Real Estate (Page 4)

Mortgage rates are moving higher as 2026 nears its midway point. And sentiment has shifted when it comes to rate expectations as more housing market observers are predicting at least one rate hike this year — a stark contrast to the start of 2026 when multiple cuts were on the table and sub-6% rates seemed possible.

At HousingWire‘s Mortgage Rates Center on Tuesday, rates for 30-year conventional loans averaged 6.79%, up 6 basis points in the past week. Rates for 30-year jumbo loans also rose 6 bps to 6.81%, while rates for 30-year loans backed by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) jumped 7 bps to 6.38%.

In the short term, rates have responded to the Federal Reserve‘s decision to hold benchmark rates steady for a fourth straight meeting, with stronger indications from Fed officials that a rate hike is more likely than a cut by the end of 2026.

A startling prediction was released Monday when Bank of America economists forecast three rate increases by the end of this year, which would bring the federal funds rate to a range of 4.25% of 4.5%, erasing all of the cuts made in 2025. But HousingWire Lead Analyst Logan Mohtashami called those actions “a bit too aggressive” and said they are unlikely to come to fruition.

“Core inflation had been picking up before the (Iran) conflict, so any rate cuts are off the table, even after the conflict ended. The conflict ending removed the worst-case scenario. However, for now, I have one rate hike planned for 2026,” Mohtashami wrote.

Interest rate traders hold similar views, according to the CME Group‘s Fed Watch tool. As of Tuesday, about 36% of those surveyed were predicting a 25-bps increase at the Fed’s next meeting in July — up from 18% a month earlier. Roughly half of respondents have penciled in a hike by September, while roughly one-quarter think there will be a 50-bps increase by October.

Impact on purchase, refi demand

Rising rates are likely to factor into summer home sales and have been suppressing activity over the past month. HousingWire Data shows that weekly pending sales remain higher than a year ago, but existing home sales — which lag the pending sales data by 30 to 60 days — are likely to slow in July, according to Mohtashami.

“Mortgage applications declined for the fourth time in five weeks, underscoring borrowers’ continued sensitivity to higher mortgage rates compared to earlier this year. Purchase activity remained above year-ago levels, but constrained housing supply in many markets, elevated home prices and ongoing economic uncertainty continue to weigh on would-be homebuyers,” Bob Broeksmit, president and CEO of the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA), said in a statement.

Purchase application demand remains 3% higher than a year ago, the MBA reported. And consumer mentalities appear to be resilient despite affordability concerns. Bank of America survey data compiled in April and May shows that 53% of Americans would rather buy a home than rent or live with family — the first time in three years that a majority have expressed this view.

“The duration of the interest rate environment that we’re in today is now becoming a new normal, so versus the shock of movement from post-pandemic to the levels [near] 7%, now we’re consistently in this area, so this is a new normal from a market perspective,” Matt Vernon, head of consumer lending at Bank of America, told HousingWire.

“I think that is causing that clear inflection point in sentiment, where most Americans — or more Americans now — are thinking of homeownership as the preferred long-term choice.”

Refinance activity strong

Kyle Bass, production business manager at Refi.com, said that even with rates above 6.5%, more stability in recent weeks also seems to be supporting stronger refinance activity.

“For homeowners sitting on the sidelines, the question isn’t whether to refinance, it is whether you will be ready when the window opens,” Bass said. “This is why it’s more important than ever to prepare now. Those considering a refinance should complete the full pre-qualification process today, not because they’re ready to close, but because it reveals what needs to improve before they are, such as paying down credit card debt. Doing this now means you will be weeks ahead when rates reach your desired level.”

FHA loans, which represent about 17% of the mortgage market, also received a potential boost Tuesday when the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development announced a host of changes to the FHA’s single-family loan programs.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is rolling out 14 changes to the Federal Housing Administration (FHA)’s single-family mortgage insurance program, including less stringent appraisal rules, expanded flexibility for the 203(k) rehab loan program and simplified closing forms. 

The updates impact FHA policies across the origination, servicing, quality control and appraisal realms. HUD said the goal is to remove outdated requirements, reduce administrative work and make FHA financing more efficient for both homebuyers and lenders. 

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Investor activity in the U.S. housing market remained resilient in 2025 even as overall home sales fell to one of their lowest levels in decades, according to a report released Tuesday by Realtor.com.

Investors purchased roughly 534,000 homes last year, a 0.7% increase from 2024, while their share of all home purchases rose to 11.3%, up from 11% the prior year, according to the report.

By comparison, home purchases by non-investors declined 2.1% year over year.

At the same time, investors sold fewer properties for the first time in two years. Investor sales fell 1.5% to 442,000 homes, the lowest level since 2020, suggesting that investors are no longer shedding properties accumulated during the pandemic-era housing boom.

“The investor market has found a new equilibrium,” Hannah Jones, senior economist at Realtor.com, said in a statement. “With small investors now comprising nearly two-thirds of all investor purchases and large institutional players continuing to pull back, the dynamics shaping competition in entry-level housing are shifting.”

The report found that investor activity has remained stronger than the broader housing market since the COVID-19 pandemic. While overall home sales are down more than 25% from their 2021-2022 peak, investor purchases have declined by a smaller figure of 22.6%. Compared with pre-pandemic levels, overall home sales have fallen 14.3%, while investor acquisitions have increased 14.6%.

Investor sales also moderated in 2025. Although investors accounted for 9.3% of all home sellers, matching their share from 2024, the total number of investor sales declined. As a result, net investor accumulation widened to about 92,000 homes, up from roughly 80,000 in 2024.

The composition of investor activity continued to shift away from large institutional buyers. Mega investors, defined as those making 350 or more purchases annually, accounted for just 7.5% of investor purchases in 2025, their lowest share since 2011. Their purchase volumes have fallen nearly 70% from the peak reached during the pandemic-era housing boom.

Meanwhile, small investors — categorized as entities making fewer than 10 purchases per year — increased their share of investor purchases to about 63%, the highest level in more than 15 years. Realtor.com said small investors remained net buyers, purchasing approximately 53,000 more properties than they sold last year.

Jones said small investors are concentrated in lower-priced segments of the market, where they often compete directly with first-time homebuyers.

Nationally, small investors purchased homes at a median price of $330,000, compared with the overall market median of $440,000, according to the report.

Investor activity remained concentrated in several Midwest and Sun Belt markets. Among the nation’s 50 largest metropolitan areas, Memphis, Tennessee, posted the highest investor buyer share at 23.7%, followed by Kansas City at 21.2%; St. Louis at 21.1%; Birmingham, Alabama, at 21%; and Oklahoma City at 17.9%.

Las Vegas and Birmingham recorded some of the largest increases in investor buying activity from a year earlier, while San Antonio and Dallas-Fort Worth remained among the most active investor markets.

By contrast, several high-cost West Coast and Northeast markets saw relatively limited investor participation. Portland, Oregon; Sacramento; and Hartford, Connecticut, each posted investor buyer shares well below the national average.

Atlanta represented one of the most significant reversals, according to the report. Once among the nation’s most investor-heavy markets, investor purchases accounted for just 10% of home sales in 2025, below pre-pandemic levels. Investors were net sellers in the metro area by nearly 1,800 homes, the largest negative net position among major markets.

Realtor.com said investor activity appears to have stabilized at an elevated level, with investor purchase shares remaining above 11% for three consecutive years.

The report suggests that while large institutional investors have retreated, the growing role of smaller investors may help sustain current levels of investor participation in the housing market.

This article was generated using HousingWire Automation and reviewed by a HousingWire editor before publication. 

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As part of the ongoing lawsuit between Mauricio Umansky’s ThePLS.com and the National Association of Realtors (NAR), the trade association has attempted to subpoena documents from the American Real Estate Association (ARA), the NAR alternative founded by Umansky and Compass agent Jason Haber. 

The subpoena seek any documents, contracts, invoices and all communications between ARA, thePLS.com and theNLS.com, the Spanish counterpart of PLS from ARA and Haber. Additionally, NAR also asked to see communications about the Clear Cooperation Policy (CCP) and the NAR Accountability Project, a group founded by Haber in the wake of the sexual misconduct allegations that surfaced against former NAR President Kenny Parcell in late August 2023. 

According to the filing, the subpoena was issued in May with documents requested by no later than June 18. 

In an post on Instagram on Monday, Haber said that neither he nor ARA will meet NAR’s request for documents dating back to January 1, 2017, as they “include highly sensitive conversations with victims who came forward about harassment inside NAR.”

“The NAR Accountability Project shut down before ARA even existed. I’ll leave it to you to ask what its files have to do with a case about private listings,” he said. “ARA is objecting in the strongest possible terms. We will not allow a legal filing about a listing network to compromise the privacy of people who had the courage to come forward.”

On going legal battle

The subpoena is one of the latest developments in a years-long legal battle between ThePLS.com and NAR over CCP. ThePLS.com originally filed it antitrust lawsuit against NAR, California Regional MLS (CRMLS), Bright MLS and Midwest Real Estate Data (MRED) — are now named as co-conspirators. The MLSs were dismissed from the initial suit with prejudice in January 2024.

NAR was also dismissed from the initial suit at that time, but without prejudice, meaning that the PLS was allowed to refile the suit, which it did in July of 2025. 

In the renewed lawsuit, the plaintiffs claim that NAR is “a combination or conspiracy among its members, who are licensed real estate professionals who compete with one another.”

The PLS alleges that the adoption and enforcement of CCP by NAR and Realtor-affiliated MLSs is “the product of agreements and concerted action among the MLS Conspirators and between and among each NAR-affiliated MLS and their members.”

By requiring all listings to be submitted to the MLS, the PLS claims that CCP “eliminates the ability of listing networks that compete with the NAR-affiliated MLSs to feature listings that are not on the NAR-affiliated MLSs.”

The plaintiff argues this “degrades the quality of competing listing networks, reduces the incentives of licensed real estate professionals to use those competing listing networks, and makes those competing listing networks less effective competitors to the NAR-affiliated MLSs.” 

Additionally, the suit claims that CCP “has had actual and substantial anticompetitive effects by eliminating the ability and incentive of licensed real estate professionals to market pocket listings through PLS,” as well as other listing networks, thereby harming competition among listing network services.

In September 2025, NAR responded to thePLS.com’s renewed claims, arguing that the plaintiffs have not experiences any “antitrust injury.” 

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Finance of America (FOA) announced on Tuesday that it has appointed three senior executives to lead its brand, communications and product functions as the reverse mortgage lender looks to expand its retirement-focused home equity offerings.

Colm Murphy has joined as chief brand officer, Jordan Baucum as senior vice president of communications and Mike Urban as chief product officer.

The appointments are part of the company’s effort to more closely align its brand, communications and product teams as it seeks to drive growth and expand awareness of home equity-based retirement financing solutions.

“These hires strengthen the core of how we build and deliver for customers as we enter our next phase of growth,” Finance of America President Kristen Sieffert said in a statement. “By aligning brand, communications, and product more closely, we’re better positioned to simplify a complex category and create solutions that reflect how people approach retirement today.”

Murphy joins the company from Publicis Groupe, where he served as global chief strategy officer for Citi, following previous leadership roles at Bloomberg Media. Baucum previously held communications and financial services positions at Customers Bank, First Republic Bank and Chevron.

Both executives will report to Angela Tribelli. FOA’s chief marketing officer, and will oversee efforts to strengthen the company’s brand presence and consumer education initiatives focused on retirement planning and financial wellness.

“Our goal isn’t simply to build a stronger brand,” Tribelli said. “It’s to help Americans better understand the role home equity can play in retirement and ensure they have access to clear, transparent information when making important financial decisions.”

Urban joins Finance of America after serving in leadership roles at Best Egg and Barclaycard US. Reporting to Brian Conneen, FOA’s chief information officer, Urban will oversee product strategy and execution, with a focus on expanding the company’s retirement solutions platform and accelerating product development.

Conneen said Urban’s experience in product management, operations and design will help the company scale its product organization and deliver new home equity solutions for retirees.

This article was generated using HousingWire Automation and reviewed by a HousingWire editor before publication.

This post was originally published on here. 

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is rolling out 14 changes to the Federal Housing Administration (FHA)’s single-family mortgage insurance program, including less stringent appraisal rules, expanded flexibility for the 203(k) rehab loan program and simplified closing forms. 

The updates touch FHA policies from origination through servicing and quality control. HUD said the goal is to remove outdated requirements, reduce administrative work, and make FHA financing more efficient for both homebuyers and lenders. 

“Every unnecessary regulation comes with a cost, and too often homebuyers pay the price,” HUD Secretary Scott Turner said in a statement. “If a policy does not protect taxpayers, improve affordability, or expand opportunity for Americans, we should rethink it.” 

Regarding appraisal quality control, FHA is reducing requirements tied to appraisal field reviews, which HUD said cost about $425 per review. The change will save the industry an estimated $3.3 million per year. 

Under the Limited 203(k) Rehabilitation Mortgage Insurance Program, FHA will allow an increased number of contractor draw requests, making it easier to complete smaller home rehabilitation projects, which are often critical for addressing aging housing markets and lower-priced housing segments.

FHA is also permanently exempting early payment defaults caused by natural disasters from required quality control review samples. And it’s eliminating the duplicative requirement for lenders to use the Important Notice to Homebuyers Form 92900-B, which is expected to simplify the FHA closing process. 

In loss mitigation, FHA is clarifying requirements governing trial payment plans. HUD said the changes are designed to protect the Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund, establish safeguards to prevent abuse and ensure proactive borrowers are not penalized when they work with servicers to avoid default.

Turner, who took over the department’s top job under the Trump administration, has emphasized regulatory rollbacks and cost reductions as core priorities. 

FHA’s single-family unit has also seen turnover in senior roles. Earlier this month, Frank Cassidy stepped down from his role as FHA Commissioner and HUD assistant secretary for housing after a brief temporary leave. Ginnie Mae President Joseph Gormley is leading the office in an acting capacity. 

HUD said FHA has taken more than 150 actions to streamline its single-family program since the beginning of the Trump administration, signaling an ongoing regulatory recalibration rather than a one-off adjustment. 

This article was written by Flávia Furlan Nunes and generated with the assistance of HousingWire Automation, then reviewed by a HousingWire editor before publication. 

This post was originally published on here. 

After years leading teams, building brands and driving growth in another industry, I joined my current company to lead as Vice President of Marketing and Communications. What I did not expect was how quickly the leadership questions would feel familiar.

The market dynamics were different. The terminology was different. The pace was different. But the questions were familiar. How do you attract great people? How do you retain them? How do you scale while protecting what made the organization successful in the first place? How do you build a culture that can support growth, change and market evolution?

Today, strong tech stacks, AI tools, marketing platforms, CRMs and operational systems are essential. Every growth-minded brokerage is investing in them. They are no longer optional. They are the price of admission.

The real differentiator is what happens after the technology is in place. In my experience, the answer often comes back to leadership, culture and connection.

Technology creates capability. Culture determines execution.

Before entering real estate, I assumed recruiting conversations would revolve primarily around technology, marketing support, commission structures and business resources. While those topics matter, I have found they are rarely where meaningful conversations end.

Eventually, most conversations come back to trust. People want to know who they are aligning themselves with. They want to understand the vision. They want to know whether leadership is accessible. They want confidence that the culture they are being promised is the culture they will actually experience.

That realization reinforced something I have seen throughout my career: people may be attracted by opportunity, but they stay because of leadership.

Although I do not have a wealth of experience inside multiple brokerages, I do have the privilege of speaking with agents every day about why they joined Glasshouse and what keeps them here.

What is interesting is that the conversations rarely center on a single tool, platform or piece of technology. Instead, the same themes continue to surface: support, accessibility, collaboration, connection and leadership.

Agents talk about feeling seen.

They talk about having access to leadership. They talk about being part of a culture where people genuinely want one another to succeed. They talk about being surrounded by professionals who are willing to share ideas, answer questions and help each other grow.

For me, those conversations are a reminder that while technology may help attract attention, culture is often what earns loyalty.

There is another piece of culture that has stood out to me since joining real estate: connection. Agents want to grow their business, but they also want to feel connected. Real estate can be isolating, and many agents know what it feels like to operate on an island.

They want to be part of a community where they can learn from one another, share ideas, celebrate wins and navigate challenges together. As a hybrid brokerage, that is not something we can take for granted.

Connection does not happen automatically when people are not working side by side every day. It requires intentional effort, leaders who create opportunities for collaboration and a culture that encourages people to share knowledge instead of hoarding it.

One of the things I have appreciated most about my brokerage is the belief that success does not have to be a zero-sum game. A saying our broker, Mo Zahedi, often repeats has become something of a company cornerstone: “A rising tide lifts all ships.”

It is more than a saying. It is a mindset.

It captures the belief that when one agent succeeds, everyone benefits. Knowledge spreads. Confidence grows. Momentum builds. People are encouraged to support one another, celebrate wins and share what they have learned.

Technology allows us to work from anywhere, but culture gives people a reason to stay connected.

In a hybrid environment, that connection does not happen by accident. It has to be built, reinforced and protected. That is leadership work.

One experience that reinforced this perspective was Asa Cox Homes, Glasshouse’s newly acquired Cleveland team of 80 agents, being selected for the Google and HouseCanary home search pilot.

The pilot explored new ways brokerage listings could surface through Google’s search ecosystem, supported by HouseCanary’s real estate data platform. Cleveland was one of only eight national pilot locations, making the opportunity meaningful not just for Glasshouse, but for an independent brokerage team entering a larger growth story.

While the pilot was rooted in technology and visibility, it ultimately reinforced something much bigger: the role leadership plays in creating momentum.

When a newly acquired team is able to step into an opportunity like that, it says something about more than market presence. It says something about alignment, communication and the ability to create momentum during transition.

It also says something about support. Asa Cox Homes was able to hit the ground running because they joined a brokerage that was nimble enough to move quickly, supportive enough to create confidence and innovative enough to recognize the opportunity in front of them.

Marketing can amplify a strong culture, but it cannot create one.

The strongest brands I have worked with were never built solely through campaigns, messaging or visibility. They were built through consistent leadership decisions that employees, customers and partners experienced every day.

Culture is not what a company says about itself. Culture is how people experience the company. Our continued growth is rooted in something simple: culture and leadership.

Technology and systems are essential to growth. But their impact depends on the people and culture behind them. Technology is most powerful when it is paired with trust, communication, accountability and leadership that people believe in.

Here is what I have learned, and what continues to be reinforced regardless of industry: technology is essential, but it is not enough on its own.

The brokerages that grow in a meaningful, sustainable way will be the ones that understand what technology can support, but leadership must create.

Leadership creates trust. Culture creates connection. And together, they create the kind of environment where people do not just join, but stay, grow, collaborate and succeed.

That is the real competitive advantage.

Not the tools alone.

The people, the leadership and the culture that bring them to life.

Korrin Ziswiler is Vice President of Marketing and Communications with Glasshouse Realty in Dayton, Ohio.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of HousingWire’s editorial department and its owners.

To contact the editor responsible for this piece: tracey@hwmedia.com

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Zillow has rolled out a personalized hub that guides homebuyers from first search through closing, the company announced Tuesday. The firm first launched a similar real estate ecosystem geared toward industry professionals, known as Zillow Pro, in mid-October 2025.

The new capabilities are aimed squarely at buyers and sellers struggling with a lengthy, confusing transaction process, as mortgage rates stay above 6.5% and nearly half of shoppers are first-time buyers, according to Zillow research. The company says its upgrades are designed to centralize tasks and documents, connect consumers with loan officers and real estate agents, and surface more actionable data at each step of the deal.

The personalized hub is built around four milestones: setting a budget, finding a home, making an offer and closing the deal. It pulls together a buyer’s goals, finances, to‑dos, documents and the agent and lender they are working with in a single interface, updating automatically as the transaction moves forward, according to the release. 

Home shoppers start by answering one question — “Are you buying, selling, both, or just browsing?” — and receive a tailored plan. The hub immediately displays three core elements:

BuyAbility℠, local market insights and a view of the buyer’s existing agent and loan officer, or a path to connect with a local agent through Zillow’s Agent Finder if they do not yet have representation.

When a buyer obtains a pre-approval, the hub reflects that milestone; when they go under contract, closing-related tasks appear. Zillow says this is intended to replace the patchwork of spreadsheets, email threads and ad hoc document collection that often compresses into a few days before closing.

Verified pre-approvals tie financing directly to search

Zillow’s Summer Launch also adds a shop with Zillow Home Loans Verified Pre-approval function, which connects a buyer’s vetted borrowing power directly to the listings they browse.

With Verified Pre-approval, monthly costs — including taxes, insurance, HOA fees and closing costs — are factored into the analysis, so buyers see whether a listing is realistically within their budget.

