9.29.26 Hispanic Homeownership; Maxwell’s John Paasonen and PLACE’s Chris Stuart on Housing Ecosystems; Selling Pressures

Robbie ChrismanWelcome to the Chrisman Commentary, Daily Mortgage News Podcast. I'm your host, Robbie Chrisman. Topics on today's episode include Hispanic homeownership, why inflation is still driving rates, and my interview with Maxwell's John Passinen and Place's Chris Stewart on why the industry is shifting toward massive tech ecosystems instead of standalone point solutions and how combining brokerage tech and mortgage infrastructure creates the ultimate one-stop shop for the consumer. Here, take a listen, do a little preview.Chris StuartIn Place's ecosystem today, we are tethered to tens of thousands of real estate professionals that leverage the place technology to power how they're running their real estate business every day. Websites, property search, CRM, lead generation, marketing, communication tools. So we imagine a world where we make it very, very easy, you know, the proverbial easy button for either an agent who's leveraging that technology to refer to the lending institution that is powered by Maxwell, or the buyer-borrower themselves who are inside of the place-powered technology searching for a home or considering a refinance or whatever that use case is. The fact that now Maxwell is part of the place ecosystem of technology will just create much, much more velocity in how referrals happen between agents and loan officers, or how borrowers enter the loan application pipeline through Maxwell's technology and get to a pre-approval as an example. So we could not be more excited to now own that layer of the experience through the Maxwell Partnership.Robbie ChrismanThis week's podcasts are presented by Gateless, intelligent automation that gives you the competitive edge. Gateless solutions reduce costs, deliver a superior borrower experience, and mitigate risk by automating tasks and decisions historically made by people. To learn more, visit gateless.com. Hispanic homeownership has room for improvement. We're in the middle of National Hispanic Heritage Month, which goes from September 15th to October 15th. The day of September 15th is significant because it's the anniversary of independence for Latin America countries Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. In addition, Mexico and Chile celebrate their independence days on September 16th and September 18th, respectively. Also, Columbus Day or Dia de la Raza, which is October 12th, falls within this 30-day period. The U.S. Hispanic poverty rate fell to a record low 13.9% in 2025, down 1.2 percentage points from 2024, and continuing a long-term decline from 21.9% in 1973. The overall U.S. poverty rate also fell from 10.7% to 10.2%. The improvement is notable because it remained statistically evident even after changes to the Census Bureau's survey methodology. But the data also shows that Hispanics remain disproportionately represented among people living in poverty. Black and American, Indian, Alaskan native populations are also overrepresented, while white and Asian populations are underrepresented relative to their shares of the population. For now, let's assume the economy's strength and the absence of clear demand destruction leave energy-driven inflation and higher-for-longer rates as the two main drivers of sentiment. Investors increasingly treat higher oil and diesel prices as sustained inflation risks rather than a temporary spike. Eventually, transportation costs will feed into food and core goods, eroding consumer purchasing power. I would know. Diesel in California yesterday to fill up my truck was $8.89 a gallon. Might be okay if Iran gets a nuclear weapon based on that. Anyways, the Treasury sell-off reflects a market view that still views the U.S. economy as resilient. Tenure breakevens remain relatively contained at 2.35%, suggesting confidence in the Fed's inflation fighting credibility. Higher real yields and term premiums reflect expectations for rates to remain elevated, while stronger business investment and solid employment, retail spending, and robust real consumption and GDP estimates provide little evidence of an imminent slowdown. The risk is that sustained energy inflation finally weakens, consumers or growth forcing markets to quickly reduce rate hike expectations and triggering a treasury rally. The Treasury sell-off intensified Monday as the Trump administration's rejection of Iran's proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz raised fears that the war's energy shock will persist, pushing the 10-year yield 9 basis points higher to 5.25%, a 19-year high, and the third year to 5.57%, its highest since 2004. The market is increasingly focused on the interaction between sustained oil-driven inflation and tighter monetary policy. Investors anticipate the Fed may need to keep rates higher for longer as the Iran conflict becomes a central driver of the global macroeconomic outlook. For today's interview, I wanted to welcome to the show Maxwell's John Passinen and Place's Chris Stewart to talk about why the industry is shifting toward massive tech ecosystems instead of standalone point solutions, and how combining brokerage tech and mortgage infrastructure creates the ultimate one-stop shop for the consumer. Place acquired Mortgage FinTech Maxwell, which serves more than 400 financial institutions and supports over $130 billion in annual mortgage transactions. This continues a string of acquisitions aimed at building an end-to-end home ownership ecosystem. Maxwell will allow Place to directly serve mortgage lenders, banks, and credit unions the same way it serves agents and real estate teams.Robbie ChrismanWe obviously have Chris from Place, John from Maxwell. Place and Maxwell have approached the homeownership journey from different sides historically. There's now a big partnership between the two. I think congratulations are in order. But for people that might be living under a rock, and John, let's start with you. And anything to fill people in on? Can you present the news and the synergies that you saw?John PaasonenYeah, so the news we announced this week is that Maxwell