logically. Book your demo.”
Chrisman Demo Day is a free perk for all Chrisman Marketplace members. If you’re a technology or service provider and haven’t joined the Marketplace yet, reach out to Jake Perkins at info@chrismancommentary.com to learn more.
The Chrisman Marketplace is a centralized hub for vendors and service providers across the industry to be viewed by lenders in a very cost-effective manner. We’re adding new providers daily, so check back often to see what’s new. To reserve your place or learn more, contact us at info@chrismancommentary.com.
Government program changes
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The FHA announced that it has issued a broad waiver of the well distance requirements for Individual Water Supply Systems, which are part of FHA’s Minimum Property Requirements (MPR) for Existing Construction set forth in Single Family Housing Policy Handbook 4000.1 (Handbook 4000.1). With this waiver, FHA is streamlining its well water distance requirements that may have been a barrier to affordable housing supply.
On June 23, 2026, FHA issued five Mortgagee Letters (MLs) updating requirements across origination, quality control, and servicing under the FHA Single Family Housing Policy Handbook (Handbook 4000.1). The changes will be incorporated into a forthcoming update to the Handbook. Read the summary in this Garris Horn write up.
USDA Guaranteed Rural Housing Loans from Plaza Home Mortgage® can be a great option for eligible rural homebuyers with: Zero down payment, Credit scores starting at 600, Up to 100 percent LTV, Low monthly mortgage insurance, options for single-family homes, condos, manufactured homes, new construction and PUDs. The property must be located in an eligible rural area and used as the borrower’s primary residence. Income limits apply.
The FHA published updates to its Single Family Housing Policy Handbook 4000.1 (Handbook 4000.1), the comprehensive, authoritative source for Single Family Housing policy guidance for industry stakeholders doing business with FHA. This update adds new guidance, eliminates outdated guidance, clarifies instructions, and incorporates previously published Mortgagee Letters (MLs) and various technical edits.
Pennymac announced that it is the first large servicer to successfully launch the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA) new Loss Mitigation Waterfall, which includes a VA Partial Claim option, deploying the solution nearly four months ahead of the VA’s November 28, 2026, required implementation date.
On August 4, 2026, USDA announced an increase to the elderly household deduction for applicants aged 62 and older, and the dependent deduction for applicants with eligible dependents. Pennymac is aligning with this change effective immediately. See Announcement 26-96 for more information.
Newrez Correspondent informs clients that the FHA announced that it has issued a broad waiver to the well distance requirements for Individual Water Supply Systems, which are part of FHA’s Minimum Property Requirements (MPR) for Existing Construction set forth in Single Family Housing Policy Handbook 4000.1. Announced July 27 and effective immediately in FHA INFO 2026-17
Newrez Correspondent announced updates to the USDA RD Section 502 Income Limits for 2026.
Originators and technology: one perspective
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Robbie Chrisman, with his thousands of interviews, has some thoughts on LOs’ perspective on technology. “In my numerous interviews around our industry, I’ve learned that mortgage ‘manufacturing’ evolved around the need for people to collect documents, validate information, and manually move loans through sequential milestones. As trusted data sources, automation, and intelligent decisioning become more sophisticated, those assumptions deserve to be questioned. The objective shouldn’t be to automate outdated workflows more efficiently, but rather to determine whether those workflows are still necessary in the first place. Innovation begins when organizations stop asking how technology can support existing processes and start asking whether those processes still represent the best way to manage risk.
“In my discussions with third-party providers of all shapes and sizes, I’ve learned that technology is no longer simply a collection of tools that replace manual work. It becomes an enabler of better decisions, stronger confidence, and a more transparent borrower experience. Successful organizations are rethinking how work flows across the entire loan lifecycle rather than simply digitizing each individual step. Achieving that vision requires more than software. It demands trusted data, thoughtful governance, effective change management, and a shared understanding of why new capabilities matter.
“I don’t think that the future won’t be defined by who implements the most artificial intelligence or builds the longest list of digital features. My guess is that it will be defined by who is willing to challenge the assumptions that have shaped mortgage operations for decades and redesign the process around the opportunities that today’s technology now makes possible.”