Shared collection centralizes partner collaboration

The final Summer Launch feature, shared collection, is aimed at the growing share of buyers purchasing with a partner.

Shared collection replaces that with a single, shared workspace inside Zillow where buying partners can save, organize and compare homes together in real time. Any update — such as saving or removing a listing — is immediately visible to all participants across iOS, Android and the web.

Zillow’s latest rollout continues a multi-year push to control more of the consumer journey from search to close. The personalized hub, embedded financing via Verified Pre-approval and pre-market exposure through Zillow Preview all move key steps of the transaction inside Zillow’s app.

Ongoing tech buildout at Zillow

This launch follows a series of technology pushes by Zillow aimed at streamlining the homebuying process and capturing more consumer engagement across the full transaction.

In summer 2025, Zillow rolled out SkyTour, an interactive 3D exterior home tour built on Gaussian splatting technology from the gaming industry, and Offer Insights, which gives buyers real-time feedback on how competitive a given offer price might be.

In fall 2025, the company launched in-app messaging for co-shoppers, AI-powered virtual staging on Showcase listings, and an integrated closing dashboard connecting search activity with back-office closing workflows.

Earlier in 2026, Zillow introduced Zillow AI mode, a conversational AI built into the app that lets buyers and renters ask questions in plain language, explore neighborhoods, compare affordability and book tours and Zillow Preview, its pre-marketing product for sellers and listing agents. 

This article was written by Brooklee Han and generated with the assistance of HousingWire Automation, then reviewed by a HousingWire editor before publication.

This post was originally published on here. 

Compass has settled the Murch Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) lawsuit filed against it last June. On Monday, plaintiff Jessica Murch filed a notice of settlement with the court. 

No details of the settlement were disclosed in the one-page filing.

The TCPA suit was originally filed in mid-June of last year by plaintiff Jessica Murch against Compass, Compass Washington and two Compass agents Rachel Olson and Ansel Sanger in U.S. District Court in Portland, Oregon.

According to the complaint, Murch’s phone number was listed on the Do Not Call Registry for more than 31 days prior to the first of several calls at issue. Additionally, the filing notes that the plaintiff has never been a customer of Compass, nor has she ever consented to receive calls or text messages from the company. Despite this, in mid-August 2024, Murch claims she received four calls from Olson asking if she was interested in selling her house. 

In the complaint Murch claims that, despite telling Olson and Compass to only communicate with her via email, she continued to receive these unwanted calls through at least early June of 2025. The lawsuit was seeking class action status.

Compass had filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit in May. The firm said it did not wish to comment on the settlement.

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Rocket Pro announced Tuesday that it is fully integrated with ARIVE, enabling direct loan submission and live status updates by syncing with its own platform in about 60 seconds.

The development marks the second phase of a partnership that began in April 2025, which initially gave brokers access to Rocket’s products and pricing through ARIVE. Now, brokers can price, submit and track loans without navigating away from the ARIVE interface. 

According to Katie Fisher (Sweeney), executive vice president of strategy and broker advocacy at Rocket Pro, only three lenders currently have this depth of integration with the platform.

“The benefit here is that you don’t have to log into a secondary system, re-upload information or convert information, and then submit,” Fisher told HousingWire. “Similarly, instead of having to log into a second system to get updates on loan status every morning, or understand how things are changing intraday, that information pushes basically right away back into the ARIVE system.”

For brokers, the Phase 2 update eliminates data re-entry and delivers more than 18 real-time loan status events — from initial contact through funding — directly into their daily workflow.

It’s all about broker choice

Rocket Pro is positioning itself around broker choice, with no platform lock-in. The move aligns with its broader strategy of accommodating varying broker workflows without requiring exclusivity to a single portal. 

While Rocket launched a loan origination system, Jupiter, in February (developed by sister company Lendesk), the company continues to invest in third-party integrations.

ARIVE, which combines a loan origination system, consumer point-of-sale interface, pricing engine and wholesale marketplace, has captured an estimated 50% market share among brokers, according to Fisher. Unlike retail loan officers who typically operate within a single, employer-provided system, brokers often juggle multiple lender portals.

“It’s just system preference,” Fisher said, comparing the choice between ARIVE and Jupiter to the preference between iPhone and Android. “They behave in different ways. They’re different price points. They’re set up in different workflows. We’re not in the business of forcing people to behave in one way or another.”

Rocket pays to participate in the ARIVE marketplace, though it does not charge brokers to work with the company or use external systems, Fisher said. Brokers pay a monthly subscription fee for access charged by ARIVE. Rocket declined to disclose the user crossover between ARIVE and its broker network.

A third phase of the ARIVE integration is currently in development. Fisher said will introduce features not yet offered by other lenders on the platform.

This post was originally published on here. 

Two Harbors Investment Corp.‘s latest adjournment of its special meeting underscores just how tight the shareholder math appears to be on its proposed sale to a CrossCountry Mortgage (CCM) affiliate — and how much pressure is coming from rival bidder United Wholesale Mortgage (UWM).

Two Harbors said Tuesday it has pushed its special meeting of stockholders to July 2 to allow more time to solicit proxies in favor of the CCM transaction. The meeting, originally scheduled for May 19 and delayed for a third time this week, will be held virtually.

The Two Harbors board continues to unanimously recommend shareholders vote for the CCM deal, which offers $12 per share in cash plus a pro-rated stub dividend.

According to the board, it represents “a 21% premium to TWO’s unaffected share price (December 16, 2025, the last trading day prior to the announcement of a transaction with UWMC) and a 119% premium to TWO’s fully diluted tangible book value as of March 31, 2026.”

The company has secured 47 of 53 required regulatory approvals and still expects to close in August 2026 if investors approve the transaction and remaining conditions are met.

Prior disclosures reviewed by HousingWire suggest the board may not yet have the votes it needs.

Emails between Two Harbors CEO Bill Greenberg and UWM CEO Mat Ishbia, which were included in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), show that as of June 15, about 73% of Two Harbors shareholders had voted and 54% were opposed to the CCM merger. 

The same email exchange revealed intensifying friction over deal structure. UWM has been pitching an alternative transaction that includes both cash and stock. Its most recent offer was $12.50 per share in cash — or at the shareholder’s discretion, 2.3328 shares of UWMC stock.

Two Harbors has pushed for all-cash consideration, arguing that the stock component would deliver far less value to investors who take the default consideration.

Based on UWMC’s June 12 closing price of $2.38, the default stock option would have implied about $5.55 per Two Harbors share, less than half of the cash headline price, the company said.

For now, Two Harbors is focused on turning around the proxy count. Stockholders who previously voted in favor of the CCM transaction do not need to take further action, the company said. Proxies already submitted will be voted upon at the reconvened meeting unless revoked. Investors who have not voted or who want to change their vote are being urged to do so. 

This post was originally published on here. 

National Association of Realtors (NAR) directors voted to keep national dues at $156 per member for 2027, approved a full slate of 2027 leadership and sent a proposed new ethics standard back to committee following a split vote at the trade association’s legislative meetings last week.

Ethics proposal sent back for more work

A proposed new Standard of Practice under Article 1 of NAR’s Code of Ethics drew significant debate before directors voted 497–356 to refer it back to the Professional Standards Committee for further review.

The proposed Standard of Practice 1-17 would have required members to disclose when they lack the knowledge, information or skills about a property type or geographic area needed to adequately protect and promote a client’s interests, according to NAR’s account of the meeting. The proposal was first introduced at NAR’s NXT conference in Houston last November. 

Supporters of the proposal said the language would reinforce a Realtor’s duty to put clients’ interests first by encouraging transparency when agents work outside of their expertise. Opponents questioned how “lack of knowledge” would be defined or enforced and whether the rule could deter newer agents from taking on unfamiliar segments of a market as they gain experience.

NAR’s Executive Committee had recommended that the board defeat the measure outright. The board’s move to refer the proposal back to committee leaves existing Article 1 obligations, which includes the primary duty of members to protect and promote the client’s interests while remaining honest with all parties in the transaction, unchanged, according to NAR.

Directors did approve a separate Professional Standards change requiring any request for compensation from a seller of an unlisted property to be made no later than when an offer is presented, rather than at first contact, as was previously required. 

This debate underscores how NAR’s ethics rules may evolve in response to pressure for higher professionalism and clearer consumer protections in the wake of the commission lawsuits and increased scrutiny on industry practices like referral fees. 

Dues held steady, 1.2 million members used for planning

On finance items, directors signed off on several recommendations from the Finance Committee, including using 1.2 million members as the basis for 2027 budget planning — down from 1.4 million projected for 2026 in 2025 — maintaining national dues at $156 per member for 2027 and continuing the Consumer Advertising Campaign assessment structure from 2026.

NAR’s membership dues have held steady at $156 since 2023. 

Keeping dues flat comes as NAR continues to navigate membership declines tied to a slower transaction market, brokerage consolidation and fallout from commission litigation and policy changes.

Advocacy and strategic plan updates

NAR’s 2026 President Kevin Brown highlighted recent movement on federal housing policy, including the Senate’s advancement of the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, which NAR described as one of the most significant bipartisan housing packages Congress has considered in years.

The organization credited members, Federal Political Coordinators and advocacy staff for building support around housing affordability and supply measures within the bill.

CEO Nykia Wright also briefed directors on NAR’s strategic plan and organizational initiatives, with additional progress updates expected in July. Directors are scheduled to reconvene at NAR NXT in New Orleans in November.

2027 leadership team

At November’s meeting NAR will install its 2027 leadership team, some of which were chosen during the board meeting, including a treasurer in a contested race, and they approved the rest of the 2027 leadership team by consent agenda.

Patti Fitzgerald of Florida defeated Matt Ritchie of Louisiana by a vote of 506–424 and will serve as NAR treasurer for 2027 and 2028.

The rest of the 2027  leadership team will be made up of Christine Hansen (Florida) as president, Colin Mullane (Oregon) as president-elect, Pete Kopf (Ohio) as first vice president, Chris Beadling (Pennsylvania) as vice president of advocacy and Mary Dykstra (Virginia) as vice president of association affairs. 

This article was written by Brooklee Han and generated with the assistance of HousingWire Automation, then reviewed by a HousingWire editor before publication.

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Pennymac will close its office in Franklin, Tennessee, and lay off staff within its consumer direct lending operations, citing challenging macroeconomic conditions, the company confirmed on Monday.

“Given the current market environment and following a careful review of our staffing needs, Pennymac has made the difficult decision to close its Franklin, Tennessee site and reduce the associated positions within our consumer direct lending operations,” a company spokesperson told HousingWire.

The spokesperson did not disclose the specific number of employees affected or their roles. But the impacted staff will receive severance and “a number” of employees will have the opportunity to transition to other roles within the company. The layoffs were first reported by The Mortgage Scoop.

The move comes as newly appointed Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh and other central bank officials forecast increases to the benchmark interest rate in 2026 in an effort to push inflation down to their 2% target. A higher-for-longer rate environment is expected to pose continued challenges for lenders across the industry.

Pennymac was the third-largest U.S. mortgage lender in the first quarter of 2026. The company posted origination volume of $36.7 billion from January through March, representing a 29% year-over-year increase, according to data from Inside Mortgage Finance.

The Westlake Village, California-based lender and servicer reported a first-quarter net income of $82.3 million. Stronger mortgage production revenues helped offset weaker servicing results stemming from mortgage servicing rights (MSR) valuation changes and hedging losses.

In February, Pennymac announced its acquisition of Cenlar Capital Corp., the country’s second-largest mortgage subservicer, marking the first major acquisition in the company’s history. The all-cash transaction included an upfront purchase price of $172.5 million, with up to $85 million in contingent consideration payable over three years.

This post was originally published on here. 

Rhode Island housing advocates – conceding for the present moment – have already begun recalibrating for next year. Their latest bid for housing reform stalled during a legislative session that ended early so lawmakers could prepare for the November elections.

Those upcoming elections could alter political dynamics for next year’s session, swinging in favor of reform advocates. The biggest shift could come in the governor’s office, where incumbent Gov. Dan McKee trails challenger Helena Foulkes in early polling.

Foulkes’ platform includes plans to improve housing affordability by building more homes, a familiar theme in gubernatorial races across the country. The Rhode Island face-off between McKee and Foulkes is so contentious that the state Democratic Party didn’t endorse either candidate.

Voters choosing a different governor might also coincide with changes in Providence’s local government that could usher in rent stabilization, a measure that failed in May.

House leadership change stalls housing reform

This year, a change in Rhode Island’s House speaker stalled marquee bills after several consecutive sessions of housing reform led by former Speaker Joe Shekarchi. Shekarchi shepherded five housing reform packages and had been advancing a sixth this year.

His successor, Rep. Christopher Blazejewski, took over as speaker but did not pick up the housing mantle. Only minor bills making technical changes to existing law passed.

The stall affected key bills backed by state Rep. June Speakman, a leading proponent for housing support. One measure was the Faith-Based Affordable Housing Development Act, drawn from the “Yes in God’s Backyard” movement. It would have allowed religious institutions to build affordable and mixed-use housing on land they own. The bill would have limited local approval barriers and streamlined permitting. It would have put Rhode Island among states with similar laws.

The Faith-Based Affordable Housing Development Act is among the measures that cleared the state Senate but stalled in the House. Speakman’s proposals to legalize single-room occupancy and incentivize commercial-to-residential conversions also failed to advance out of the House committee process. Those bills are central to a supply-focused strategy that aims to add lower-cost units and reuse obsolete buildings instead of relying on new greenfield development.

Advocates are already looking beyond the current session. With the 2026 elections on the horizon, housing groups expect a reshaped legislature and plan to reintroduce key measures in 2027, potentially with newly elected lawmakers who have campaigned on affordability.

“We are disappointed where they ended up this session,” Kris Brown, executive director of housing advocacy group Neighbors Welcome! Rhode Island, told HousingWire TBD.

Brown said Speakman holds a safe House seat and will remain a housing champion. Advocates hope she becomes chair of the Municipal Government and Housing Committee next session.

Mayor and council races could change capital city dynamics

Rhode Island’s housing debate is expanding beyond zoning and supply. Rent stabilization is now the defining issue in Providence’s September Democratic mayoral primary.

The city council passed an ordinance capping annual rent increases at 4%, only to see Mayor Brett Smiley veto it. The council later came up one vote short of overriding that veto, with several members absent.

That outcome set up a stark contrast for voters. Smiley has aligned with the supply-side argument. He warns that rent caps would deter new construction and push developers out of Providence.

His challenger, state Rep. David Morales, has pledged to enact rent stabilization within his first 100 days. Morales argues that Providence is the nation’s hottest rental market. He says that reality demands immediate tenant protections.

A Morales victory would likely make Providence the only city in Rhode Island with rent stabilization, adding pressure from City Hall on state lawmakers at the State House half a mile away. Even if Morales loses, Smiley may face a city council with more advocates for rent stabilization. Most council challengers support rent stabilization and could form a veto-proof majority.

This post was originally published on here. 

SERHANT. has expanded into Houston, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio with 13 founding agents and six independent brokerages that collectively closed nearly $1.5 billion in sales volume over the past 12 months, the company announced Tuesday.

The move gives SERHANT. an immediate foothold in four of Texas’s largest housing markets. The Texas launch follows the firm’s entrance into Boston and California earlier this year and brings its footprint to 17 states since it began expanding beyond New York in 2023.

Texas operations and leadership

SERHANT. Texas will be led by managing director and broker of record Susana Sarvis, who is based in Houston. A 17-year industry veteran and Houston native, Sarvis previously served as vice president of brokerage operations at Real Brokerage and has held leadership roles at Compass and John Daugherty, Realtors, one of Houston’s legacy luxury firms.

“After spending more than 17 years helping agents grow their businesses and navigate an evolving industry, I couldn’t be more excited to join SERHANT. and lead our Texas expansion,” Sarvis said in a statement. “Texas is home to some of the most dynamic luxury markets in the country, and I look forward to helping our agents elevate their businesses while delivering exceptional experiences for buyers and sellers across the state.”

Independent brokerages align with SERHANT.

Rather than acquisitions, six established Texas independents are rebranding under SERHANT., bringing their existing agents and leadership into the firm’s platform. These firms include Houston-based Truss Real Estate and CitiQuest Properties, Evoke Realty, which serves Austin, San Antonia and the Coastal Bend region, Dallas-Fort Worth-based MRA Realtors and Austin-based KF Real Estate and Steele Portfolio Real Estate.

In Houston, Truss Real Estate founder Chris Phan is joining as a founding member, bringing a 15-person team. Phan has closed nearly $260 million in career sales, including $46.7 million in the last 12 months and was named to the 2024 RealTrends Verified list as the No. 31 agent in Houston by volume and No. 6 by sides. 

Patrick Burbridge, the leader of CitiQuest Properties, will be joining SERHANT. in Houston along with 10 agents. Burbridge has spent 22 years in real estate, closing nearly $150 million in the past 12 months and more than $2 billion in career volume. The firm primarily focused on developments and new construction. 

David Garcia Jr. and Alanna D’Antonio Garcia are joining SERHANT. as founding members through the affiliation of their firm Evoke Realty. At SERHANT. they will operate as evoke group. The San Antonio-based brokerage has more than $380 million in career sales and was named one of MySA’s Best Real Estate Companies less than two years after launching in 2022, the company said in the announcement. 

In Dallas, the husband-and-wife team of Robert Alvarez Jr. and Lisa Martin are bringing MRA Realtors to SERHANT. The pair, named to the 2025 and 2026 Real Producers North Dallas Top 1000, have more than 40 years of combined experience and more than $65 million in residential and commercial sales over the past eight years, according to the release.

In Austin, SERHANT is gaining Kasey Fagan, the broker-owner of KF Real Estate and Ellen Steele, the leader of Steele Portfolio Real Estate. Her team will rebrand as The Ausperity Group at SERHANT. 

Other teams and agents joining the firm include Eric and Erika Nelson’s Nelson Co., Nicole Lopez’s Marlowe Group and Michael Bass and the Bass Client Collective in Houston; Arios and Nicole Crenshaw’s Crenshaw Residential Group and Dustin Weiss, who is a founding member of Compass’s The Weiss Group, in Austin, Matt Keeton, Michael Petersen and Petersen Real Estate Group and Aaron Shockey and his seven-person team the Aaron Shockey Group in Dallas-Fort Worth.

This article was generated using HousingWire Automation and reviewed by a HousingWire editor before publication.

This post was originally published on here. 

A majority of Americans now believe that buying a home is a better option than renting or moving in with family, signaling a shift in consumer sentiment despite ongoing affordability challenges, according to Bank of America‘s latest Homebuyer Insights Report.

The survey included with the report, conducted in partnership with Bank of America Institute and released on Tuesday, found that 53% of respondents favor buying a home over renting or living with family, marking the first time since 2023 that a majority has expressed that view.

The report also found growing confidence in the value of homeownership. About 90% of respondents said a home is a valuable investment, up from 79% a year earlier, while 94% said homeownership provides stability, compared with 83% in 2025. Additionally, 32% said they are more confident in their ability to purchase a home this year, up from 27% last year.

‘Increasingly optimistic’ consumers

“We are seeing meaningful changes in attitudes toward homeownership,” Matt Vernon, head of consumer lending at Bank of America, said in a statement. “Despite real and persistent challenges in the market, buyers and owners are increasingly optimistic, and many are starting to move forward rather than waiting on the sidelines.”

In an interview with HousingWire, Vernon reiterated that the market has reached a point where consumers are accepting current rates as the “new normal.”

“The duration of the interest rate environment that we’re in today is now becoming a new normal, so versus the shock of movement from post-pandemic to the levels [near] 7%, now we’re consistently in this area, so this is a new normal from a market perspective,” Vernon said.

“I think that is causing that clear inflection point in sentiment, where most Americans — or more Americans now — are thinking of homeownership as the preferred long-term choice.”

Affordability remains the biggest hurdle for prospective buyers. The survey found that 58% cited high home prices as a barrier to homeownership, up from 46% in 2025, while 47% pointed to elevated mortgage rates, compared with 40% a year ago.

Even so, more consumers appear willing to enter the market. Seventy-one percent of prospective buyers said they are waiting for home prices and interest rates to decline before purchasing, down from 75% in 2025. The shift was most pronounced among younger buyers, with the share falling to 68% among Gen Z respondents (down from 74% a year earlier) and to 70% among millennials (down from 77%)

Among current homeowners, 52% said they expect to purchase another home, either as a primary residence or an additional property. And more homeowners are accelerating their plans, with 22% expecting to buy within the next year, up from 15% in 2025.

Lock-in effect easing?

The survey suggests that the”lock-in effect” created by low-rate mortgages may be easing. More prospective buyers said they would be willing to move and accept a higher mortgage rate if it meant purchasing a home in a more affordable area, securing their dream home or moving to a better location.