is becoming part of Place. Couldn't be more thrilled about that. I know we'll unpack what that means and why that happened a little bit as we go through. But as you know, Maxwell had spent our last decade building technology and services for mortgage lenders, right? And we today serve over 400 financial institutions in that space. Place spent their early years building services and technology for real estate agents. And when we met, felt like a very natural coming together where we can uh combine our forces to think about how we serve a broader breadth of customers across across real estate.Robbie ChrismanChris, from Place's perspective, why did this make sense?Chris StuartTo John's point, Place launched six and a half years ago, and our mission is very simple to deliver the dream of homeownership everywhere. And we believe, unlike some of the other players in the real estate and lending industries, we believe that the pathway to serving the homeowner and delivering homeownership and serving all of the key client types in the real estate industry is paved by the top producing professionals who are in the community working at the table, kitchen table with those awesome real estate clients. And so therefore, Place has built a multi-tiered homeownership services platform. And we've put the bulk of our time the last six and a half years into serving the needs of top-producing real estate agents. We also made an acquisition of our own direct lending uh entity. So we're serving loan officers. And then we've got a whole emerging part of our ecosystem where we're serving the needs of big institutions, loan servicers, loan originators, banks and credit unions, uh, SFR investors. And so we really look at our enterprise today as really being bookended. We are serving the needs of the professionals who work directly with the homeowner clients all the way to the institutions on the other end of the spectrum. And Maxwell and their awesome legacy of serving institutions as well as banks and credit unions and their respective loan officers fit into uh that vision of what we've built and what we're continuing to innovate.Robbie ChrismanSo ultimately, what does this mean for the residential mortgage industry?John PaasonenSo I think what it means for us, in our view, and and what got us really excited as we started to get to know you know Ben and Chris and Stu and the team at Place is that homeownership doesn't happen in these neat industry silos where uh you know they're talking to an agent and they're talking to a lender and they're talking to uh a title agent, right? The consumer doesn't think about that. They think about, I want to get my home, right? I want to build wealth generationally through my home. And so everyone else that's involved, if we can help stitch that together into an experience, no matter what brokerage they use, no matter what lender they use, no matter what title company they use, if we can help stitch together that homeownership experience for the homeowner, that real estate agent, that brokerage is gonna be better off as a business, the lending institution is gonna be better off as a business, the title company is gonna be better off as a business. And we actually think the capital markets and the institutions that buy the assets are gonna be better off because it's stitched together and they have that visibility all the way through the chain. And so place and maxbook, we're pursuing that same challenge from different sides, and now we get to work on it together. Uh, and I think that's a huge bet that we're making um that we're going deeper in housing. And so I think for our customers, as I think about the impact that has on their business, we're gonna be thinking a lot more. If you're a credit union in Iowa or you're an IMB in Chicago, we're gonna be thinking a lot more about how do we help your loan officers get more deeply connected with their real estate agent partners? How do we help you get more deeply connected with the closing transaction? And so that you become the center of home for these customers that you have a relationship with. And that really helps you win the next customer. And and when that customer comes back to refinance their home and look for their next one, they're gonna call you again because we're gonna build that relationship much more deeper.Robbie ChrismanJohn, what does all of this mean in a broader sense for the industry? Where are we heading as real estate, mortgage, title, these things converge together?John PaasonenYeah. You know, there's been a dream for decades of these things converging. And I think there's been fits and starts over the last 20 years of entrepreneurs and other large businesses in these different segments trying to pull it together. I think what's changed over the last five years is that as these institutions in these different spaces have gotten so large, you're starting to see some of them converge, right? Think about some of the news headlines that we've read about big acquisitions over the last five years in the space. And so now consumers are getting sucked into these platforms that are owning the entire journey for them. And so if you're an IMB in the Midwest or you're a credit union in California, the question for you is how are you gonna compete with that? How are you gonna have the capability to think about the consumer before they start talking to a lender? How are you gonna have the capability to keep in touch with the consumer when they're in servicing and really broaden your brand across all of that? And you know, what I love about what Stu said earlier in the conversation is place exists, and Maxwell has always existed as well to empower others. We're not doing this to put our brand in front of the consumer, we're doing it to put your brand in front of the consumer, right? We empower others to be successful. And so that's what's not changing, but what's changing is we're gonna start stitching these things together. It's not a one-touch loan and it's done. There's a lot that happens before closing and after closing that your brand as a lending institution can be can be involved in. And you know, let me give you a very simple example. Place