Capital markets: rates, affordability, and policy
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MBS and Treasuries were essentially flat Thursday, with a quiet session giving way to modest late-day losses as rising oil prices weighed on bonds despite limited economic or geopolitical developments. The lack of movement was a bit of a surprise, as markets were expected to remain volatile heading into today due to both geopolitical risks and Chair Warsh’s closely watched Jackson Hole speech, where investors will look for clues on his broader Fed reform agenda, communications strategy, balance-sheet policy, and (most importantly) the outlook for September and subsequent rate decisions.
Many think that he won’t say anything of substance, but with September hike odds anywhere from 35 percent to 44 percent, depending on who you ask, Chair Warsh’s Jackson Hole speech is a critical test of Fed credibility: he may reinforce the commitment to 2 percent inflation without offering forward guidance, while softer economic data gives him flexibility to refine the Fed’s message. A more hawkish tone or payrolls revisions could trigger a sharp repricing, while dovish guidance could initially lift bonds but ultimately pressure the long end of the yield curve if it fuels inflation or policy uncertainty.
The U.S. Treasury completed this week’s note auction slate with a good $44 billion 7-year note offering, with demand slightly better than the recent average: a 2.50 bid-to-cover ratio means investors submitted $2.50 of bids for every $1 of Treasuries offered, versus a 2.48 recent average. However, demand from indirect buyers (typically foreign institutions and large asset managers) was notably weaker at 61 percent, while direct buyers stepped up strongly to 27 percent, suggesting domestic investors absorbed more of the issue than usual.
The mortgage market is entering a period where policy changes may generate headlines without addressing the underlying affordability problem. FHFA Director Pulte is expected to announce changes to certain Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loan-level pricing adjustments and potentially mortgage credit-score requirements, but the question remains whether either move will meaningfully reduce costs for borrowers. Changes to credit-score reporting, in particular, do little to solve the fundamental problem of incomplete or inaccurate consumer data, while proposed government purchases of mortgage-backed securities are unlikely to materially lower mortgage rates if longer-term Treasury yields remain elevated. Meanwhile, leadership upheaval at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac raises concerns about whether policymakers are focused enough on the operational risks facing the enterprises.
Aside from the events in Jackson Hole, today sees a light economic calendar, which kicks off later this morning with August Chicago PMI, expected to decline marginally from the prior reading. After that brings Final August University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment, which is expected to be unchanged. Year-ahead inflation expectations, part of that release, will be scrutinized. We begin the day with Agency MBS prices, and therefore mortgage rates, little changed from Thursday’s close, the 2-year yielding 4.23, and the 10-year yielding 4.69 after closing yesterday at 4.67 percent.
My buddy Ira was telling me about his new hobby of photographing salmon in different outfits.
Apparently, it’s just like shooting fish in apparel.
Visit www.ChrismanCommentary.com for more information on our industry partners, access archived commentaries, or subscribe to the Daily Mortgage News and Commentary. You can also explore the Chrisman Marketplace, a centralized hub connecting mortgage professionals with trusted vendors and solutions. If you’re interested, check out my periodic blog on the STRATMOR Group website. STRATMOR’s current blog is, “Those Monthly Payments Go Somewhere.” The Commentary’s podcast is available on all major platforms, including Apple and Spotify.
qoɹ & ǝᴉqqoɹ
(Market data provided in partnership with MBS Live. For free job postings and to view candidate resumes, visit the Chrisman Job Board. This newsletter is intended for sophisticated mortgage professionals only. There are no paid endorsements by me. For the latest mortgage news, visit Mortgage News Daily. For archived commentaries, or to subscribe, go to www.ChrismanCommentary.com. Copyright 2026 Chrisman LLC. All rights reserved. Paid job & product listings do appear. This report or any portion hereof may not be reprinted, sold, or redistributed without the written consent of Rob Chrisman. The views and opinions in this newsletter are mine alone unless otherwise specifically stated herein.)
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