“Clearly, affordability is still the constraint in the market, but we’re also seeing homeowners make trade-offs to challenge that issue, whether that’s looking at managing costs, smaller living places, fewer amenities or looking at markets that may be cheaper than they initially were looking into,” Vernon said.

Technology is also playing a larger role in the homebuying process, with 20% of prospective buyers and homeowners reporting that they used artificial intelligence tools or chatbots during the past year to research housing-related topics. Usage was higher among younger consumers, reaching 32% among Gen Z respondents and 28% among millennials.

Among those who used AI, the most common applications included affordability, mortgage payment and closing cost estimates, learning about the homebuying process, and researching neighborhoods, market trends and property values.

Despite growing interest in AI, consumers still prefer human guidance for major decisions. Respondents said they would rather rely on professionals for tasks such as touring homes and obtaining legal or contractual advice.

Gen Z ‘social pressures’

The survey also highlighted the challenges facing younger buyers. Nearly one-third of Gen Z respondents said they are considering purchasing a home with friends or family members, while 28% reported taking on additional jobs to improve affordability. Another 31% said they plan to use homebuyer assistance programs to help fund a purchase.

Vernon said that while Gen Zers have an advantage of being digitally savvy, they are facing “social pressures” to buy a home.

“Those newer, social media native younger generations are seeing their friends, they are seeing their neighbors, they are seeing folks that they connect with either achieve the dream of homeownership or talk about aspiring to get there, and they’re feeling a general pressure if they are in the same age — and, ultimately, situation in life ‚ where their friends, their neighbors, etc., are buying and they are not,” he said.

The findings are based on an online survey conducted by Sparks Research between April 13 and May 10, 2026. The survey included 2,000 adults, evenly split between homeowners and renters, who either currently own a home, previously owned one or plan to become homeowners in the future.

This post was originally published on here. 

“Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres.”

All Gaul is divided into three parts. Julius Caesar used those words more than 2,000 years ago to begin an account of military conquest.

America’s housing affordability challenge might be described similarly.

Like Gaul of yore, it divides into three parts: talk, action, and outcomes. Identifying the three parts; that’s a cinch. Navigating the brutal, withering, mystifying distance between them is where housing affordability in the U.S. becomes a case of history repeating and getting almost nowhere.

That journey has frustrated and flummoxed policymakers, builders, investors, manufacturers, technologists and reform-minded housing advocates for generations.

Even when progress seems real, the same obstacles persist decades later and continue to bedevil the industry: insufficient housing supply, rising costs, labor constraints, permitting delays and a persistent inability to deliver attainable housing at scale.

That reality gives particular significance to two little-noticed funding opportunities recently launched by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

As applications for a $10 million robotics- and AI-enabled housing manufacturing demonstration and a $3 million automated permitting systems initiative remain open until July 13, HUD is quietly testing whether technology-driven productivity gains can be part of a broader housing affordability solution.

The timing of the HUD innovation foray is like stars aligning in the firmament of political will to “go big” on what’s plainly a societal scourge felt at a household level: our housing attainability crisis.

Congress – with a vote expected today in the House of Representatives – is poised to finalize and send the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act to President Trump’s desk, continuing a multiyear policy conversation focused on reducing regulatory barriers to housing production.

At the same time, HUD is pursuing a complementary strategy: investing in technologies designed to improve how housing is manufactured and how housing projects move through local approval systems.

Viewed together, the efforts suggest recognition that America’s housing shortage is by no means a problem of regulatory friction alone. It is equally a the-way-we’ve-always-done-it productivity problem. It is also equally an inefficient Residual Land Value capital investment problem.

These frictions are binding and have proven unrelenting.

Today’s “go big” talk and commitment to action echo a housing experiment launched nearly six decades ago by a HUD secretary who approached housing with an industrialist’s mindset.

George Romney’s unfinished experiment

In 1969, former American Motors chief executive and HUD Secretary George Romney launched Operation Breakthrough, one of the most ambitious federal housing innovation initiatives.

Romney believed America would not solve its housing challenges solely through additional subsidies, policy changes, or conventional building practices. He envisioned a broader transformation that would apply industrial management principles across every aspect of housing production.

As a housing historian and author of Construction Physics, Brian Potter notes that Operation Breakthrough sought not only to develop new construction technologies but also to address the entire housing delivery system, including production, financing, regulation, land use and distribution.

The ambition was a moonshot. The talk was epic. The action was both bold and sweeping.

Yet despite producing thousands of housing units and fostering significant experimentation, Operation Breakthrough ultimately failed to create the industrialized housing ecosystem its architects envisioned. Within a few years, many of the systems developed through the program had disappeared from the market.

Today, prefabricated housing accounts for a smaller share of U.S. homebuilding than it did before the initiative began.

The reasons – and the vicious circles of failure since then – remain relevant.

Operation Breakthrough revealed that technology alone cannot transform housing production. Fragmented demand, inconsistent regulations, localized approval systems, financing barriers, and market structures often proved stronger than the innovations themselves.

The lesson was never that innovation failed. It was that innovation without system-level alignment rarely achieves a plain-and-simple business non-negotiable: net-margin-positive scale.

That observation lies at the center of current conversations about housing industrialization.

The system, not the technology

Few observers have spent more time studying that question than Ryan Smith, co-founder of ModX and one of the principal researchers on HUD’s recent work to accelerate offsite construction.

Smith argues that the industry’s challenge – and the boneyard of flashy, VC-backed, save-humanity offsite, robotic, 3D-printing enterprises that have thrown talent, time, money and political capital into efforts to meet it over the past decade or more – is often misunderstood.

The conversation often centers on robotics, automation, modular construction, or factory-built housing, as if technology itself were the breakthrough. In reality, he says, countries that have successfully industrialized housing have built supporting systems that enable technology to scale.

“We know that the United States had a world-class industrialized housing sector,” Smith said. “Today Japan and Northern Europe really lead this area. The question is: What are the barriers in the United States to getting back to where we were, or to do what essentially Japan and Northern Europe have been able to accomplish?”

According to Smith’s research, the answer extends well beyond factory technology.

Recommendations from HUD-sponsored studies include demand aggregation, performance-based regulations, housing system certification, government incentives, and stronger alignment among federal, state and local housing policies.

These recommendations acknowledge that housing remains one of America’s most fragmented industries, or as Brian Potter calls it, “a loosely connected community of practice,” with thousands of local jurisdictions operating under different codes, approval processes, and procurement practices.

Smith points to international examples where governments did more than support innovation. They created predictable market conditions that encouraged manufacturers and investors to commit capital over long time horizons.

Other countries, he notes, developed offsite construction industries through coordinated incentives, harmonized standards, and demand signals that brought uncertainty and risk for manufacturers within reasonable tolerance levels.

The result was not simply better technology but a more coherent ecosystem for deploying it.

That perspective helps explain why HUD’s new funding opportunities may be more consequential than their dollar amounts suggest.

The programs are not solely about robotics or permitting software. They represent an attempt to generate evidence about how new technologies perform within real-world housing systems.

Why entrepreneurs see an inflection point

For housing technology entrepreneurs, the significance of the HUD initiatives lies partly in what they signal to the broader market.

Vikas Enti, founder and chief executive of Reframe Systems, which is preparing an application for the robotics demonstration program, sees the funding opportunity as validation of a larger shift underway in housing production.

“The cost curves are not going to get bent by continuing to build homes the existing way,” Enti said. “We have hit an inflection point in the industry where we need fundamentally new approaches to continue advancing labor efficiency.”

Reframe’s business model centers on decoupling construction from traditional jobsite processes and moving more production into advanced manufacturing environments. That approach reflects a growing belief among housing innovators that meaningful productivity gains will require housing to become less dependent on fragmented, labor-intensive field operations.

Enti believes the HUD program sends an important signal not only to builders and manufacturers but also to investors.

Federal support has historically played a catalytic role in sectors ranging from aerospace to electric vehicles, helping attract additional private capital once technologies demonstrate viability.

Enti hopes the demonstration program can serve a similar function for housing innovation.

“I hope this encourages more federal funding for housing and catalyzes interest from philanthropic funds and local state financing,” he said.

That possibility resonates with another observation from a source familiar with HUD’s thinking. Speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, the source said most applications are expected to arrive near the July deadline, but emphasized that the larger objective is to create momentum.

The source noted that many of the institutional mechanisms originally envisioned during the Operation Breakthrough era remain available today. The challenge is not necessarily inventing entirely new frameworks but creating conditions that allow innovation, standards, and local adoption to advance together.

Beyond regulation, beyond pilots

None of this diminishes the importance of regulatory reform.

The National Association of Home Builders‘ latest estimate finds that regulation accounts for $131,734, or 26.4%, of the average new single-family home’s price. Reducing unnecessary regulatory burdens remains an essential component of improving housing affordability.

Yet the industry’s focus on regulation sometimes obscures another reality.

Every day of delay in the permitting process adds cost. Every inefficiency in the construction cycle adds cost. Every labor shortage, coordination failure, inspection bottleneck, supply chain disruption, and productivity loss adds cost.

Those costs rarely appear clearly on a regulatory ledger, but they accumulate throughout the housing delivery process.

That is where HUD’s two demonstration programs intersect with the broader conversation about housing affordability.

One program seeks to determine whether advanced manufacturing technologies can improve production efficiency. The other seeks to determine whether technology can improve approval efficiency. Both focus on throughput, cycle time, and productivity.

The question now is whether they become one of an on-again-off-again series of demonstrations or, in fact, establish a real trailhead.

Pilot projects alone cannot transform an industry. Operation Breakthrough ultimately showed that. They move beyond talk to action. But sustainable change – and the dynamic, repeatable, resilient outcomes we so sorely need – require that builders, manufacturers, capital providers, regulators, policymakers, and local governments remain committed long after the demonstration phase ends.

Talk can identify the problem. Action can fund a pilot.

Outcomes require durable systems, aligned incentives and long-term commitment. We’ll know them when we see them.

This post was originally published on here. 

For Gary Mercer Sr., achieving high placement on the RealTrends Verified annual rankings is less about chasing a specific number and more about a lifetime commitment to consistency.

The results, however, speak for themselves. As an individual agent, Mercer reported $167.35 million in transaction volume across 241 sides for 2025.

That performance placed him at No. 19 nationally among individual agents for sides and secured the No. 1 ranking in Pennsylvania for both sides and volume .

His team — LPT Realty-affiliated Gary Mercer Team — reported $264 million in volume across 431 sides. That was good enough for a No. 3 volume and No. 5 sides rank among mega teams in Pennsylvania, with respective national ranks of No. 55 and No. 72.

When asked about the figures, Mercer characterized them as a steady continuation of the team’s long-standing performance standard.

“I would say it was, for us, an average year post-COVID,” Mercer told HousingWire. “I mean, we have done over 500 transactions in the past. I think consistency in the approach and time on task, doing the things that work and sticking with that has been key. What we find is if we’re sticking to the basics, training and teaching and having the agents follow that, it doesn’t matter whether it’s an up market or a down market.

“That’s going to help you survive and do well no matter the market.”

The Gary Mercer Team — founded in 1990 — operates in a West Chester market characterized by low inventory, which Mercer notes has “artificially kept prices high.”

“We work with the whole gamut [of home price points],” Mercer said. “We do have a luxury team. We have a new construction team. We pretty much cover all elements and even do a little subdivision and flips and some new construction ourselves. So we’re staying active.”

Benefits of the team model

Mercer began his real estate career in 1987 and has long been an advocate for the team structure in real estate.

After nearly 30 years with an independent company — which later became Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Fox and Roach — and a decade with Keller Williams, he moved the team to LPT Realty in May 2025.

He cited LPT’s support for team growth and its alignment with his values as key factors in the decision.

“I was an advocate and have been a supporter of teams and a believer that teams, early on, [are] the wave of the future in real estate,” Mercer said. “The LPT system really supports teams, team growth and your individual definition of success, which align with our values and principles.

“That’s why we changed companies and why we’re a hub for them in the Pennsylvania and greater Philadelphia marketplace.”

For agents looking to break into the industry or seeking a more sustainable career path, Mercer strongly advocates for the team environment as a pathway to stability and growth.

“I think for an individual agent, it’s really important for them to be aligned with successful people, and in my opinion, they get the best opportunity through a team situation,” he said. “That’s because a team will be able to generate leads to help them while they’re developing and cultivating their database for a long-term referral business.”

He elaborated on the practical advantages of the team model, noting that it can ease burdens that often overwhelm solo practitioners.

“A team model typically provides tools and systems that take the non-productive work off of an agent, so that they can focus on what they do best,” said Mercer. “That should be meeting with clients, working with buyers and getting listings, so that they can create a consistent business.

“The whole system just helps them create a more linear path to success — but individual agents can do it too. It’s just a lot harder.”

Embracing technology with pragmatism

Regarding technology, the team uses a full stack of systems including Follow Up Boss and Slack for team communication.

Mercer said he and his team are employing artificial intelligence and learning its applications as they go. However, he emphasized a disciplined approach to innovation.

“I would say that we’re adaptive to things that are current to the market that are working, but we don’t chase shiny objects,” Mercer said.

As the real estate industry continues to evolve with new technologies and market dynamics, Mercer’s formula remains rooted in fundamentals; stick to proven systems, invest in training and allow team members to focus personal connections that generate the greatest value.

This post was originally published on here. 

Fathom Holdings Inc. told its agents that its pending sale to Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. is intended to create an “Everything Home Ecosystem” that keeps real estate agents at the center of an expanded homeownership services platform, according to an internal email filed Monday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Filed June 22 under SEC Rule 425, the email was sent to Fathom’s agents after the company announced it had signed a definitive agreement to be acquired by Bed Bath & Beyond. The message emphasized that the deal remains subject to closing conditions, including shareholder approval and may not close on the expected timeline or at all.

The company addressed agent concerns about being notified only at the time of the public announcement. As a publicly traded firm, Fathom said it was required to keep details of the proposed transaction confidential until it was announced through “appropriate regulatory channels,” adding that early disclosure could have violated securities laws and jeopardized the deal.

The communication positions the transaction as part of a longer-term strategy to move beyond a single-transaction model and extend the company’s relationship with consumers over the full life cycle of homeownership. Fathom framed the Bed Bath & Beyond combination as a way to build an “end-to-end homeownership experience” that keeps agents in the middle of the relationship rather than limiting their role to intermittent purchase and sale events.

According to the email, the planned “Everything Home Ecosystem” would rest on three pillars:

• Omni-channel retail: Home furnishings, décor, storage, organization, kitchen, bath and outdoor living products.
• Protection and finance: Mortgage solutions, home equity lines of credit, home warranties, financial products and brokerage services.
• Home services and renovation: Maintenance, repair, installation, flooring, cabinets, closets, storage solutions and other home improvement services.

The company said these integrated offerings are intended to keep homeowners engaged with the ecosystem long after closing while giving agents more structured ways to remain relevant to past clients. For housing professionals, the strategy underscores a broader industry shift toward cross-selling financial services, home services and retail products around a home transaction.

Fathom’s plan, if the transaction is completed, would tie its brokerage and finance operations to Bed Bath & Beyond’s consumer brand and home-related retail footprint.

This article was generated using HousingWire Automation and reviewed by a HousingWire editor before publication.

This post was originally published on here. 

In 2020, amid a worldwide pandemic, I launched a new business called DOORA, which was a combination interior design firm and furniture gallery that morphed into a vertically integrated real estate company. The concept centered on turning houses into homes and owning the various stages of that process.

This is similar to the angle Better Homes and Gardens has been working for decades — bringing in its consumer-facing media brand and combining it with real estate.

I was reminded of my time at DOORA when I heard the news about Bed Bath & Beyond’s acquisition of Fathom Holdings last week. Does this signal a new acquisition model for the real estate industry and, if so, who’ll benefit?

I’m a believer in this model, not just because it makes shopping for cool closing gifts easier but because of the big-picture implications for both agents and consumers.

Opening the door on a curious M&A deal

The acquisition probably took many by surprise, and on the surface, the retail-meets-brokerage model reads as unusual. But the deeper industry impact is less about novelty and more about direction. 

Ever since the advent of HGTV-style home shows and reality-TV real estate, the home has been becoming a branded consumer ecosystem. 

Just as I believed when I started DOORA, housing, design and retail don’t have to sit in separate lanes. They’re just sold that way. To me, the integration of a real estate business and a home goods retailer makes intuitive sense.

Consumer engagement solves the follow-up problem

The strongest aspect of the deal, to my mind, is the shift from transactional real estate to continuous consumer engagement. Instead of communicating only during a purchase or sale, agents have the opportunity — and the excuse — to reach out on a regular basis.

Once the homeowner becomes part of a brand ecosystem like the one Bed Bath & Beyond and Fathom are building, the opportunity extends far beyond the closing table to furnishings, design services, upgrades, (re)financing and repeat lifecycle engagement. Instead of a one-time commission, the home becomes the foundation of an ongoing relationship.

For a company like Bed Bath & Beyond, the logic extends beyond diversification, offering access to a targeted audience focused on filling and maintaining a home across decades. Real estate brokerages and mortgage platforms sit on one of the most valuable, high-intent datasets in consumer commerce. The portals already know this and now retailers are catching up.

People browsing homes are signaling major life transitions like moves, upgrades, relocations and wealth shifts. Owning that moment creates leverage that traditional retail has never fully captured. Now it can be captured at unprecedented scale.

What happens when brokerage becomes a brand extension of retail?

Now, extend that logic far enough, and the brokerage looks less like a standalone service business and more like a distribution channel for lifestyle commerce.

That raises the interesting question: Will real estate companies become retailers, or will retailers become real estate platforms?

Brands like Restoration Hardware, Anthropologie and Urban Outfitters have already blurred into home ecosystems without owning the real estate transaction. They influence taste, furnishings and identity the moment someone moves.

The missing piece has always been proximity to the transaction itself. That gap hints at a future where the emotional and financial sides of homeownership are no longer separated by industry lines but brought together through brand alignment.

Could we see an upscale brand like Restoration Hardware buy Douglas Elliman or The Agency buy Nordstrom’s? Could we see Living Spaces or Ashley Furniture buy EXIT Realty?

Restoration Hardware in particular has restaurants and stores. They have access to staging furniture from their outlet, and could sell the properties furnished. They even know how long I’ve owned the furniture in my current house (12 years, in some cases), which tells them that it’s either time for me to move or buy new furniture.

The RH catalogue is sent to my home every quarter. Why not display properties for sale around the world, staged with RH fixtures and furnishings?

And you have to admit, the RH logo would look killer on a For Sale sign.

There’s a reason this idea keeps resurfacing in different forms: it works, at least in theory, because the consumer experience already behaves this way. Someone buys a home, then enters a multi-year spending cycle tied to that decision. Furniture, renovation, design, services, financing — all of it clusters around the original transaction.

Vertical integration is simply an attempt to stop seeing those as separate industries, adding cohesiveness to proximity.

I’d love to sit down with Bed Bath & Beyond’s Marcus Lemonis to get more of his perspective. Until that happens (Marcus, give me a call!), we’ll have to speculate on his strategy and wait to see how the integration gets implemented.

Whether this specific acquisition becomes a blueprint or an outlier, it’s clear that real estate is no longer just a service industry. It is becoming a consumer brand environment, where trust, data and lifestyle matter just as much as listings and commissions.

Troy Palmquist is executive-level growth expert specializing in residential real estate.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of HousingWire’s editorial department and its owners.

To contact the editor responsible for this piece: tracey@hwmedia.com

This post was originally published on here. 

Executives at United Wholesale Mortgage (UWM) and Two Harbors Investment Corp. (TWO) raised the heat in an email exchange during their latest round of deal negotiations.

TWO mentioned that UWM could be trying to frustrate competitor CrossCountry Mortgage (CCM) in its efforts to acquire Two Harbors, while UWM alleged that TWO executives are prioritizing their own compensation in detriment of shareholders. The email exchange — included in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) — were between Bill Greenberg, president and CEO of Two Harbors, and Mat Ishbia, chairman and CEO of UWM.

A shareholder meeting to vote on the proposed CCM deal is scheduled for June 23, after being postponed once from May 28 and a second time from June 11. The email exchange shows that 73% of shareholders have submitted a vote, with 54% of them opposing the CCM merger — but since the information was disclosed June 15, it may have changed.

“Assuming these numbers are accurate, the disclosure suggests that Two might lack the shareholder votes needed to approve the CCM proposal,” analysts at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods (KBW) wrote on Monday.

Two Harbors, a New York-based real estate investment trust, continues to recommend that shareholders vote in favor of its existing agreement with CCM for $12 per share in cash, plus a stub dividend.

“TWO stockholders face a consequential choice at TWO’s Special Meeting: the certainty of $12.00 per share in cash under the CCM transaction or the potential significant decline in the value of TWO common stock if the transaction is not approved – with no actionable alternative on the table,” the company told shareholders in a letter on Monday. 