owns a company as well called Connect. Uh, and what CONNECT does is they provide a moving cost shares. So, you know, right, I don't know if you've ever moved before, but connecting your utilities, getting your internet set up, your solar panels, I mean, it's a huge pain in the butt, right? And so what Connect does is they have a person who literally is your cost shares that helps you get all this kind of they work with over 70 different categories, moving trucks and plumbers, they help you get rekeyed, all of those things, right? It's completely free for the consumer. Why can't we deliver that as a service from the lending institution that you're touching? And so it's not complicated. Somebody's buying a house, they're packing boxes, they're trying to figure out how to get the lights turned on. If your lender can help make that part of the process easier and we can deliver that for that lender through Maxwell and Place, that's huge. And so that's another simple example of how we're really trying to stitch together the homeownership journey instead of these neat silos that you know we tend to operate in as the industry today.Robbie ChrismanJohn, I've been speaking at various conferences around the nation and I've been telling loan officers look, if your borrower is going to be doing a lot of research on Chat GPT, a lot of that stuff you're now no longer their kind of point person on. You need to level up. If you have that much more time, you should be acting as a concierge. So it's very refreshing to hear you say this. And I'm I'm certainly excited about the partnership.John PaasonenYeah, I mean, I, you know, we view as we think about product development, software development, right? And AI is a huge help, not just the consumer, it should be a huge help for the loan officer as well. Because to your point, Robbie, they need to level up. They can't just be order takers taking a loan application. They need to be advisors, especially in this market environment. They need to be advisors to the consumer around how much can you afford, what products are available to you, how do I help you navigate this? They're not just salespeople managing a pipeline, right? They are consultants, they're advisors. And, you know, what I've seen in the best loan officers are the ones that really take that advisory role very seriously, right? That they're partnering with their customer. You know, I often tell the story of one of my favorite loan officers on Maxwell named Ryan, who, when a customer first comes into his office, he sits them down, he says, I'm not here for a loan. We're gonna do a loan, but I'm here for the rest of your life to advise you on your largest purchase and how to manage that wealth that you now have. Right. And he says, you know, when that customer has a baby, um, they're gonna get a card for me. When that customer gets a promotion in their job, they're gonna get a congratulatory text from me, right? He stays in their life, in their business beyond that initial loan, right? And that's what every loan officer needs to do. And so if we as a technology platform can help enable every loan officer to be like Ryan, that's what's gonna make uh them successful and us successful too.Robbie ChrismanIf any loan officers out there would like to babysit for me, I will do my next loan with you.John PaasonenThere you go.Robbie ChrismanHey, so so for lenders out there wondering what this means, hey, I've worked with Maxwell for a long time. Are you still my partner? It's same team, products, and so everything, like what what is the same, what's different from the lenders out there?John PaasonenYeah, nothing, nothing is changing uh from that perspective. You know, we're even today, Maxwell. Uh, you know, we we're gonna continue to work with the you know, you lenders are gonna continue to work with the team, the products, the services that they know. Um, we're continuing to invest in in making the product better. There's gonna be a pretty big product announcement coming out here in a couple weeks. And our commitment to our lenders is their brand, their customers are the most important thing. And we're committed to make them successful with their customers and to continue to build that trust with them. And so what they're gonna see though is that moving beyond just this origination, we're thinking much more broadly around how we help them be successful in that. So we stay their partner, the product stays the same, you know, our investments continue to ramp up, but they're gonna see more breath from us in terms of how we're helping them stay front and center.Chris StuartI wanted to add to that back to some of the comments that you made earlier, John. I think that they're really important. And I just want to double down on some of them. In a world where our customers are going to be constantly by bombarded by other competitors. So if I'm a bank or credit union, a current or future prospective client of Maxwell, your clients are gonna be bombarded by your competition to do the next refi or to get pre-approved for that next mortgage or to take out a home equity line of credit or a debt consolidation. And if those clients are gonna be shepherded into an experience with those other lenders that provide this ecosystem approach to how those lenders are merchandising the property and casualty insurance or a home warranty or whatever those other offerings are, it's critical that Maxwell's clients also consider how they're presenting that same ecosystem approach. And now, because Maxwell sits inside of the place ecosystem, that placed ecosystem will serve as a competitive marketplace of partnerships that we now, through Maxwell, are offering to Maxwell's current and future clients. And more importantly, number two, that ecosystem serves as the hub of innovation, of thought leadership, of the things that we are now going to be providing. We placed through Maxwell to Maxwell's current and future clients. We can't overstate that, right? Like we all need to come together, which we place have made an investment in through the acquisition of Maxwell to provide to Maxwell's clients is this idea that we're all going to get better together