TWO stocks were trading at $12.28 on Monday afternoon, down 0.32%. 

In response, UWM released a statement a few hours later: “It is ironic that the Two Board bemoans the decline of its stock price, when they have a path to maximizing value for all TWO stockholders: true engagement with UWMC,” the statement read. 

UWM’s most recent offer was $12.50 per share in cash, or if a stockholder chooses, 2.3328 shares of UWMC stock.

‘Play for the media’

According to the SEC filings, on June 8, Greenberg invited Ishbia to New York to discuss an all-cash acquisition following a waiver of CCM’s non-solicitation provisions. Ishbia said he could not fly to New York and instead invited Greenberg to Pontiac, Michigan, or propose an online meeting later in the week.

Greenberg reminded him of the June 12 waiver deadline, but Ishbia made himself available only one day before it.

According to Two Harbors, during a June 11 call, Ishbia said he was not sure any proposal would be forthcoming and that he needed additional information about TWO’s financials. Greenberg said nothing material had changed and provided updates on spread performance, MSR values and prepayment speeds during the quarter.

Following the meeting, Ishbia wrote that UWM needed to understand “why” and how TWO wanted the offer adjusted, raising concerns that executive postures were tied to their roles.

“The fact that your shareholders can elect stock doesn’t make it worse,” Ishbia wrote. “I know you personally get paid out differently if stock is a component of the deal, but once again, that isn’t a good reason to not approve that deal.”

Ishbia offered to modify the exchange rate, default to cash rather than stock, or provide a “higher of” structure for “sleepy” shareholders, noting that UWM’s stock was lower. He blamed interest rates and the war in Iran. He also said concerns about whether UWM could fund an all-cash deal were “ridiculous and obviously just play for the media.”

Rejecting accusations

Greenberg responded by email, saying that he and Steve Kasnet — an independent director and chairman of the Two Harbors board — rejected accusations of “self-dealing” and suggestions they were focused on their own pay.

“Our Board’s ask for all-cash consideration is based on its fiduciary duties to all TWO stockholders — including those who would receive default consideration worth less than 50% of the headline price,” Greenberg wrote.

Based on the June 12 closing price of UWMC Class A common stock of $2.38 per share, the default stock consideration implied a value of approximately $5.55 per share — less than half of the $12.50 cash election, Two Harbors said.

In response, Ishbia said that if Two shareholders wanted $12 in cash for their stock, they could call their broker and sell it, noting the shares had been trading well above $12 for six weeks. He said executives reached out because 73% of shareholders had voted, but 54% were against the deal, and the meeting was adjourned. “Are you a Chairman or a Dictator?” Ishbia wrote of Kasnet.

Ishbia also said he was “summoned to go to NYC” and added: “In all due respect, who the heck do you think you are?” He also said TWO’s lawyers threatened UWM with violations of nondisclosure agreements by having consulting firm Okapi Partners contact shareholders.

Greenberg ended communications by saying that if UWM had a different proposal with no stock component, it should present it and the board would consider it.

“If you are prepared to submit a proposal that addresses the Board’s stated concerns, we encourage you to do so. If you have a different proposal to present, present it — the Board will consider it. If the goal is to frustrate a competitor’s transaction, that is unfortunate but we understand that as well.”

This post was originally published on here. 

Villager Realty, an independent Chicago-area brokerage founded in 1991, has joined REMAX Premier on Chicago’s North Shore, moving its roster of agents into the REMAX network.

The transition, led by broker-owner Dan Crouch, marks a return to the REMAX brand after the brokerage previously operated as a REMAX office before becoming independent.

Crouch said the decision was driven by a desire to provide agents with additional technology, training and brand resources that were difficult to offer as an independent brokerage.

“When we were independent, there were limits to what I could provide,” said Crouch. “I felt responsible for my agents and their success, and I knew we needed the right tools, education and brand support to move forward.”

According to the company, all of Villager Realty’s active agents joined REMAX as part of the transition.

“The fact that he didn’t lose an agent speaks volumes,” said Bobbie Fisher, a REMAX Premier recruiter who assisted with the move. “They’re independent agents, but they’re incredibly loyal, and that kind of trust is rare.”

REMAX Premier reported nearly $414 million in 2025 volume across 1,105 transaction sides to RealTrends Verified.

Looking ahead, Crouch said he plans to focus on expanding his own business, developing a team structure and supporting agents as they transition into the REMAX network.

This article was generated using HousingWire Automation and reviewed by a HousingWire editor before publication.

This post was originally published on here. 

Earlier this month Mauricio Umansky’s firm The Agency made a splash in New York when it announced the affiliation of a 1,200 agent strong former Christie’s International Real Estate affiliate and the creation of The Agency One Rock. 

While the firm’s strong agent count and 26 offices spread across New York City, Westchester County, the Hudson Valley and New Jersey, look like a massive get on paper, agents at the former Christie’s International Real Estate affiliate say things are far more complicated. 

In early January 2026, Stephen Braconi, an agent who was brokered by the former affiliate until late 2025, filed a lawsuit against the firm, its New Jersey operation and Darlene Bandazian, its broker of record, alleging that the firm left commissions that were owed unpaid and accusing the firm of unfair charges. The suit was filed in a Bergen County-based New Jersey Superior County Court. 

In the complaint, Braconi claimed that the company has failed to pay him over $145,000 in commissions related to deals that closed in late 2025. Additionally, he claims that this comes after a provision in his independent contractor agreement with the firm stipulates that the firm will pay its agents within 10 days of receiving funds from a closed deal.

Unfair and fake fees charged?

In an amended complaint filed in April, Braconi claimed the firm had charged him over $75,000 in unfair and fake fees including technology and desk fees. The amended complaint also removed most of the claims of unpaid commissions, but it did include allegations of wrongfully reduced commission splits and withholding over $17,000 in commissions on a closed deal. Additionally, the amended complaint also claimed that the brokerage failed to pay Braconi in a timely fashion and did not provide him with “a complete and comprehensive written explanation” of its alleged delays in payment. 

The brokerage filed a counterclaim against Braconi in March, alleging that he owed the brokerage nearly $40,000 in unpaid fees and that it had actually overpaid Braconi for several months at the end of last year after he reached an annual gross commission income of $1.35 million, which the firm said triggers a reduction in commission splits. The counterclaim also alleges that Braconi violated non-solicitation terms in his contract after he left the brokerage in late 2025. 

The court has rejected Braconi’s request for a temporary restraining order against the firm, which was seeking to freeze the firm’s funds. Oral arguments for the defendants’ motion to dismiss the lawsuit are scheduled to take place this coming Thursday. 

The Agency One Rock did not respond to HousingWire’s request regarding Braconi’s allegations. 

Payment issues have been pervasive, says one industry site

In addition to this lawsuit, The Real Deal published a report last week stating that agents at the firm claim that payment issues at the brokerage have been pervasive for years, with some agents saying they have waited months to be paid for deals. They claim that this violates regulations from New Jersey’s Department of Banking and Insurance that generally require brokers to pay agents within 10 business days of receiving a commission.

Earlier this month, Christie’s International Real Estate terminated its franchise agreement with this New York and Northern New Jersey affiliate. At the time, a spokesperson for the brand told HousingWire in an emailed statement that the “decision was not made lightly.” 

“However, it was ultimately in the best interests of the Christie’s International Real Estate brand and our global affiliate network,” the statement read. “Christie’s International Real Estate remains fully committed to the New York and Northern New Jersey markets, and we look forward to continuing to build and strengthen the brand in these markets.”

In a statement sent on Monday, a spokesperson told HousingWire the decision to terminate the licensing agreement was made in order to “protect the integrity of the Christie’s International Real Estate brand.”

“We recognize that many real estate professionals in New York and New Jersey have built successful businesses under our banner and remain deeply committed to it,” the spokesperson added. “We have tremendous respect for these agents, and we are focused on ensuring they will have a strong platform to continue growing their business with Christie’s International Real Estate in these markets.”

This post was originally published on here. 

For more than a decade, housing industry policymakers, researchers and other stakeholders have worked to address a persistent housing shortage in the U.S. Still, new demographic and market trends suggest the housing landscape may look markedly different in the years ahead, according to a new Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) white paper released Monday.

The paper, “Implications of a Persistent Slowing in Housing Demand,” examines how shifts in population dynamics, construction trends and affordability pressures are reshaping the balance between housing supply and demand.

“Over the past several years, growth in housing demand has slowed as new housing supply has entered the market in many regions,” said Mike Fratantoni, MBA‘s senior vice president and chief economist who co-authored the paper.

“While affordability challenges remain significant, MBA’s research highlights the importance of looking beyond today’s market conditions to understand the long-term forces shaping housing demand. These findings can help industry participants and policymakers better prepare for future changes in housing and mortgage market dynamics.”

Along with Fratantoni, the report is authored by Joel Kan, MBA’s vice president and deputy chief economist; Judie Ricks, MBA’s associate vice president of commercial real estate research; and Edward Seiler, MBA’s associate vice president of housing economics and executive director of the Research Institute for Housing America.

The paper found that after the financial crisis of the late 2000s, strong millennial household formation drove housing demand that outpaced new construction. This contributed to rising home prices and rents, pushing up estimates of a national housing shortfall that range from 1.5 million to 7.3 million units.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, historically low mortgage rates further accelerated demand, pushing home prices and rents higher even as builders ramped up construction, particularly in multifamily housing and in markets in the South and West.

By 2025, the report stated, conditions began to rebalance as demand cooled and newly built housing came to market. Vacancy rates increased, rent growth slowed and for-sale inventory expanded, especially in Sun Belt markets.

The paper also notes that housing affordability, while still strained in many areas, has recently improved as income growth has outpaced gains in home prices and rents.

Looking ahead, MBA researchers warn that demographic trends — including an aging population, lower fertility rates, smaller younger adult cohorts and reduced immigration — are likely to slow household formation over the next decade.

At the same time, housing supply is expected to rise gradually as aging baby boomers transfer homes to younger generations.

If construction remains elevated while household formation slows, the report cautions that supply growth could outpace demand in some markets, putting downward pressure on home prices.

The findings also carry implications for the mortgage industry, including potential effects on origination volumes, borrower equity accumulation and overall credit performance.

This article was generated using HousingWire Automation and reviewed by a HousingWire editor before publication. 

This post was originally published on here. 

At last month’s Reverse Mastermind Summit in Knoxville, Tennessee, I had the opportunity to speak about one of the most important challenges facing our profession: the public perception of reverse mortgages and the industry that serves older homeowners.

My message was intentionally optimistic. Yes, we have a perception problem, but perception is not permanent. It changes when professionals consistently demonstrate competence, transparency and integrity.

Changing the narrative

The first step is surprisingly simple: tell better stories. Every reverse mortgage represents a homeowner who gained financial flexibility, remained independent, eliminated a burdensome mortgage payment or moved closer to family. Yet the industry rarely celebrates these successes. Instead, misinformation fills the void. We should be proud of the lives we improve and share those stories responsibly.

The industry must also be willing to hold itself accountable. Misleading advertisements that promise “free money” or imply that borrowers never repay the loan may generate short-term leads, but they damage long-term credibility. Public trust is built when professionals explain both the benefits and the responsibilities of a Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM) with equal measures of honesty.

Education is equally important. Too many originators rely on proposal packages and disclosures to explain the product, even though those documents were designed for compliance rather than understanding. Reverse mortgages should be explained through conversations, illustrations and thoughtful planning, not by handing borrowers a stack of paperwork.

Improved perception also requires investing in the future. The industry needs younger loan originators, better training programs and experienced professionals willing to mentor the next generation. Reverse mortgages are no longer products of last resort — they are sophisticated retirement planning tools that deserve knowledgeable advocates.

Maybe most importantly, we must have honest conversations. Sometimes the right advice is a reverse mortgage. Sometimes it is downsizing, restructuring finances or exploring another solution entirely. Clients remember professionals who solve problems, not those who simply sell products.

Educate before you persuade

The industry should also confidently challenge misinformation while speaking truthfully about competing products. A reverse mortgage should never be positioned as the only answer, but it should be presented as one of the safest and most flexible ways for many older homeowners to access their housing wealth.

Compared with products that require monthly payments, can freeze credit lines or expose retirees to unnecessary risk, the HECM often provides protections that are unmatched in retirement finance.

Finally, public perception improves when professionals genuinely believe in the product themselves. If you have never studied how a reverse mortgage could fit into your own retirement plan, it is difficult to speak with authentic conviction. Confidence comes from understanding, and understanding creates trust.

The reverse mortgage industry does not need a better marketing slogan. It needs thousands of professionals who educate before they persuade, tell real success stories, reject deceptive practices and put the long-term interests of homeowners first.

If each of us commits to doing just one of those things better this year, we will improve public perception and improve the lives of the families we serve.

This post was originally published on here. 

In the first half of this two-part topic, I described the piecemeal nature of private hazard insurance policies, state-sponsored “last resort” programs, the National Flood Insurance Program, and federal aid through emergency declarations. This system is reactive, slow and difficult to navigate for families and businesses seeking help to recover from catastrophic events.

Beyond systemic gaps, households and businesses face swiftly rising insurance costs, and some cannot secure coverage at any price.

National surveys of homebuilders and resale agents confirm that concerns about the availability and cost of hazard insurance deter at least some buyers from purchasing homes.

Envisioning a new path: a national insurance umbrella

The escalating frequency, severity and geographic spread of disaster-driven losses in the U.S. require a bolder, more holistic approach. I’m not an insurance expert, yet my research uncovered a handful of multinational pooled-risk programs that have provided hazard coverage for 10-plus years. These successful programs share characteristics that should be incorporated into a new U.S. program:

Central Leadership:

I propose creating a government-sponsored entity (GSE) with a mandate to maintain access to hazard insurance at a reasonable cost. A steady supply of competitively priced hazard insurance will keep policy costs more affordable for families and businesses. This approach parallels the roles of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which operate under mandates to ensure liquidity in mortgage capital, enabling lenders to provide mortgages. They indirectly influence the 30-year mortgage rate by supporting a competitive supply.

National Risk Pool:

A larger, geographically diverse risk pool statistically improves long-term predictability (known as the law of large numbers) and reduces the financial costs of risk for individual households and businesses.

Single, inclusive policies:

The national risk pool should cover the full range of disasters, eliminating the need for separate flood policies. According to Flood Smart, 99% of U.S. counties have experienced flooding since 1996, yet only 4% of homeowners carry flood insurance. A single policy will eliminate coverage gaps and disputes over which policy must pay for damage.

Proactive planning and recovery:

Analyzing the types, frequency, and severity of disasters by region or state supports planning for initial relief, recovery, reconstruction, and mitigation plans.

Metric-driven payouts:

Successful international programs release relief and recovery funds based on observable, measurable events, such as centimeters of rainfall, wind speeds, earthquake magnitudes, and named tropical storms. These predetermined and documented payout events translate to fast release of funds, without delays for insurance inspections or appraisals.

Mitigation incentives:

International pooled risk organizations have provided funding for housing improvements, livestock and seeds to supplement traditional crops, as well as for drainage in flood-prone areas. In the U.S., the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) offers grants for mitigation planning and activities that reduce the likelihood of flood damage. In March 2026, FEMA announced $1 billion in funding for mitigation focused on major infrastructure projects that support resilience and the adoption of hazard-resistant building codes.

Three international pooled risk programs demonstrate the benefits.

I researched three multinational consortia that help manage risk for 17 to 43 member countries. Participating governments purchase natural disaster coverage at a substantially lower price than they would without risk pooling. They set the event thresholds that trigger payments and the maximum payout, both of which affect policy costs.

Applying this approach to a single country should be easier, with risk pooling across all U.S. states and territories and the integration of flood risks into a cohesive hazard insurance program.

The three pooled risk programs described below rely on predetermined criteria to classify disasters. Global Information Systems (GIS), satellite monitoring, and remote sensors enable insurers to gather precise data on risks and disasters when structuring their programs. The monitoring also confirms events that trigger payouts, in contrast to the more subjective emergency-declaration process in the U.S.

• The Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility’s members include 19 Caribbean and 4 Central American governments, along with 11 utility companies. The facility was launched in 2007, with leadership from the World Bank and support from grants and contributions from larger countries. CCRIF provides parametric insurance to its members against cyclones, earthquakes, and excess rainfall. Read about CCRIF
• The African Risk Capacity (ARC) formed in 2012 includes the governments of 43 member countries, along with international organizations and the private sector. Drought leading to famine is a major concern, so funds are released when rainfall totals fall below predetermined thresholds. Funds can also be released to recover from weather-related and other disasters, fight epidemics, and improve local risk management by encouraging advance preparation. Read about ARC
• The Pacific Catastrophic Risk Insurance Company (PCRIC) pools premiums from 17 Pacific Island countries to respond to climate, weather, and seismic events. Launched in 2016 under the World Bank’s leadership, with initial contributions from Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States. Some participating countries are more vulnerable to drought, while others face tropical storm risks. Payments triggered by measurable parameters support timely responses and encourage sustainable development and recovery work. Watch a PCRIC video

What it it will take for change to happen

Implementing material changes to the fragmented U.S. hazard insurance and disaster recovery system will require strong leadership.

We can expect resistance from insurance companies that don’t want to answer to a new GSE. However, they will benefit from more predictable premium income and loss payouts across a national risk pool, supported by timely and accurate metrics from real-time satellite and sensor monitoring.

Some individuals and companies will argue that they don’t want to pay for weather, climate, or seismic risks elsewhere in the country.

However, no part of our country is immune to increasingly costly disasters, and the largest possible risk pool improves predictability and lowers recovery costs for everyone.

If you pay federal taxes and buy hazard insurance, you are already subsidizing the recovery of other households and businesses in the U.S.

This post was originally published on here. 

A federal appeals court on Friday blocked the Trump administration from immediately moving forward with plans to cut roughly two-thirds of the workforce at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), marking the latest setback for the government in a legal battle over the agency’s future.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit denied a request by the Department of Justice (DOJ) to allow layoffs to proceed while litigation continues over CFPB acting director Russell Vought’s efforts to dramatically reduce the agency’s staffing levels.

Instead, the court sent the case back to U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson to determine whether a preliminary injunction issued last year should be modified in light of the CFPB’s revised reduction-in-force plan and other developments. The appeals court also rejected the administration’s request to require Jackson to rule within 45 days.

The ruling leaves in place an injunction that has temporarily blocked large-scale CFPB layoffs while courts consider whether the agency can be significantly downsized without violating its statutory obligations.

The dispute stems from the Trump administration’s efforts to reshape the CFPB, which was created by Congress after the 2008 financial crisis to oversee consumer financial products and services.

Vought, who was named acting CFPB director in February 2025, has argued the bureau can meet its legal responsibilities with a smaller workforce, while employee groups and consumer advocates say the cuts would effectively dismantle the agency.

Shortly after taking the position, Vought moved to suspend most CFPB operations, closed its headquarters and said he would halt agency funding. In April 2025, the administration moved to dismiss roughly 90% of the workforce, prompting a court challenge that temporarily blocked the layoffs.

In August 2025, a federal appeals court panel allowed the reductions to proceed, resulting in about 1,500 dismissals.

The appeals court did not rule on the legality of the CFPB’s revised workforce reduction plan. Instead, it directed Jackson to consider the new proposal before the full appeals court continues its review of the case.

The D.C. Circuit retained jurisdiction over the appeal and instructed the parties to report back after the district court issues its decision.

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a ranking member of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, issued a statement on Saturday in reaction to the decision.

“Last night, the D.C. Circuit rejected the Trump Administration’s latest request to shut down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, refusing to lift the injunction that has prevented Russ Vought from carrying out his plan to eliminate the agency,” Warren’s statement said. “Courts will also have a full chance to review Vought’s most recent unlawful plan to sideline the CFPB by firing most of its remaining staff.”

“We’ll keep fighting for the agency that has returned more than $21 billion directly to Americans who were cheated or scammed by big banks and giant corporations,” Warren added.

This post was originally published on here. 

In 2026, over 80% of Side Real Estate’s partner companies qualified for the RealTrend Verified Rankings, up from 72% a year ago and roughly 51% in 2024. According to Side co-founder and CEO Guy Gal, this growth is no mere coincidence. 

“Side inherently has the benefit of getting to work with really great agents because that is our model — we help very productive agents and teams become their own company,” Gal said.

In 2024, Gal said he and the team at Side were surprised that only about half of their teams and agents made the RealTrend Verified Rankings, and they quickly made it a goal to one day have 100% of their partners make the rankings. 

“This progress has come from making sure that our agents focus all of their energy and effort on what matters most, which is how they market, how they come to the market, how they build out their team and how they work with clients and show up in their communities,” Gal said.

He believes Side agents and partners can focus more on these things because Side provides them with all of the back-end transaction management support, enabling them to spend more time and energy working with and serving their clients. 

“They can be more productive because they are not constrained by their capacity to meet all the opportunities that have already presented themselves.” Gal said. 

Stand outs from the rankings include the San Francisco-based enterprise team City Real Estate, which closed 469 transaction sides and over $1 billion in sales volume, earning it the No. 4 rank in the nation for sale volume on the RealTrends Verified agent rankings, as well as House Real Estate, a Sacramento-based mega team that closed over $380 million in sales volume spanning 417 transaction sides, earning it the No. 2 rank in California by transaction sides. 

Training their way to the top

Kylie James, Side’s senior director of partner success, added that the firm also works to foster the growth of its agents and partners through education and training. 

“We do over 10 live trainings each week that focus on different areas of a real estate company’s business,” James said. “It might be leveraging some of the tools Side provides or best practices around nurturing your sphere and how to create more business from that. These are really great times for Side to be a thought leader and show those best practices that folks should be implementing in their businesses.”

James added that Side’s managing brokers in each market regularly put on town hall events to ensure that partners and agents stay on top of forms, compliance and understand current local market conditions. 

On top of this, the firm also provides partner companies with a business strategist, who works to help them understand the resources or mentorship they have available to them as they work toward different goals. 

Success breeds success

As Side works toward its goal of having all partners qualify for the RealTrends Verified Rankings, Gal said the company is focusing on creating partnerships with well-established top-producing teams and independent brokerages interested in affiliating with Side. 

“Partnering with these top firms, teams and agents, creates this positive selection bias where the community starts to support itself through connections and relationships. Now most of our partnerships originate from referrals from our community,” Gal said. “Our partners and their brands are showing up in markets in really distinct and visible ways because they are different and not more of the same. This inspires other people around them to want to follow in their footsteps.” 

Gal said it is “pretty cool” to have grown the company to where it is today, largely through organic growth mechanisms

Local over corporate 

Today, however, while much of the rest of the real estate industry is focused on consolidation, Gal said he is confident the boutique, local, community-oriented nature of Side will help continue to fuel its organic growth. 

“For nearly a decade, we’ve been investing against the status quo of the industry, which is much more concerned with consolidating everything under a  small number of brands where everyone sort of looks, speaks, talks, pitches, approaches their marketing and their appointments similarly, which in effect commoditizes the agents,” Gal said. “Instead, we have always thought that if you’re going to commoditize anything in real estate, it should be the brokerage.” 

For Gal, the agents are what makes a company or a brand distinct because they are the ones that understand the texture and contours of the community better than anybody.

“Our agents are specialists and experts in their markets versus generalists, who may be well served by a one-size-fits-all approach,” Gal said. “But we want to see a future of real estate that is a lot more independent, a lot less consolidated, a lot more specialized and a lot more local and community-oriented than it is corporate and consolidated.” 

In the meantime, Gal acknowledged that the industry is in the midst of a massive wave of consolidation, but looking at past consolidations, he said this is often followed by a proliferation of boutique real estate firms, looking to differentiate themselves from the corporate behemoths.

“To the degree that the industry continues to try to bundle itself up into these weird Frankenstein corporations, we want to unbundle it into distinct, unique local companies that receive the support they need to scale, so they can focus on what they do better than anyone else and actually show up in the market as opposed to disappear into it,” Gal said.

This post was originally published on here. 

The headlines that landed this month read like a siren. Sharpest price drop in nine years. For a broker-owner scanning the morning news between agent calls and recruiting appointments, that kind of language can set the tone for the whole day, and not in a good way. But the data underneath those headlines tells a far more useful story, and the leaders who read it correctly will be the ones who position their businesses to win the rest of the year.

According to the Realtor.com May 2026 Monthly Housing Trends Report, the national median list price fell 2.4% year over year to $429,500, the steepest annual decline since the company began tracking the figure in 2017. Median price per square foot dropped 2.5%, a record annual decline, and fell in 35 of the 50 largest metros. On its face, that looks like a market losing altitude.

Look closer, and you see something else entirely. This is not a plane falling out of the sky. It is a plane being brought in for a smooth landing.

The tell is in what did not happen

The most important number in the report is not the price drop. It is the price cut that never came. The share of listings with a price reduction fell to 17.5%, down from 19.1% a year earlier. In a genuinely distressed market, the pattern runs the other way: sellers list high, reality sets in and a wave of reductions follows. As Realtor.com senior economist Jake Krimmel put it, in a crashing market sellers list optimistically and get forced to cut.

What happened in May was the opposite. Sellers priced to sell rather than pricing to test the market. They did their homework before the listing went live, not after it sat for 40 days. That is the behavior of a disciplined market, not a collapsing one.

And buyers rewarded that discipline. Pending home sales rose 4.3% year over year, the sixth straight month of gains, while new listings hit 474,976, the highest May level since 2022, fueling the most active spring market in four years. Chief economist Danielle Hale summed it up well, noting that six months of sellers adjusting their expectations have been met by buyers stepping back in.

So, the real picture is a market exhaling after years of holding its breath. Prices are softening, supply is loosening, and demand is quietly returning. For executives, that combination is not a threat. It is a window.

What it means for your business

A normalizing market rewards competence in a way that a frenzy never does. When homes sold themselves in a weekend, pricing skill was optional and order-takers thrived. That era is over. The agents and teams who win now will be the ones who can sit at a kitchen table, walk a seller through the data and guide them to a number that actually moves the home. That is a coachable, buildable skill, and it is where smart leaders should be investing right now. Here are the moves that matter.

First, have your agents rebuild their listing conversations around pricing discipline. The data has handed you the most persuasive talking point of the year: sellers who price right from the start are selling and those who chase the market down are not. Equip every professional in your organization to tell that story with current numbers, not gut feel. What we teach our coaching clients is simple. The comparative market analysis is no longer a formality your agents can breeze past on the way to the listing agreement. It is the listing agreement.

Second, retrain the price-reduction conversation before you need it. The brokerages that struggle this year will be the ones still having awkward, defensive price-cut talks in week six. Get ahead of it. Coach your team to set pricing expectations during the listing appointment, with a clear, pre-agreed plan for what happens if the market does not respond. A seller who understands the plan on day one does not panic on day thirty.

Third, build capacity for volume, not just margin. Demand is returning and inventory is rising at the same time. That is the recipe for transaction growth, and transaction growth is a staffingand systems question as much as a sales one. Are your lead routing, your transaction coordination, and your onboarding ready to handle more deals at a moment when many competitors are still bracing for a downturn the data does not support?

Fourth, treat this as a recruiting and retention moment. A market that rewards skill is also a market that reshuffles talent. The professionals who coasted on easy conditions will start to feel the squeeze, and the ones who want to get better will start looking for a brokerage that can actually help them do it. That is your opening. The leader who offers real training, real coaching and a clear plan for winning in this market becomes a magnet for the agents worth having, and a place the best ones have no reason to leave. Invest in your people now, while your competitors are still bracing for a downturn the data does not support.

Fifth, manage the narrative inside your own walls. Your agents are reading the same unsettling headlines your clients are. Left unaddressed, sharpest drop in nine years becomes a confidence problem that shows up in every listing appointment. The most valuable thing a leader can do this month is translate the data for the team. This is normalization, not freefall, and a normalizing market is exactly where skilled professionals separate themselves from the pack.

The opportunity in the recalibration

There is a reason markets like this tend to reshuffle the leaderboard. When conditions are easy, the gap between the great and the average disappears. When conditions demand skill, that gap reopens, and the professionals who invested in their craft step into the space the order-takers leave behind.

The May report is, at its core, a story about expectations meeting reality and a market finding its footing. Sellers are getting realistic. Buyers are responding. The organizations that thrive will be the ones whose leaders saw past the headline, read the data, and built their people to meet the moment.

Prices came down. For the broker-owner who is paying attention, opportunity went up.

Darryl Davis, CSP, is a nationally recognized real estate speaker, bestselling author, and coach with more than 40 years in the industry. He helps real estate professionals and the leaders who build them create careers, and lives, worth smiling about. Learn more at darrylspeaks.com.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of HousingWire’s editorial department and its owners.

To contact the editor responsible for this piece: tracey@hwmedia.com

This post was originally published on here. 

Georgia residential land developers succeeded this year at convincing lawmakers that the permitting timeline needed to be faster and more predictable to dent the state’s growing housing imbalances.

Fresh off that win, they are now plotting their next legislative move. The Georgia Residential Land Development Council is targeting final plat approval — aiming to shorten timelines, lower expenses and reduce wait-time financial risks to bend housing cost curves toward more affordable levels.

In contrast with Florida and Texas, Georgia had done little to address housing supply and affordability. Permitting reform was the first significant legislation to pass.

“The elephant in the room we are not tackling is zoning and land use,” Jay Knight, a GRLDC co-founder, told HousingWire TBD. “It’s a conversation that needs to be had, but it’s going to be a really long battle … and it becomes a philosophical argument. So far, we’ve been able to confine our arguments to math and logic.”

Defining the math

Knight uses his own company, Templar Development, as an example. After putting in roads, curbs and other infrastructure, the company’s monthly interest expense runs at a rate of $70,000, after submitting its plat in April.

Delays in the approval process add to that monthly baseline cost, and push the end price higher. The National Association of Home Builders has documented how rising regulatory costs increase home prices, making housing less affordable.

In a study released this month, the association found regulatory costs have risen 40% in five years. Regulations at all government levels added an average of $131,734 to a new single-family home’s cost. That represented 26.4% of the $499,500 average sales price of a home in January.

“This study illustrates how excessive regulation is deepening the nation’s housing affordability crisis and making it harder for builders to deliver the affordable, attainable housing that our nation sorely needs,” said Bill Owens, NAHB chairman and Ohio home builder, in a statement.

The GRLDC’s Knight cited studies showing that for every $1,000 increase in cost, 4,100 Georgians are priced out of buying a home.

Building “shot clocks”

The rising cost of permitting drew more attention during the COVID-19 pandemic as home prices and construction costs skyrocketed. Only a handful of states have addressed the permitting side of the equation: Texas, Florida, California, North Carolina and Washington. With the exception of North Carolina, the others also passed zoning reforms that preempt local government authority, allowing density increases and residential uses “by right” in commercial zones.

Most permit shot clocks address the front end of the process. That is where Knight and his organization started. Knight said the permitting process in Georgia dropped from about a year to 10 weeks.

“That’s very consequential,” he said.

His group is now working the back end with final plat review. One challenge: planning officials restart the existing 30-day statutory review clock, and that can repeat nearly without end.

Knight said the proposal calls for 45 days to complete a review. A resubmittal review would drop to 20 days. A third submittal would drop further to 14 days.

All subsequent reviews must work from the initial comments – no new comments allowed, Knight said. Those first comments must also be limited to local codes.

“We were getting turned down for font sizes, page numbering and all kinds of stuff,” Knight said.

The GRLDC points to a model in Texas for putting hard deadlines on final plat review and approval.

Texas stepped up

The Lone Star State set one of the country’s strictest deadlines for residential plat approvals — and built automatic approval into the law as the penalty for missing it.

Its legislature acted in 2019 and gave municipalities 30 calendar days to approve, conditionally approve, or deny a residential plat. Miss the deadline, and the plat is automatically deemed approved under state law.

The legislature sharpened the law in 2023. Cities can no longer pad application requirements with studies or documents not explicitly authorized by state statute. The 30-day clock starts only when a complete application is filed — but cities cannot require applicants to waive that deadline under any circumstances.

Once a city issues a denial or conditional approval, the developer responds in writing. The city then has just 15 days to act on the resubmittal. Fail to meet that window, and the plat is deemed approved again.

If a city still refuses to issue approval after missing either deadline, developers have a legal remedy. They can obtain a certificate of no action, which carries the same legal force as a formal approval. Courts have upheld actions to compel uncooperative officials to produce that certificate.

Texas lawmakers took the permit-to-plat shot-clock rules even further in 2025.

Developers can now hire licensed third-party professionals to review plats when a city stalls. That option gives applicants a parallel track entirely outside the municipal review process.

The cost of waiting

Research suggests hard deadlines deliver results beyond the permit office. A 2026 study by Princeton economist Evan Soltas and MIT economist Jonathan Gruber found developers pay a 50% premium for land with pre-approved permits in Los Angeles, one of the most expensive housing markets in the country.

Researchers found that L.A.’s permitting timelines are roughly twice as long as those in Fort Worth.

The researchers estimated that reducing approval timelines to Texas-level speeds could cut development costs equivalent to 21% of construction costs. Texas is far from immune to affordability pressures. Home prices there have climbed sharply since the pandemic.

But its streamlined approval process has kept it among the more accessible large-state markets in the country, and its shot-clock framework is now the model that Georgia developers want to replicate.

This post was originally published on here. 

Allegiant Reverse Services is celebrating its 10th anniversary in the reverse mortgage industry. Founded during a period of market uncertainty, the company has expanded its title and settlement operations to serve clients in 48 states, completed 130,000-plus reverse mortgage transactions and built a tenured, high-retention workforce.

As the reverse mortgage industry continues to evolve through changing regulations and needs, as well as new technologies, the company says the importance of trust and experienced professionals remains unchanged.

HousingWire‘s Reverse Mortgage Daily recently spoke with Rob Awalt, founder and president of Allegiant Reverse Services about the company’s first decade of business, the biggest changes he’s witnessed in the reverse mortgage market and what he’s looking ahead to in the next decade.

Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity

Sarah Wolak: Given that Allegiant has been around 10 years, that means it was founded during a period of significant disruption in the reverse mortgage industry. What were the beginning stages of building the company and what is it like today?

Rob Awalt: Like any new venture, there’s a lot of energy and excitement about doing something new, and there’s also a lot of waking up at 2 o’clock in the morning.

There was a lot of disruption in the market. The confidence we had moving forward came from having earned our keep over many years at a previous company, building relationships in the industry and a track record of closing a lot of transactions with people who trusted us.

That gave us confidence that we could do it again. The difficult part was that even though the market was in tough shape, we were closing about one-third of all the business nationwide at that time — maybe 30% of the national market. Getting up to speed and building capacity became one of our biggest challenges because people wanted to continue doing business with us at the new company right away, and that created its own concerns and problems.

Wolak: Why was that?

Awalt: We weren’t fully set up yet. When you do a startup, you’re done with what you were doing on a Friday, and on Monday you’re starting a new company — it takes time to establish systems, hire people and secure licenses.

People were asking when they could start opening orders and we were still in the initial phases, beta testing and getting everything in place. We didn’t leave our jobs, spend six months building a company and then launch. We had an idea, three or four of us started it, and then we began adding people. So those relationships and customers started calling early and often, asking when they could start doing business. That gave us confidence we were going to be OK. We just had to build our capacity and we were able to do that.

Like any startup, people were doing things they wouldn’t be doing six months later. They were setting up printers, copiers and fax lines. It was a true small company startup and it grew from there.

Wolak: You touched on relationships. In a write-up you did with the National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association (NRMLA), you mentioned that about 25 people have been with the company for more than 10 years. You also talk about a “decade of trust.” Can you talk about that philosophy, and how you build and maintain trust in an industry that has sometimes struggled with misconceptions and misinformation?

Awalt: It’s been our focus — and again, a lot of those folks spent 10 years with us at a previous company. The core group has really been together longer than the company itself and the 10-year anniversary.

From day one, when we ventured into the reverse space, most people came from the forward title business. We started getting some bandwidth in 2004 through 2007, when very few people were paying attention to reverse. We earned credibility with some of the larger companies because we were dedicated to the space long before most others.

We made a commitment to the industry, and we’re a mission-based company. People bought into the factor that we’re working with a protected class and this product is misaligned. … We are laser-focused on the borrower first. If we take care of the borrower, the client naturally gets taken care of as well. That’s been our goal from day one. We still regularly discuss how important our role is in this space.

When I look back on the last 10 years and think about what I’m grateful for, it comes down to the care factor and dedication of our people. Reverse mortgages are complex transactions. It’s an all-asset transaction, meaning every asset in our building is touching it: our legal department, our underwriting department … everybody has to touch that file because they’re complex and difficult. And as we expanded nationwide, our team learned the complexities of not just every state, but each county, township and borough. Watching them build that expertise has been impressive.

We spend a lot of time evaluating where we can improve, especially from a technology standpoint, because technology is accelerating everything. But there are areas in our industry, especially in the reverse space, where more technology is needed. It needs to speed up in certain areas, but picking the right areas to speed up and become more efficient is more important than just speeding things up.

The most important touch points are in escrow — working with the client, working with the customer, trying to get the loan closed and being available to that borrower who sometimes struggles a little bit. Those are the natural things.

Hearing our folks on the phone, you can tell they’re talking to a senior because they’ve got this quiet demeanor about them. They’re having a conversation with these people. They’re not just talking at them and trying to explain something.

So you say, “How do you get those people? How do we build our culture?” Let’s face facts: We do it, we work at it, and we try to cultivate that team-first and mission-first mentality. But those conversations they have with people are a big part of our glue.

Wolak: You were an athlete before getting into financial services. What inspired you to get into reverse mortgages and stay in the business for so long?

Awalt: I got recruited into a startup company on the forward side, so that’s how it happened. I owned a 1031 exchange company that I was able to sell to a bank, and that led me into the title business and relationships with different business leaders in the greater Sacramento area.

I had a partner in the exchange business who was in the title business, and he introduced me to people and encouraged me to get involved. Back then, I already had contacts and was running in those circles through the 1031 business. When we sold the 1031 company, it was time to transition, and that’s how I ended up on the title side of things.

We had a small operation that did reverse business, and we were able to cultivate that. We got lucky because the biggest company at the time, Financial Freedom, took a liking to us. We dedicated not only an office but eventually a larger team to the business, and that grew from an office to a bigger office to a standalone division.

At that point, I had to make a decision. Was I going to go with this growth nationwide, or was I going to continue doing what I was doing, which was forward commercial business locally in the Greater Sacramento market? I chose to go national and explore that avenue. The nice thing was that we were able to grow with our customers. As they expanded into new states, we expanded with them on the same timeline.

We didn’t have to be national on day one. They would tell us they were getting licenses in certain states, and we’d have advance notice, so we’d go get licensed in those states as well. We were fortunate to have, for lack of a better term, an amazing company taking us along for the ride because we were good at what we did and dedicated to the space. It wasn’t some big, planned-out strategy. It was organic, and we capitalized on it and ran with it. That’s what brings us to where we are today.

Wolak: You talked about being taken under the wing of Financial Freedom. How did you know 10 years ago that it was time to leave the nest and start your own endeavor?

Awalt: Financial Freedom had exited long before that. … But by that point, we had evolved enough that we were doing business with what were considered the big three at the time — Bank of America, Wells Fargo and MetLife. We evolved alongside the industry.

Around 2015, we saw an opportunity to become independent. We were part of a larger title company, but entrepreneurs are entrepreneurs. We looked at the opportunity to go out on our own, double down on the space and the relationships we had built, and that really launched us.

You take that leap of faith and then you go to work. We hit the ground running and started putting everything together. Four years later, COVID hits and throws another curveball at you. We were able to adapt and adjust to that. We weren’t for sale and we didn’t have our hand up in the air, but we got the attention of some people who wanted us to be part of their portfolio.

Stewart Title has been good to us. They allow us to operate and do what we do while supporting us in areas where it helps. Third-party risk is a real thing. We were a smaller company at the time with a couple of owners, and larger lenders sometimes look at that and say, “We’re willing to work with you, but we’re not going to commit a large amount of business and create that exposure.”

When you have a company like Stewart Title behind you, third-party risk largely comes off the table and their comfort level increases. That’s just smart business. It’s been a good fit for us in those ways.

Wolak: Looking ahead to Allegiant’s next 10 years, what are your priorities for the company? What does success look like?

Awalt: The reverse space is evolving as we speak, with all the proprietary products that Longbridge Financial, Mutual of Omaha, Finance of America, SmartFi and others have introduced. They weren’t relying solely on the HECM or government-backed product. They evolved because they had to, and it’s good to have more products available for retirement planning and broader financial planning.

We’re doing the same thing. We’re continuing to evolve and support the things that help with lending to seniors. I don’t want to limit that to reverse mortgages or even just lending to seniors. You could call it senior-centric, retirement-centric, stability-centric or financial planning-centric. We’re always focused on those areas and asking where we can add value.

As a title company, you’re not out there dictating terms. You’re not the tip of the spear. We’ve always focused on where we fit in and how we can help our lenders and the broader industry. It’s not just about getting transactions. It’s about being part of the framework that’s helping move the industry forward and making these products more accessible so the space can continue to grow.

This post was originally published on here. 