by being affiliated and just developing that muscle of the experience that we're delivering to these clients, the borrower client that is.John PaasonenAnd there is nobody else in the categories in which you know Maxwell competes today that is thinking like this. There's no, you know, uh, if you look at you know where our competitors have headed and chosen to mark their strategy, it's going deeper into banking and deposits and account opening and all those things, rather than saying, hey, we're going deeper in home, uh, right? We're going deeper in home and housing and home ownership to make our customers successful. And that's really a critical strategic differentiation, I think, for us and should be for our customers. And uh we're excited to get to get going on it.Robbie ChrismanAnd finally, before I let you two go, Chris, I'll start with you. How does Place see the future of residential mortgage lending? What are we working towards here?Chris StuartOur mission, and this is you know inherited across all of our businesses. We own today and operate 15 distinct businesses, obviously Maxwell among them. Our mission is to deliver the dream of homeownership everywhere. And we really don't believe that there's any organizational muscle across the industry that's really advocating for that outcome, right? And therefore, the homeownership rate in the United States has been pretty flat, plus or minus a few hundred basis points across more than a couple of decades. So then, how do we make it easier? How do we remove the friction? How do we take expense out? You do it by organizing in the way that place is now doing. Bring the businesses together, operationalize them, put them on a common tech stack, make sure everyone's rowing in the same direction. And so, relative to mortgage, that is our commitment. How do we take the cost out to the maximum extent possible? How can we get the lending side of the world tightly integrated with the real estate agent side of the world to make things easier for customers? How can we, you know, leverage all the most contemporary thinking and technology to be a better benefit for current and future prospective homeowners? Like that's the way that we see lending. And that's the reason we're making the investment and commitment to operationalizing all these different businesses, from working with servicers at the institutional end all the way down to the loan officers and real estate agents on the street working with the buyers and sellers. That is our commitment. So that's how we see the future, Robbie.John PaasonenFrom a technology perspective, you know, we see loan officers becoming much more technology enabled, right, to do their jobs much better. And I think that's a big direction that we all see residential lending going, being enabled by more technology, be more effective, but not to lose the human touch that's so important for advisory and guiding them through the biggest financial decision of their life. And uh that's our intent is to continue to empower the humans and mortgage to be successful with tech as they as they do their jobs.Robbie ChrismanVery cool. Well, I'm happy that both of you took the time to speak with me today. I think that the audience, it's certainly valuable for them to understand where the industry is headed. Big changes, the convergence of a lot of these different silos is really exciting. So thank you both for the time. Yeah, thank you. Absolutely.Robbie ChrismanUS Treasuries and agency MBS began the week under selling pressure, showing little relief even as oil prices retreated on signs of potential US Iran diplomatic progress. A resilient economy combined with persistent price pressures could reinforce the case for restrictive Fed policy, while weaker labor data would raise the possibility that higher rates and elevated costs are finally beginning to constrain demand. Today's busy economic calendar has July's FHFA housing price index and S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Home Price Index, September Consumer Confidence, August Jolts, and remarks from Fed Governor Bowman, Fed Governor Barr, Fed Governor Waller. We began Tuesday with agency MBS prices slightly better than Monday's close, the two-year yielding 4.91, and the ten-year yielding 5.22 after closing yesterday at 5.25%. Let's wrap up with a joke and some housekeeping. War is full of logistical challenges, and throughout history, one of the major concerns is how to feed armies to provide a reliable supply of food to maintain both their energy levels and morale. As the old saying goes, an army marches on its stomach. Military rations have existed since at least the time of ancient Rome when soldiers received two pounds of bread a day, sometimes with meat, olive oil, and wine. Today, U.S. troops are provided with meals ready to eat. Over the years, some foods were created specifically for soldiers but became beloved by the civilian population. For example, in 1942, the U.S. Army offered a lucrative contract to any company that could figure out a process for producing palatable frozen orange juice, deemed necessary for keeping vitamin C levels at acceptable levels among the troops. It wasn't until 1945 that a viable process was created, at which point the Florida Foods Corporation won the contract to produce 500,000 pounds of orange juice concentrate. However, the war ended before the product was shipped. Finding itself sitting on a giant mound of oranges, Florida Foods changed its name to Vacuum Foods Corporation a year later and began selling the nation's first concentrated frozen orange juice, which it called Minute Maid, in reference to the product's quick and easy preparation. Despite initially slow sales, Minute Maid eventually took off with the help of the jingle from Bing Crosby, paving the way for similar frozen products. I guess today wasn't a joke. It was a history lesson. Thanks again to Gateless for sponsoring this week's podcasts. Gateless provides intelligent automation that gives you the edge, reducing costs, delivering a superior borrower experience, and mitigating risk by automating tasks and decisions historically made by people. To learn more, visit gateless.com.