Bed Bath & Beyond is making an unexpected push into residential real estate, agreeing to acquire technology-focused real estate services company Fathom Holdings in an all-stock transaction valued at $53.38 million.

The deal brings brokerage, mortgage, title, insurance and homeowner financial services under the retailer’s expanding umbrella as it pursues an “Everything Home” strategy.

The transaction marks Bed Bath & Beyond’s latest move beyond retail as it seeks to build a platform that serves consumers throughout the entire homeownership journey.

Recent acquisitions — including F9 Brands, The Container Store, Installed Right and SFV Services — have strengthened the retailer’s offerings in home improvement and services.

What it means for real estate professionals

For agents and brokers, the acquisition reflects a broader shift toward integrated consumer platforms rather than standalone brokerage models.

Some industry observers argue consumers are unlikely to trust a retailer best known for home goods with one of the largest financial decisions of their lives. Others believe the acquisition mirrors broader efforts across the industry to combine brokerage, mortgage, title and ancillary services into a single customer experience.

If Bed Bath & Beyond invests heavily in Fathom’s technology and agent network, the brokerage could become the primary customer acquisition channel instead of relying on retail shoppers to generate real estate business.

For agents, that could eventually mean greater access to cross-selling opportunities, referral business and integrated homeowner services.

Brokers may also face additional pressure to compete with companies offering consumers a one-stop shop that extends well beyond the transaction itself.

Other recent similar moves

Amazon partnered with Realogy, later known as Anywhere Real Estate, to launch the TurnKey program in 2019 — connecting homebuyers with agents from brands such as Coldwell Banker, Century 21 and Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate.

Buyers received Amazon products and home services credits after closing before the initiative was cancelled in 2020.

Rocket is perhaps the strongest current example of the ecosystem strategy. The company has spent years assembling mortgage, brokerage, title and servicing businesses — including acquisitions of Redfin and Mr. Cooper — to create an end-to-end homeownership platform.

Home Depot once operated a real estate business before exiting after the 2006 housing downturn, while Sears previously owned both Coldwell Banker and Dean Witter Reynolds.

Whether Bed Bath & Beyond succeeds where others struggled remains uncertain. Still, companies are increasingly viewing buying and selling a home as just one piece of a broader, lifelong relationship with the consumer.

This article was written by Jonathan Delozier and generated with the assistance of HousingWire Automation. It was reviewed by a HousingWire editor before publication.

This post was originally published on here. 

At the start of June, Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) announced it had joined Anthropic’s cybersecurity initiative, Project Glasswing. ICE will deploy Anthropic’s Claude Mythos Preview across its operations, including the New York Stock Exchange, to identify and remediate vulnerabilities before they can be exploited.

By participating in Project Glasswing, ICE joins a select group of organizations using advanced AI tools to secure critical financial and technology systems. ICE said it’s overseeing the AI tool’s deployment, security architecture and governance internally as it works to strengthen protections for critical financial infrastructure.

In an interview with HousingWire just a few weeks into the inititative, Bob Hart, president of ICE Mortgage Technology, and Steve Pugh, ICE’s chief information security officer, shared how the initiative supports the company’s efforts to enhance cybersecurity resilience efforts.

Editor’s note: This conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity

Sarah Wolak: Can you give an overview of Project Glasswing and what the pilot entails?

Steve Pugh: Mythos came out right after the RSA conference. It was [Anthropic’s] next generation of model. They had a core group of folks within that program to really help them figure out what to do with this thing. There was a lot of excitement, but they knew it was pretty powerful. So they created this program called Project Glasswing.

A number of companies have been in it. The U.S. government got involved and started talking about how these models should be rolled out, given they’re incredibly powerful. We got invited as part of one of the waves and have been using it for the last few weeks.

From everything we’ve seen, it is living up to all expectations. It’s certainly a step change in the models we’ve been using historically. It’s not a doomsday scenario; it’s just part of the journey we’re on with AI. At ICE, we’re trying to figure out how we leverage this to make our products and our customer data as safe as possible.

Wolak: What kinds of AI-enabled threats are you preparing for?

Pugh: The nuance there is that the AI models aren’t necessarily creating new exploits. They’re basically taking advantage of things that were already there, stuff humans may have found or overlooked. It’s not a new AI-type attack pattern.

The one difference is the speed at which AI moves. That’s what’s been interesting about Mythos is how broad it will scan and how quickly it can determine whether something is a defect versus a vulnerability that could lead to exploitation or lead to full control over your system.

That speed that it does that is quite remarkable. For us, we’ve been on this journey for a while. We started leaning in last year around AI-powered attack patterns, and we’ve always measured ourselves on that time scale. While that time continues to compress, I believe somebody came up with the “zero-day clock”— the time it takes to go from a vulnerability to a zero-day. That’s in a matter of minutes now.

Wolak: Cybersecurity has long been a board-level issue for mortgage companies. What are ICE customers telling you about cybersecurity concerns in the era of AI?

Bob Hart: Cyber has always been one of the top priorities of the executives we talk to. That being said, I personally have not seen the emergence of concerns yet around AI. At this point, it feels like people are viewing AI more as an altruistic means of efficiency gains.

I do think there is going to be more curiosity and concern around the capabilities AI will bring to cybersecurity. So I suspect this will bring a heightened level of awareness and interrogation. You’re also seeing an emergence of a lot of new tech vendors, and what is the level of scrutiny they need to go through to make sure the end customer is protected?

We’re just at the cusp of starting to see that. On security, I’m not seeing as much of it yet. I’m seeing more around governance of how you use AI, not as much yet on security. I’ve had a couple of customers, based on the press release we did around Mythos, reach out and say thank you for being a part of this, but I don’t think we’ve seen a tipping point on the security side.

Pugh: I do think what Mythos did was push the conversation around security — and specifically AI security — into the boardrooms and into the executive staff meetings. We’ve always heavily invested in security. We’re highly regulated. Leadership has always felt that security was important to invest in, and it’s become a strategic enabler and a market differentiator.

But what we also do is pull in lessons learned from other business units — things like the New York Stock Exchange and our energy business. These are unique attack surfaces. We’re able to centralize that, create a common defense and push that out.

Hart: I think it also would be good to understand why ICE got included in Project Glasswing.

Pugh: I think it’s a sort of nod from Anthropic and others, certainly at high levels of government, that we are a critical company on the national and international stage. Getting Mythos in our hands early helps give us a head start in finding and fixing some of these vulnerabilities that other models may discover in time. We’ve got about nine months before open-weight models are freely available to everyone. So we’re trying to get ahead of that. As a systemically important financial market utility and owner of the New York Stock Exchange, it was important for us to get into the program early and start testing and providing feedback.

Wolak: Does participation in the partnership create new standards or best practices that you think could eventually benefit the broader mortgage ecosystem? Or is there work to address these capabilities to be applicable to the mortgage market?

Pugh: I think it’s going to go both ways. There have been a lot of lessons learned around how to handle vulnerabilities we discover and the quickest way to remediate them. It’s not just ICE software — we’re also looking at open-source software that everyone uses. Pretty much every participant in Glasswing is looking at open source, and that vibrant community will benefit from vulnerabilities being discovered and fixed.

Over time, this will trickle down, and everybody will be at a new standard. The one thing Mythos has showed us is that we can’t just sit back and use the same security paradigms we have historically. It’s a brave new world and we need to be positioned to essentially deal with the onslaught of vulnerabilities.

Wolak: How does ICE validate AI findings and avoid false positives?

Pugh: A lot of people’s immediate reaction is just to fix everything thay Mythos finds. That’s not the most judicious way to do it. Maybe sometime we’ll get there, but there has to be prioritized remediation. How you would treat a remote code execution vulnerability is different from a simple inefficiency.

One of the nice things about Mythos is that it can create a proof-of-concept exploit for the vulnerability, so you know it’s real. … It’s running an adversarial run against the findings to try to eliminate the false positives, and so what you’re left with at the end of all of this is a really tight, consolidated viewpoint of the vulnerabilities and what’s real versus what’s potentially a false positive.

Hart: I’ll piggyback a little bit off your previous question around security questions coming out of the boardroom. While I’m not seeing as many yet, although we are starting to see more, particularly on the depository side, I do think regulators are going to start digging into this more … so I think safety and soundness around customer data is going to become more of a focus.

I think back to Steve’s point that, even from the top down, from our CEO down, in terms of protecting both our customers and the consumer data that we have, I think this will become a much larger conversation in mortgage going forward, particularly now that Mythos is getting more press.

Wolak: Internally, what metrics will ICE use to determine whether its participation in the program has been successful? How will that influence feedback given to Project Glasswing?

Pugh: Metrics are something we think about a lot, and I think the efficacy of the model and finding the real stuff is probably the truest measure. And then the question becomes, “What made that better than hiring a team of pen testers? What made that better than using an application like a static and application security scanning tool?”

And the way that we’re thinking about that right now is one, as you mentioned, the false positives. Is the output of the model giving us what we would want to know about? The other thing is the speed: Is it finding stuff faster than our other tools are finding it? And then the third is, are we able to actually turn that into a fix fast enough for the benefit of our customers?

We have pretty good confidence in what it costs to find a critical vulnerability in our software and things like that. It’s still pretty early days, but I’m really interested in those numbers. So we’re looking at it from a number of different angles, and certainly feeding that back to the other participants within Glasswing as well as Anthropic themselves.

Wolak: Broadly speaking, what does ICE’s participation in Project Glasswing mean for the broader mortgage industry?

Hart: If you think about the customer base that we have — and you think about the consumers that are leveraging our technology from origination all the way through servicing — we think what it means for the industry is we’re taking cybersecurity incredibly seriously. Steve and his team worked with the Anthropic team to get us into Project Glasswing. Our security posture is critical.

I do believe our customers expect us to be at the forefront of this, because they don’t want their name to be on a headline. And they also don’t want to have to deal with the fallout — both from a reputation perspective but also a financial perspective of a vulnerability or an exploit that’s discovered.

Pugh: I think the results will be a new high-water mark for security standards across the mortgage industry. I think that customers will come to expect a high level of security, and I don’t think you could be in the mortgage business without coming with a very mature security backing.

Mythos certainly has the first mover advantage with Project Glasswing, but OpenAI has Daybreak. We’re also part of that program, and so as we look to deploy additional capabilities, ICE is going to continue to lean forward with these various models to ensure that our customers and our customers’ data are secure as they can be.

This post was originally published on here. 

ATTOM data shows that home flipping activity declined in early 2026 even as investor profits edged higher, signaling a modest rebound in returns after a prolonged downturn.

A total of 64,348 single-family homes and condominiums were flipped in the first quarter of 2026, representing 8% of all home sales from January through March, according to ATTOM’s Q1 2026 U.S. Home Flipping Report, released Thursday.

That share rose from 7.2% in the prior quarter but was down from 8.2% during the same period last year. The number of flips also fell from 69,711 in Q4 2025 and 70,579 in Q1 2025.

Profitability improved slightly, with typical gross returns rising to 25.4%, up from 24.7% in the fourth quarter, which marked the first quarterly gain in nearly two years. Even so, margins remained below year-ago levels, when flipped homes generated a typical return of 29.6%.

Gross profits increased to $66,000, up from $64,300 in the prior quarter, but they also trailed the $74,172 figure recorded in the first quarter of 2025.

“The first increase in flipping returns in nearly two years is a welcome sign for investors,” ATTOM CEO Rob Barber said in a statement. “The market remains far more competitive than it was during the peak profit years, but this quarter’s gains suggest that conditions may be stabilizing.”

Flipping activity rose on a quarterly basis in 77% of the 174 metro areas analyzed, although it declined year over year in 56.3% of markets. The highest flipping rates were in Columbus, Georgia; Atlanta; Canton, Ohio; York, Pennsylvania; and Spartanburg, South Carolina.

Among large metros, Dallas; Kansas City; and Memphis, Tennessee, posted some of the highest flipping rates, while Seattle; Tulsa, Oklahoma; and Honolulu had some of the lowest.

Cash purchases accounted for 61.1% of flipped homes, down slightly from the prior quarter but higher than a year earlier. Flips took a median of 165 days to complete, up modestly from both prior periods. Buyers who utilized Federal Housing Administration (FHA) financing made up 10.2% of flipped-home purchases, down from a year earlier.

Margins varied widely by price tier, with homes purchased between $100,000 and $200,000 producing the strongest typical returns at 32%, while properties bought for less than $50,000 posted a 14% loss.

Industry participants cautioned that rising gross margins do not necessarily translate into stronger net returns. Sean Faries, CEO of Land Gorilla, said the headline figures mask meaningful cost pressures.

“I’d be cautious reading this as flippers suddenly making more money,” he said in a statement. “What the data really shows is a more selective market, where the deals that don’t pencil are getting screened out and the operators still active are buying better. That’s discipline, not a rebound.

“The headline here is a gross margin, not a profit. It’s the spread between what an investor paid and what they sold for, before rehab, financing, carrying costs, and the cost to sell,” he added.

Megan Castleton, chief credit officer at Constructive Capital, said the current environment is forcing a more disciplined approach.

“The lesson for brokers is simple: stop selling ‘flip activity’ and start selling ‘flip viability.’ In this market, the difference between a fundable opportunity and a bad trade can be just a few points of margin,” Castleton said.

“Agents are in a strong position to add value because today’s flip market is less about buying cheap and more about buying right. … The market is rewarding discipline again.”

This article was written by Sarah Wolak and generated with the assistance of HousingWire Automation, then reviewed by a HousingWire editor before publication.

This post was originally published on here. 

Retirement plan participation among eligible U.S. workers reached a record 86% last year, according to Vanguard‘s 2026 How America Saves report, which analyzed retirement savings behavior across nearly 5 million defined contribution plan participants.

The annual report found that automatic enrollment, higher default contribution rates and broader use of professionally managed investments have reshaped retirement savings over the past 25 years, contributing to higher participation rates and increased account balances.

Participation among eligible employees has increased from 65% to 86% since the report was first published a quarter century ago, reflecting the expanded use of automatic enrollment.

Nearly two-thirds of retirement plans now automatically enroll new participants at contribution rates of at least 4%, while about one-third use default rates of 6%, the report explained.

“More than 25 years of data and insights make it clear — strong default contribution options and automatic features have made saving for retirement more accessible and effective for more Americans than ever before,” said Lauren Valente, managing director of Workplace Solutions at Vanguard.

Savings rates and account balances climb

The report found that participants are also saving at higher rates. Forty-five percent of workers increased their contribution rates in 2025, helping push the average combined employee and employer savings rate to a record 12.1%.

Average account balances increased 13% from a year earlier, supported by continued contributions and market performance.

Investment behavior also remained relatively steady despite periods of market volatility. According to the report, only 5% of participants made changes to their investment allocations during the year.

The use of professionally managed investment portfolios has also increased over time. Nearly 70% of participants now rely on professionally managed allocations, contributing to broader portfolio diversification, according to the report. Employer matching contributions reached a record average of 4.7%.

Home equity gains attention in retirement planning

The findings come as retirement professionals are increasingly viewing home equity as a key source of retirement income.

Reverse mortgage lenders are positioning home equity as a planning tool for retirees who seek greater financial flexibility, rather than as a product of last resort.

But industry data reflects a mixed picture. Mutual of Omaha Mortgage remained the nation’s largest reverse mortgage lender in May with a 21.5% market share, although its loan volume declined 14.9% from April and was 9.4% below year-ago levels.

Finance of America ranked second and was one of the few major lenders to post a monthly increase in production, despite lower year-to-date volume. The top 100 retail lenders endorsed 1,967 Home Equity Conversion Mortgages (HECMs) in May, down 4.7% from April and 10.8% lower year over year.

Shannon Robinson, senior vice president of New American Funding‘s reverse division, recently told HousingWire‘s Reverse Mortgage Daily (RMD) that demographic trends continue to support long-term demand.

“The state of reverse mortgages in the industry is really being driven by two powerful realities right now,” Robinson said. “One is that more than 11,000 Americans are turning 65 every day, and homeowners over the age of 60 to 62 years old hold over $15 trillion in housing wealth.

“When you just sit there and think about that statement, it’s extremely powerful. So, as active adults are looking for ways to navigate inflation and create financial flexibility, home equity is becoming an increasingly important part of the retirement conversation, and NAF is very much focused on that.”

Some lenders are also targeting affluent homeowners, marketing reverse mortgages as wealth management tools that can improve cash flow, reduce taxes and preserve investment portfolios.

Proprietary reverse mortgages have become a larger share of business for many originators, partially because they allow borrowers with higher-value homes to access more equity while avoiding the Federal Housing Administration‘s upfront mortgage insurance premiums on HECM offerings.

Still, higher interest rates and softer home prices continue to weigh on the market.

“Overall, 2026 has been a challenging year,” Gabe Bodner, a reverse mortgage planner and president at OneTrust Home Loans, told RMD. “Part of the reason is that with interest rates being higher, it has reduced principal limit factors, and we’re finding many borrowers are short cash to close, unfortunately.

“The other interesting thing is we’ve seen home values softening across most markets, but homeowners have an inflated opinion of the value of their home. And that has resulted in quite a few instances where values are coming in short or low, which is again causing borrowers to be short cash to close.”

Financial pressures remain a challenge

Despite improvements in retirement savings, the report noted that many workers continue to face financial pressures that affect their ability to balance short-term expenses with long-term retirement planning.

Vanguard said increased hardship withdrawals indicate ongoing challenges with financial resilience.

“While the progress and participant outcomes are significant, they also highlight where we need to go next,” Valente said. “Continuing to strengthen the system means helping Americans manage short-term financial pressures while staying on track for long-term retirement security and expanding solutions that support them at every stage of their journey.”

How America Saves is Vanguard’s annual analysis of participant behavior and retirement plan design trends across defined contribution plans.

This article was written by Jonathan Delozier and generated with the assistance of HousingWire Automation. It was reviewed by a HousingWire editor before publication.

This post was originally published on here. 

Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh’s new framework for the U.S. central bank carries significant implications for the mortgage industry and broader housing market — a sector that he admits is already facing a restrictive monetary stance.

While his hawkish tone points to higher-for-longer mortgage rates in the near term, it also signals the potential for lower long-term rates driven by a firm commitment to the Fed’s 2% inflation target. In the interim, however, a stark reduction in forward guidance will likely translate into increased market volatility, according to industry experts.

Wednesday’s policy announcement and press conference offered a clear glimpse of the new era of communication under Warsh. The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC)’s statement was roughly half its usual length, stripping out forward guidance and the voting roster. Meanwhile, the Summary of Economic Projections (SEP) omitted Warsh’s personal forecast — the first time a sitting Fed chair has declined to share their dot plot.

Warsh said colleagues submitted dots “with pencils” and “big erasers,” signaling low conviction and humility about forecasts. The more that markets are paying attention to what’s happening in the real economy, the more effectively they can price what they believe is most likely to occur, Warsh said. For him, when markets merely reflect Fed guidance, the Fed loses an important source of information.

“It’s a completely radical approach, and markets didn’t like it in the first moment,” said Nash Paradise, director of sales at UMortgage. “Without the crutch of the Fed’s forward guidance, we’re going to have to be more into the data — since the conflict with Iran, the data hasn’t really mattered. That puts us in position for more instability.”

Selma Hepp, chief economist at Cotality, said the forward guidance was fairly broad but provided guardrails around what the Fed was thinking. But she said this strategy could “backfire” and cause more volatility, including for mortgage rates.

“Not knowing what the Fed is thinking generally tends to bring more uncertainty, and that means you may have an uncertainty premium priced in. So it may end up leading to slightly higher mortgage rates.”

Hawkish tone across the board

Overall, economists found the Fed’s tone surprisingly hawkish. Nine policymakers anticipated rate hikes this year, eight projected no change, and only one projected a cut. Inflation projections were also revised higher than anticipated, pushing the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) inflation estimate to 3.6% (up from 2.7% in March).

The market repercussions were immediate. The 2-year Treasury yield jumped roughly 13 basis points and the 10-year yield rose by 5 bps, although the 30-year yield actually dipped by 1 bps.

Despite the hawkish tone, mortgage spreads did not show a meaningful uptick. Jeana Curro, managing director and head of agency MBS research at Bank of America, described yesterday’s FOMC meeting as a “non-event to date.” But Curro added that if rate hikes formally enter the narrative, it could act as a slight negative for mortgages.

Hepp agreed: “Hawkish tone generally means more focus on bringing inflation down — and with inflation being elevated right now and throughout the remainder of this year, that would mean no rate cuts. In the long term, what does that mean? Potentially could have some benefits.”

Paradise, however, pushes back against the popular assumption that a tightening monetary cycle automatically guarantees higher mortgage rates.

“An increase in the Fed funds rate isn’t necessarily a bad thing for mortgage rates. It signals a flip that will help move some of the economic data more favorably, lowering inflation, and the markets could actually react well to that,” Paradise said.

“Mortgage rates have a lot of room to level off. Looking at where they’ve been trading, at where the 10-year yield is, a rate hike is definitely not the end of the world for mortgage rates.”

Currently, the spread between the 10-year yield and the 30-year mortgage rate sits at roughly 220 basis points, leaving plenty of room for tightening, Paradise noted.

Balance-sheet moves

Beyond interest rates, the Fed’s handling of its $1.9 trillion mortgage-backed securities (MBS) portfolio remains a massive variable for housing. Doubts remain over the central bank’s next moves, with the market divided on whether the Fed will actively sell off MBS or simply let the portfolio run off.

According to Curro, Bank of America does not expect the Fed to begin actively selling MBS, believing the market is “still a little bit too fragile” for such a move. The most likely path is continued runoff of the portfolio, with proceeds reinvested into Treasuries, echoing the strategy previously outlined by former Chair Jerome Powell.

“Early on, Warsh was well-characterized as an interest rate dove and a balance-sheet hawk, but we’ve been hesitant to assume that means anything more for mortgages than simply allowing MBS holdings to continue running off while reinvesting into Treasuries,” Curro said.

In a report published Thursday, Wells Fargo analysts said that the real question is how much confidence the market will have in model valuations if the policy regime shifts, forward guidance becomes less reliable and the Fed’s balance-sheet reaction function turns unpredictable.

“To be clear, we still think outright Fed MBS sales that leak volatility back into the market remain a low-probability outcome, but that probability has increased at the margin under the new Chair,” the analysts wrote.

New task forces

Adding another layer of structural change, Warsh also announced a sweeping overhaul of the central bank’s internal operations. This includes the creation of five new task forces to target communications, the balance sheet, data, productivity and jobs, and inflation frameworks.

“Taking a fresh look at all of these areas should ultimately make the Fed operate more efficiently and effectively over time,” said Marty Green, principal at Polunsky Beitel Green. “It will also allow the Fed to perhaps better adjust policy in an economy that may evolve more quickly as artificial intelligence has a greater impact.”  

According to Green, the task forces bring the opportunity to utilize data that may be more available in real time and to eliminate some data points that may be anachronistic but have continued to be used for historical comparison.

And while the Fed has explicitly restated its goal of reining in inflation, the task forces can now closely evaluate exactly how inflation is measured and how its various components respond to monetary policy, he added. 

This post was originally published on here. 

For weeks, a central question surrounding Dream Finders Homes‘ pursuit of Beazer Homes has been unambiguous:

Will Dream Finders’ offer for the company and its public relations campaign be enough to convince Beazer shareholders that a sale should occur?

A just-completed debt refinancing by Beazer Homes likely raises the cost of any acquisition of Beazer.

An ever-relevant issue is that the target companies involved in M&A transactions – whether friendly or hostile – are not static entities but continue to operate their businesses. During the process, protracted as it may be, things happen.

In a hostile transaction, a target company aims to create value for shareholders, demonstrating its case that the best path is to remain independent. In contrast, in a friendly merger and acquisition transaction, the target company continues to run the business, consistent with the expectations discussed with the buyer.

On June 15, Beazer priced $400 million of 8.0% senior unsecured notes due 2032, replacing approximately $357.3 million of its existing 5.875% senior notes due in October 2027.

The transaction appears, on its face, to be a routine corporate-finance decision. Beazer pushed a significant debt maturity five years further into the future, reducing near-term refinancing risk and strengthening its liquidity profile.

At the same time, the refinancing introduced a financial hurdle for any would-be acquirer, as most notes of this type contain “change of control” provisions that require a buyer to repay the notes upon the sale of the target company. During the first two years after issuance of notes of this type, they typically carry a make-whole provision in the event they are repaid or “called”.

According to calculations provided by a source familiar with the transaction, if the newly issued notes were repaid immediately following a change of control, the debt would carry an estimated make-whole obligation of $53.4 million.

In that scenario, a buyer would need to repay roughly $453.4 million on the $400 million note issue. That incremental cost did not exist prior to the refinancing.

In the context of the overall acquisition, this $53.4 million isn’t massive, but it isn’t peanuts, either. That is, it would likely equate to approximately 2.5-3.0% of the overall purchase. Put another way, it is the equivalent of about $2 per Beazer share.  

Again, these change-of-control provisions are standard. The wrinkle is the timing of the issuance, in the midst of this hostile takeover attempt.  Before the transaction, Beazer’s outstanding 2027 notes had already passed their call protection period and could be prepaid without penalty.

“This $53.4 million is the incremental cost that would have to be paid by a buyer in the event of an acquisition,” the source said.

Yet industry observers caution against interpreting the refinancing primarily as a takeover defense. Instead, they view it as something far more common: a company managing its balance sheet and extending debt maturities as it normally would.

Not a poison pill

Longtime homebuilding analyst Dan Oppenheim said the refinancing should be viewed first through a corporate-finance lens rather than the narrower prism of Dream Finders’ pursuit.

“This should be viewed first as Beazer being proactive in addressing a 2027 maturity, rather than as a defensive move,” Oppenheim said. “The refinancing gives the company more time and flexibility in a potentially more challenging financing environment, but that flexibility comes at a higher cost. With the higher debt expense and a slower-turning inventory environment, it also adds to the operating and financial challenges management will need to navigate as it continues to make the case for remaining independent.”

In his view, Beazer’s decision reflects the need to proactively manage its balance sheet in an environment marked by concerns about a more challenging financing market over the course of 2026 and early 2027.

Having refinanced the notes, Beazer now has additional time and flexibility to navigate whatever housing market conditions arise over the next several years.

The trade-off, of course, is cost, and the higher rate on the notes and lower inventory turnover, at a time when generating sales absorption is a challenge, may further weigh on Beazer’s results, potentially adding pressure on Beazer management and its board to look more closely at strategic options.

From a shareholder perspective, the refinancing removes a near-term capital-markets question regarding Beazer’s determination to remain independent.

From a buyer’s perspective, it creates a new expense.

Both can be true simultaneously.

This post was originally published on here. 

For decades, manufactured housing has excelled at producing lower-cost homes.

What it has struggled to do is go vertical.

Fact is, America’s most severe housing shortages are no longer in places where inexpensive land is abundant. They’re in high-cost metropolitan markets where making housing pencil often requires more homes on less land. That makes manufactured housing’s challenge – up to now – to develop and build multi-level homes everybody’s challenge.

A proposed rule from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) could help change that equation.

The proposal would expand the definition of a manufactured home and allow upper-level sections of multi-story manufactured housing to be transported and assembled without a permanent chassis — a technical change that industry leaders say could unlock new forms of higher-density housing, reduce construction costs and make manufactured housing more viable in expensive, land-constrained markets.

For developers working in places such as California’s Bay Area, where land costs and labor shortages can make conventional construction difficult to justify, the proposal represents more than a regulatory update.

It could effectively remove one of the industry’s most persistent design and engineering obstacles.

“This rule change…opens up more design flexibility. It opens up more innovation potential. It reduces some of the vertical construction cost, and that may mean that some of these sites that maybe aren’t even economical for site-built construction, because labor is so expensive and scarce, can make sense to build with a two-story manufactured home with no chassis under the upper level,” said Sean Roberts, CEO of manufactured housing developer Villa and a member of HUD’s Manufactured Housing Consensus Committee.

“That opens up opportunities to develop more housing in these locations where it’s really, really needed, and that’s a good thing.”

A rule aimed at the next generation of manufactured housing

Last week’s proposal is designed to encourage more multi-story manufactured housing construction.

Specifically, HUD would permit upper-level sections of manufactured homes to be transported and assembled without a permanent chassis. The proposal complements language in the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act that would remove the permanent chassis requirement for the first floor of manufactured homes.

Roberts told HousingWire TBD that while two-story manufactured homes are certainly possible under current regulations, they have become less common because of the design complications and costs associated with permanent chassis requirements.

For developers operating in high-cost states such as California and Colorado, where Villa is active, the implications could be significant.

“The only way to get a project in many of those places to make sense economically is to be more land-efficient, which means to build more per square foot of land, and the way you do that is by going vertical,” Roberts said.

Why the chassis matters

The challenge with requiring upper-level sections to include a permanent chassis is not simply the additional cost.

Roberts estimates the requirement can add between $5,000 and $10,000 to a typical home. More importantly, he said, it forces designers and engineers to work around structural steel framing when locating stairs and routing mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems.

Builders often must cut stair openings into the chassis and weld components together in ways that are considerably more complicated than conventional framing methods.

Removing the upper-level chassis would allow second stories to be designed more like traditional upper floors, with more precise ceiling heights, improved stair placement and more efficient overall layouts.

Lesli Gooch, CEO of the Manufactured Housing Institute, said in a statement that the organization strongly supports the proposal.

“From a construction standpoint, eliminating the fixed steel frame from the upper floors removes major design barriers. Enhanced design flexibility, reduced unnecessary costs and material waste, and expanded options for today’s homeowners can all become a reality with this change,” Gooch said.

The proposal also builds on a 2024 HUD update to manufactured housing construction and safety standards that permits up to four dwelling units within a single manufactured housing structure.

“What this all means is you can have much more efficient and innovative two-story single-family homes, duplexes, triplexes, and it opens up a totally new type of way of thinking about manufactured homes, which is really, really exciting, because of the cost efficiencies of building this way,” Roberts said.

From rural housing solution to urban housing tool?

More than half of all manufactured homes today are located in rural areas, where land is relatively abundant and housing costs are lower.

Industry leaders believe that could change if federal rules make multi-story designs easier and less expensive to build.

Villa is currently working on a project in Santa Rosa, California, where several two-story manufactured homes may be incorporated into the community. Roberts said the proposed rule would make projects like that easier to execute and more economically feasible.

Others in the industry see similar potential.

During Cavco Industries‘ Q4 2025 earnings call in May, President and CEO William Boor argued that broader removal of chassis requirements could dramatically expand manufactured housing’s relevance in urban and suburban markets.

“A lot of the innovation that could take place…if you think about those kinds of opportunities, you start to see the opportunity for product innovation for urban and suburban markets, and that opens up a whole new market opportunity for this industry,” Boor said.

Roberts believes another regulatory barrier may eventually warrant review as well. Current HUD Code requirements mandate that at least one exterior exit door be accessible from each bedroom without traveling more than 35 feet.

While that standard works well for single-story homes, Roberts said it becomes significantly more restrictive in multi-story designs where stairways consume much of the allowable travel distance.

If HUD wants to fully unlock multi-story manufactured housing, he argues, that requirement could become the next area for reform.

The local approval challenge

Even if HUD finalizes the proposal, its ultimate impact will depend heavily on what happens at the state and local level.

Manufactured housing has gained increasing acceptance among policymakers seeking solutions to housing shortages and affordability challenges.

Since 2021, lawmakers in 10 states have enacted laws requiring local governments to allow manufactured and modular housing by right in single-family zones as part of broader housing legislation. Florida, Idaho and Virginia joined that list this year.

States have also begun modernizing financing rules. New York, for example, last year enacted legislation allowing eligible manufactured homes that are permanently affixed to land and connected to utilities to be classified as real property rather than personal property, potentially giving buyers access to conventional, GSE-backed mortgages.

Gene Kim, executive vice president of commercial real estate at Ascent Developer Solutions, said modern manufactured housing communities increasingly resemble traditional residential neighborhoods.

Removing chassis requirements altogether would only accelerate that trend.

“It’s cheaper, and you now have better designs and better quality communities. So, the distinction between site-built and manufactured housing communities is going to get even thinner,” Kim said.

Local governments still retain authority over design and architectural standards. But those standards for manufactured housing cannot exceed those imposed on site-built homes.

That reality could become increasingly important if HUD eventually removes chassis requirements altogether.

“If ‘chassis’ is removed outright from HUD’s definition, it will force states to revise their own laws, as most state laws rely on the HUD definition,” the draft notes.

Randy Grumbine, executive director of the Virginia Manufactured and Modular Housing Association, said the change would ripple through numerous sections of state code.

“It’s pretty involved to make the change and clean up,” Grumbine said. “It’s in sections you don’t realize until you start looking.”

Whether those legal and regulatory changes ultimately bring manufactured housing into more traditional suburban neighborhoods remains uncertain.

Grumbine cautioned that adoption will take time.

“But within the next five years, sales could rise as we see more adoption,” he said. “We need more developers coming to Virginia and doing subdivisions to show what’s possible when done right,” with such features as curbs, landscaping and gutters.

This post was originally published on here. 

When Tamir Poleg bought a property in France, the process gave him a glimpse of what he hopes the U.S. and Canadian real estate markets can avoid — listing fragmentation.

To find the home, Poleg said he had to search across multiple websites, many of which had outdated, inaccurate or incomplete information. The experience was frustrating enough that it shaped how he thinks about one of the biggest debates now playing out in U.S. real estate: listing fragmentation.

“I bought a property in France, and in order to find the property, I had to go through so many different websites with so much false information, or inaccurate or just outdated information,” Poleg, CEO of The Real Brokerage, said on the RealTrending podcast. “It was just not a great experience.”

That experience is now informing Poleg’s view of the industry at a moment when Real is preparing to acquire REMAX, private listings are dominating industry conversations, brokerages are rethinking scale and artificial intelligence is beginning to reshape how agents work.

REMAX deal is not simply about size

According to Poleg, its about combining Real’s technology and growth with one of the most recognized brands in real estate.

“Remax has this iconic brand, they’re known everywhere, they have the scale, and Real has the growth, and Real has the technology,” Poleg said.

The deal surprised many in the industry, in part because Real is widely viewed as a tech-forward, cloud-based brokerage, while REMAX is a legacy franchise brand with a long-established office and broker-owner model. But Poleg said Real had been looking at REMAX for years and saw the two companies as highly complementary.

“When we started to try and analyze why REMAX was kind of slowing down in North America, we realized that it’s because of a tech gap, it’s because of a value proposition that needed a little bit of a boost, it’s because their franchisees/brokers are struggling a little bit with margins, and this is exactly what we thought we could help with,” he said.

Poleg said Real’s technology platform was designed to help brokerages operate more efficiently. Bringing that to REMAX, he said, could strengthen the value proposition for franchisees and agents while preserving the REMAX brand.

“If you’re an agent that seeks more freedom, flexibility, you’re a little bit more tech savvy, you want to work from anywhere, you can join under the real model,” Poleg said. “If you’re an agent that is looking for more of a brand name office location or office present, you want your broker close to you. You can join other REMAX, but now we can offer both models under the same umbrella.”

Cultures are similar, says Poleg

Despite the obvious differences between the two companies, Poleg pushed back on the idea that the cultures are too far apart. He said both companies are focused on agent productivity and helping agents succeed.

“Both companies are focused on productivity, agent productivity. Both companies are kind in nature. We’re trying to disconnect ourselves from the politics in the industry, we’re trying to focus on our businesses, so there are a lot of similarities,” he said.

Private listings? Start with agents

That “stay out of politics” approach also helps explain why Real has remained relatively quiet during the private listings debate. As major brokerages, portals and MLSs argue over inventory access and listing control, Poleg said Real started with its agents.

“The first thing we did when this whole private listing, private exclusive, free marketing started to be a discussion, we just reached out to our agent population and asked them, Is this meaningful to you? Do you want us to do something about it,” he said.

The response, he said, was clear.

“About 95% of our agents on the Real side said our clients are not even asking us about this, like this is not even a discussion,” Poleg said. “Out of the remaining 5%, some 50% of them, so 2.5%, said that their clients are somewhat interested in having a discussion about private listing.”

For now, Poleg said, that told Real not to rush into the debate. But he is watching the issue closely, especially as listing access becomes more fragmented.

“I think we’re getting to the point of no return on this, and I think that very soon, and when I mean very soon, it could be in a matter of a few months, we’ll be at a point where fragmentation is beyond our control, and we cannot get the genie back in the bottle,” Poleg said.

Concerns about the consumer

His concern is that consumers could lose easy access to accurate, comprehensive listing data — a hallmark of the U.S. real estate system compared with other countries.

“I hope that we do not end up this way in the U.S. and Canada,” he said. “But I think that in terms of fragmentation and everything that’s happening with the MLSs and the kind of the large forces that are pushing in different directions, I think that it’s becoming inevitable to find ourselves in a situation which could be less in favor of consumers’ ability to find data, accurate data in an easy way.”

AI could reshape the industry

AI is another force that could reshape the industry, but Poleg said the technology should be used to improve the transaction, not remove the agent from it.

“At the end of the day, AI should help create better experiences, both for agents and for consumers,” he said.

For Real, that means using AI to eliminate friction, create transparency and reduce the time it takes to move from search to closing. Poleg said he believes Real is “far ahead of everybody else when it comes to AI capabilities,” but he also warned that many companies underestimate what it takes to build AI tools that are actually useful.

“Everybody can use AI. Everybody uses ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini on a very superficial level,” he said. “I think that when it gets interesting is when you’re thinking about agentic use of AI and building agents that are focused on one specific task.”

At Real, Poleg said the company is building multiple AI agents, each designed for a specific function, such as drafting contracts or creating social media content. The long-term goal is to give agents one entry point that can coordinate many AI tools behind the scenes.

“The future is us as real estate professionals employing AI agents as if they were our employees, and they become specialized in one specific task, which eventually they will perform better than we perform,” he said.

AI is not a threat to agents

But Poleg does not see that as a threat to agents. Instead, he sees AI as a productivity layer that allows agents to serve more clients while spending more time on the parts of the transaction that require human trust.

“People will still need humans to hold their hands and guide them through that somewhat complicated, highly emotional transaction that they’re going through,” he said. “As humans, we want to be guided by humans, because this is who we trust.”

The goal, he said, is not to replace agents. It is to make them more capable.

“I think that agents are here to stay, but we can turn agents into super agents with the right technology and the right help, and that’s what we’re going to try and do,” Poleg said.

Future look

Looking ahead, Poleg does not expect the industry to change overnight. After more than 20 years in real estate and more than 12 years building Real, he said he has learned that change often takes longer than people expect.

“In three years, things will look almost the same,” he said.

But over a longer time horizon, he believes the transaction itself has to change. Consumers do not want process, paperwork or uncertainty, he said. They want a home.

“At the end of the day, what buyers want is a home, and we, as an industry, we don’t provide them homes,” Poleg said. “We deliver a set of tasks and paperwork that they don’t understand, and the lengthy process that they’re concerned about, and that has to change.”

For Real, the next step is closing the REMAX transaction and beginning the work of bringing the companies together while keeping the two brands distinct. Poleg said Real will remain focused on improving the agent experience, the consumer experience and watching closely as the industry navigates consolidation, AI, MLS policy and listing data control.

“This is what we’re going to be focused on for the foreseeable future,” he said.

This article was generated using HousingWire Automation and reviewed by a HousingWire editor before publication. 

This post was originally published on here. 

Real estate has always had a complicated relationship with lead follow-up. Everyone knows speed matters. Everyone knows consistency matters. And almost every team believes there is missed opportunity sitting somewhere inside its database, even if they’re using real estate AI follow up.

The common response has been to increase activity: take a large group of buyers and sellers, load them into an ISA process or dialer and start making calls. With AI-powered callers now entering the market, that temptation is only growing. If technology can call faster, cheaper and more consistently, why not use it to reach as many contacts as possible?

More outreach doesn’t mean more opportunity

The problem is that more outreach does not automatically create more opportunity. After analyzing more than one million real estate follow-up calls over the last three months, one of the clearest lessons is that intent beats volume.

The best-performing follow-up did not come from calling the largest list. It came from calling the right person after they had shown a real signal of interest. That signal could be a property click, a home valuation request, a landing page visit, an ad response, an email click, a saved search or engagement with a piece of market content.

This distinction matters. A buyer who clicked on a listing yesterday is not in the same position as someone who has been sitting quietly in a CRM for three years. A homeowner who just filled out a valuation form is not the same as someone who once attended an open house in 2019. From a database perspective, both may be “leads.” From a follow-up perspective, they are completely different conversations.

That difference should shape everything: when the call happens, what the opening line sounds like, what information the assistant or ISA has available, and whether the outreach feels helpful or random.

Calling more people is not a strategy

One of the biggest mistakes real estate teams make is confusing activity with opportunity. Call volume is easy to measure, and with automation, it is easier than ever to increase. But a high number of dials does not mean a team is creating meaningful conversations.

In fact, indiscriminate calling can work against the agent. If the consumer has not taken any recent action, the call can feel disconnected. The person receiving it may not remember the agent, the listing, the form or the original reason they entered the database. Even if the call is technically compliant and professionally delivered, it may still feel like noise.

That is why broad database calling should be approached carefully. The better approach is to build follow-up around signals of intent. Did the consumer click on a property? Did they open and click an email? Did they respond to an ad? Did they request a valuation? Did they revisit a landing page? These actions provide context and make the outreach feel more relevant.2 

AI-powered follow-up makes this discipline even more important. When technology can create activity at scale, the strategy behind that activity matters more, not less. If the targeting is wrong, AI simply helps a team do the wrong thing faster.

Context matters more than the perfect script

Real estate teams often spend a lot of time refining scripts. Scripts are useful, especially when teams are training new ISAs or trying to create consistency across many conversations. But in the call data, the strongest results were less about having the perfect script and more about having the right context.

A follow-up call is much more effective when the person or system making the call understands why the lead is being contacted in the first place. Did they look at a specific property? Were they searching in a certain price range? Did they click on a market update? Are they a buyer, seller, investor or past client? Did the lead come from an ad, a landing page, an email campaign, a portal or the agent’s own database?

Without that context, even a polished opening can sound generic. With context, the conversation becomes more natural. “I saw you were looking at homes in Scottsdale” is a very different opening than “I’m just following up on your real estate inquiry.” One feels specific. The other feels like a call center.

This is an important shift for the industry. The future of follow-up is not just better scripts. It is better data before the call starts. The more context an assistant has, the more likely the call is to feel relevant to the consumer.

One call is rarely enough

Another clear pattern from the call data is that many leads do not answer on the first attempt. In many cases, engagement required more than one touch. A common pattern was a combination of calls and a text message from the same number before the lead picked up or responded.

This matters because many agents still give up too early. A lead is called once, maybe receives a voicemail or a text, and then gets labeled as bad or unresponsive. But the issue may not be lead quality. It may simply be that the follow-up sequence was too thin.

Consumers are busy. They may be working, driving, with family or unwilling to answer an unfamiliar number the first time it appears. A second call, especially when paired with a relevant text from the same number, can make the outreach feel more recognizable and less random.

The key is that persistence has to be tied to context. Calling repeatedly without a relevant reason can feel like pressure. Calling with a clear connection to a recent action can feel like service. That difference matters.

Local presence still affects answer rates

Phone number strategy also plays a larger role than many teams realize. When a lead in Arizona receives a call from a New York number, the trust gap starts before the conversation begins. The consumer is already making a decision: does this feel familiar, local and worth answering, or does it feel like another unwanted call?

Local presence is not about misleading the consumer. It is about understanding that trust starts before the first word is spoken. Area code relevance, number reputation, call history and connection rate all affect performance.

As AI callers and automated follow-up systems become more common, number management will become a more serious operational discipline. Teams will need to monitor which numbers are performing, retire numbers that are no longer effective, and assign local numbers when possible. This is not a minor technical detail. It can directly influence whether a consumer ever answers the phone.

A voice that sounds too perfect can hurt performance

One of the more interesting findings was around voice quality. The instinct with AI-powered follow-up is often to make the voice sound as polished and neutral as possible. But overly perfect voices can create suspicion. Consumers are used to real assistants sounding human. They pause. They vary their tone. They may have an accent. They do not sound like a perfectly produced commercial voiceover.

In some call groups, making the voice sound more natural improved appointment booking. In one test, adding subtle human characteristics to the voice increased appointment booking by roughly 20%, moving a base booking rate of about 4% closer to 5%.

That may sound small, but at scale it is meaningful. On every 100 qualified calls, that difference can represent one additional booked appointment. Across thousands of calls, the impact compounds.

The broader lesson is not that one voice type or accent is universally better than another. The lesson is that consumers respond to experiences that feel natural. AI follow-up should not try to trick people, but it also should not sound robotic, overly polished or disconnected from how real assistants speak.

In real estate, trust is still the product.

Appointment rate is the metric that matters

Many teams still measure follow-up by activity: number of dials, number of texts, number of leads loaded, speed to first call. These are useful operating metrics, but they are not the outcome.

The better metric is appointment booking rate. Did the lead engage? Did the conversation move forward? Did the consumer agree to a showing, consultation, valuation appointment or next step? Did the agent receive a real opportunity?

A high call count with a low appointment rate is not success. It is just activity. As AI-powered follow-up becomes more common, this distinction becomes critical. AI can increase call volume very quickly, but the goal should not be more calls. The goal should be more meaningful conversations.4 

The question for real estate teams should shift from “How many leads did we call?” to “How many real opportunities did we create?”

AI follow-up should protect the agent’s time

The biggest lesson from analyzing 1 million calls is not that AI can call faster than a human. That part is obvious. The more important lesson is that most agents do not have a lead problem as much as they have a nurturing problem.

Agents and teams spend money on ads, portals, landing pages, websites, social media and email campaigns. Leads are generated, but too many are contacted too late, called once and forgotten, or approached with no context. The opportunity is not only in generating more leads. It is in handling the leads that already exist with more consistency and intelligence.

AI can help with that, but only if it is used correctly. Bad automation creates more noise. Good automation improves timing, adds context and creates better handoffs to the agent.

The agent still matters. The relationship still matters. The appointment still needs a professional who can advise, negotiate and build trust. But before any of that can happen, the lead has to engage.

That is where the industry is changing. The teams that win will not be the ones that simply automate the most. They will be the ones that understand intent, follow up with context and use AI to create more meaningful conversations, not just more calls.

In real estate, the first conversation still matters. Increasingly, the quality of that conversation depends on what happened before the phone ever rang.

Sam Mehrbod is a former top 1% Realtor in Vancouver with deep knowledge of property technology. 

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of HousingWire’s editorial department and its owners.

To contact the editor responsible for this piece: tracey@hwmedia.com

This post was originally published on here. 

A federal lawsuit. A study with a $1.4 billion headline. A survey with an 85% stat. A LinkedIn brawl. The Zillow versus Compass story arrived not as a court case but as a campaign. And every campaign needs an audience.

That audience is you.

On May 12, Zillow filed a Sherman Act case in U.S. District Court for Northern Illinois against Compass and MRED, the Chicago-area MLS. The complaint alleges that the two coordinated to use MRED’s rule-making power to pressure Zillow into displaying Compass private listings nationwide, or lose its Chicago listing feed.

The filing itself runs more than 100 pages. Most agents will never read it. The press cycle; however, is impossible to avoid.

Within 48 hours of filing, Zillow released a methodology piece tying private listings to $1.4 billion in alleged seller losses over three years, plus another $1.5 billion attributed to deals where one brokerage represented both sides. The next day, came a consumer survey: 61% of potential sellers said broad online exposure beats a private network, and 85% said they want an agent who can pre-market their home to the broadest online audience.

Then, Compass CEO Robert Reffkin answered. Not in court. On LinkedIn. He told followers, “Zillow isn’t protecting transparency, Zillow is protecting Zillow, and willing to hurt agents and sellers to protect their monopoly.” He paired the post with what he called an internal Zillow strategy document and argued it showed Zillow’s plan to sue brokerages that allow sellers to market outside the portal.

This is what a coordinated communications strategy looks like. Both companies are running one.

The analysis

Step back from the dollar amounts for a minute. Look at the sequence.

A filing followed by a study followed by a survey followed by an executive post is not a legal strategy. It is a media strategy. Each piece is engineered for a different audience. The lawsuit is for the federal judge. The study is for the trade press. The survey is for the consumer press. The LinkedIn post is for the agent down the street.

When you receive content built for a specific audience, the question to ask is not “Is this true?” The question is, “What does the sender want me to do after I read it?”

Zillow wants you to repeat the seller-loss figure on your next listing appointment. Compass wants you to repeat the “seller choice” line. Both companies need agents to be carriers of their message into homes the companies will never set foot in. That is how a corporate fight becomes a Tuesday afternoon listing conversation in Wichita or White Plains.

Powerfact: When two companies time their press releases like a relay race, they are not informing the industry. They are training it. Notice the choreography, and choose your own words.

The honest read on the underlying facts is uncomplicated

Zillow’s $1.4 billion number rests on the Zestimate, a tool that has been criticized for years as directionally useful but not surgically precise. The figure is overstated as an exact dollar amount. The underlying logic, that broader exposure tends to produce stronger price discovery, has been true since the first public auction. Compass’s argument that sellers should have the right to choose how their homes are marketed is also true in principle. The question Compass does not answer is whether every Compass seller who chose a private path was first shown the cost of that choice in their own numbers.

Both sides have a piece of the truth. Neither side has the seller’s interest as its primary loyalty. That loyalty belongs to the agent in the room.

Powerfact: Your fiduciary duty does not live in a press release. It lives in the listing agreement, the file and the conversation you had with the seller before either was signed.

Roughly 55% of Compass listings flow through Private Exclusive or Coming Soon pathways according to their own shareholder’s report last year. That means more than half of all their sellers are choosing a private listing knowing they are risking losing money on their house. Really? Do you believe that? The internal data inside one of the loudest brokerages tells a quieter story than its press releases.

What Agents Should Do

Read the actual lawsuit. The complaint is publicly filed. Spend an hour with the document itself, not the coverage of the document. You will be a more useful resource to your clients after 60 minutes with the filing than after three months of headlines.

When a seller mentions either company by name, do not take a side. Ask one question: “What outcome are you trying to produce with this sale?” Net dollars? Speed? Privacy? Certainty? Build the marketing plan around the answer, not around the brand names.

Stop volunteering data points from either side’s marketing materials. If you cite the $1.4 billion figure unprompted, you are carrying Zillow’s water. If you cite “seller choice” as a default, you are carrying Compass’s water. Use your own comps, your own math, your own language.

Run a quiet inventory of your own brokerage’s position. Find out where your broker officially stands on private listings, delayed marketing, and dual agency. If you cannot explain it in plain English to a seller, you cannot defend it in a transaction.

The fight between Zillow and Compass may last years

It will produce more lawsuits, more studies, more surveys, more weekend LinkedIn moments. It will also produce a steady supply of pre-packaged talking points designed for your mouth.

The proper agent response is to be useful to the seller in front of you and skeptical of every piece of content built to be carried into that conversation. Read the filings. Run the numbers. Document the decisions. Speak in your own voice.

That is the work. It always has been.

Darryl Davis, CSP, is a speaker, coach, and bestselling author who has trained real estate professionals, and the leaders who build them, for more than 40 years. Read his whitepaper on private listings here. He is the founder of the POWER AGENT® Coaching Program and Darryl Davis Seminars. Learn more at darrylspeaks.com.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of HousingWire’s editorial department and its owners.

To contact the editor responsible for this piece: tracey@hwmedia.com

This post was originally published on here. 

Mortgage applications for new home purchases rose 3.8% year over year in May but fell 3% from April, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA)’s Builder Application Survey, released Thursday. The figures are not seasonally adjusted.

New home purchase activity softened during the month, with the MBA estimating new home sales at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 642,000 units in May, down 2% from April’s pace of 655,000.

“New home purchase activity slowed in May, with MBA’s estimate of new home sales declining to 642,000 units,” Joel Kan, MBA’s vice president and deputy chief economist, said in a statement. “Even as home builders continue to offer concessions to increase sales, homebuyers have been hesitant because of higher prices, increased economic uncertainty, and mortgage rates averaging over 6.5% in May.”

On an unadjusted basis, MBA estimated 58,000 new home sales in May, down 3.3% from 60,000 in April.

The survey uses mortgage application data from homebuilder subsidiaries, along with market assumptions, to produce early estimates of new home sales ahead of the U.S. Census Bureau’s official report.

By loan type, conventional loans accounted for 49.6% of applications. Federal Housing Administration (FHA) loans were 35.6% of applications, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) loans were 13.7% and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) loans were 1.1%.

The average loan size declined from $378,384 in April to $372,825 in May.

“The average loan size to purchase a new home was at the lowest level in 10 months at $372,825, consistent with government loans accounting for more than half of applications for the fifth consecutive month,” Kan said.

This article was generated using HousingWire Automation and reviewed by a HousingWire editor before publication.

This post was originally published on here. 

Summit Sotheby’s International Realty has cemented its position as a leading Utah brokerage, placing more real estate professionals on the 2026 RealTrends Verified rankings than any other firm in the state.

The firm represented 39 of Utah’s top 100 agents by sales volume and 40% of the state’s top 25 agents.

That includes the No. 1 ranked individual agent in Utah by sales volume, Michael LaPay, who reported just over $193 million in volume. Summit Sotheby’s also counts the No. 7, No. 8 and No. 11 ranked agents among its ranks — along with three more in the top 20.

The company recorded more than $4.5 billion in 2025 sales volume.

Chief Marketing Officer Tiffany Fox attributed the firm’s performance to a consistent focus on service quality rather than scale.

“Truthfully, we’ve never set out to be the biggest, but we’ve set out to be the best,” she told HousingWire. “What that looks like for us is kind of putting blinders up and ignoring what any other real estate firm or brokerage or trend is happening, and focusing on what our mission statement has been, which is to provide our advisors with world-class exceptional real estate support that is highly innovative.”

Founded in 2008 by Thomas Wright — who serves as CEO and principal broker — the firm has grown to just shy of 300 advisors serving the entire state of Utah.

Its footprint spans urban markets in the greater Salt Lake City area, destination ski communities like Park City and Deer Valley as well as desert markets including Moab and St. George.

Recent innovations

Fox said the brokerage recently deployed a suite of new technology communication platforms designed to give advisors real-time access to marketing efforts.

“We developed an entire platform because we interviewed so many technology platforms with the innovations that we’ve really wanted to go after, and what we determined is that none of those platforms, with all due respect to them, were good enough for our advisors in the way that we coach them to do business,” she said. “We built in-house — from the ground up — an entire platform to replace old platforms for them to a be able to communicate more effectively.

“Think of it like as a pizza tracker with Domino’s. You know where your pizza is or you know where your Uber driver is. Same story with all of the marketing efforts on any of their listings.”

Summit Sotheby’s maintains a 40-person in-house creative agency and has deployed additional videography and photography services to help agents position their properties.

The firm also employs what it calls a “property launch” strategy designed to create an authoritative first impression.

“We know that you only have one opportunity to make a first impression online,” Fox said. “Anyone can place an ad and have thousands and thousands of views on a property, but are those views qualified? Most of the time, no. That’s a lot of why our agents perform at the level in which they do, is because we don’t treat our business like the industry norms in any capacity.

“We generate more eyes, more interest, more understanding and knowledge of our properties than our competitors. Then, the proof is sort of in the pudding of the results.”

Communication as a foundation

Fox emphasized that the firm’s approach to client communication transcends price points and market segments.

The brokerage provides a communication report to every client that breaks down every portion of the transaction — including marketing efforts in chronological order, showing feedback, open house data, online traffic and zip code analytics.

“We deliver that every single week, and we have found, regardless of area or price point, that it truly differentiates us,” said Fox. “It also eliminates so many of the questions, the anxiety, the fears, and calms the entire situation down.”

For high-end luxury clients, the conversation shifts to lifestyle aspirations.

“When we really do [insert] ourselves into that super high luxury market, no one truly needs a $40 million property,” Fox said. “These are lifestyle decisions that people are making. Our conversations with them can be described as, ‘Wave your magic wand. What does your perfect day look like?’ Because, especially when we look in a ski marketplace, there’s a wide variety.

“There’s questions like, are your children skiers or snowboarders? We have skiers only mountains and there are skier and snowboarder mountains. How private do you want to be? What about land? Are you okay being 20 or 30 minutes up the mountain and away from gas stations and grocery stores?”

Utah’s market momentum

The firm’s success comes as Utah continues to attract buyers from coastal markets and beyond.

Fox pointed to major developments including the impending return of the Olympic Games to the greater Salt Lake City area and significant ski resort expansion work.

“We are so fortunate to call Utah home because of that differing lifestyle component, but also the investment that the state makes into growth and new business,” she said. “Because of all of these things, our demand continues to increase and to remain steady.”

Salt Lake City International Airport, which recently underwent a multi-billion-dollar renovation, has increased direct flights to major markets and European destinations.

Fox also noted the growth of “Silicon Slopes,” where companies like Adobe have established major hubs — bringing workforce relocations from coastal areas.

“Those nuances are what continue to make Utah one of best places to live, where people are moving to,” she said. “We’re seeing immense traction, properties going under contract, property selling, cash buyers and traditional financing buyers as well. Our market continues to thrive, despite what you may hear in the headlines.

“We handle the entire buyer and seller spectrum. It’s a luxury experience and a luxury brand of delivery, regardless of area or price point.”

This post was originally published on here. 

A broad coalition of banking and housing finance trade groups is urging federal regulators to scale back parts of the proposed Basel III capital rules, arguing that overlapping requirements and elevated risk weights could unnecessarily restrict lending and economic growth.

The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA), the Community Home Lenders of America (CHLA) and several other groups submitted comment letters this week to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

The groups said that while the Basel reproposal is a “step in the right direction” compared to the 2023 version, it still includes areas of “overcapitalization” that they say are not well aligned with underlying risk. They said the framework would benefit from additional tailoring to the structure of the U.S. financial system, particularly in mortgage lending, servicing and warehouse financing.

In a joint statement, a coalition that includes the Consumer Bankers Association, the American Bankers Association, the Bank Policy Institute, the Financial Services Forum and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said the proposal “represents a significant improvement over the previous version,” noting progress in simplifying the framework and better aligning capital requirements with risk.

“However, some overlapping requirements remain, leading to excessive capital charges for certain risks. Our recommended changes would further improve risk sensitivity and reduce unnecessary complexity, advancing the proposal’s stated goals. The changes will ultimately benefit bank customers and the economy while promoting a sound banking system,” the statement read.

In their 41-page letter, the groups urged regulators to reduce overlap between the stress capital buffer and the proposed rule, particularly for operational risk. They recommended applying a uniform 12% business indicator coefficient, along with revisions to market risk and credit valuation adjustment frameworks, to eliminate what they described as “double counting” between stress testing and capital requirements.

They also called for retaining current definitions of “commitment” and “unconditionally cancelable,” warning that proposed changes would introduce ambiguity, increase uncertainty in the capital framework and potentially raise lending costs.

To support mortgage market activity, the groups recommended cutting the risk weight for appropriately hedged mortgage servicing assets to 100% from 250%. They also recommended an implementation date no earlier than Jan. 1, 2028, to allow adequate time for compliance and to better align timing with the forthcoming stress test rule.

MBA, CHLA pen separate letters

MBA, in its own 32-page letter dated June 18, said banks play a central role in mortgage lending, mortgage servicing, warehouse financing for independent mortgage banks (IMBs) and commercial real estate lending. The trade group argued that capital rules should preserve banks’ ability to provide liquidity across those markets.

MBA recommended reducing the proposed 250% risk weight on mortgage servicing assets (MSAs) to no more than 100%, and it called for adjustments to warehouse lending rules to better align capital treatment with the risk of underlying mortgage collateral.

It also urged regulators better to recognize private mortgage insurance in residential mortgage capital calculations and to reduce capital burdens on certain securitization exposures, including those through the government-sponsored enterprises.

The MBA said its recommendations reflect nearly three years of engagement with regulators and policymakers, including prior comment letters and congressional testimony.

“MBA is concerned that, without further targeted refinements, the final rules could continue to discourage depository institution participation in residential and commercial mortgage origination and servicing and further reduce housing affordability for first-time homebuyers and underserved communities,” the letter stated.

Separately, CHLA also supported portions of the proposal, including lower capital treatment for mortgages and mortgage servicing rights, while pressing regulators to reduce capital requirements on warehouse lending.

CHLA, which sent its own comment letter on June 17, called for cutting warehouse loan risk weights to 50% from 100%. It argued that the short-term, collateralized nature of the exposures makes current treatment overly conservative.

CHLA, which represents IMBs, noted that nonbank lenders now originate about 84% of U.S. mortgages, up from roughly 30% in 2013. It also pointed to a sharp decline in bank participation in government-backed lending, including Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and Ginnie Mae programs, over the past decade.

The group also reiterated its long-standing call for federal regulators to develop a standby liquidity facility for nonbank Ginnie Mae issuers, arguing that independent mortgage banks lack access to the same emergency funding tools available to banks during periods of market stress.

This post was originally published on here. 

California officials have reached a sweeping settlement with Florida-based MV Realty — requiring the real estate company to void homeowner agreements, remove liens from properties and pay out millions of dollars.

The agreement resolves a lawsuit filed in December 2023 by California Attorney General Rob Bonta, along with the district attorneys of Napa and Santa Barbara counties.

Litigation alleged that MV Realty misled homeowners into signing long-term contracts in exchange for small upfront cash payments while placing liens on their homes that restricted future sales, refinancing and other transactions.

Under the settlement, MV Realty must cancel all homeowner contracts in California, individually terminate every lien it recorded against affected properties and reimburse homeowners who paid early termination fees.

The company must pay more than $1.3 million in consumer restitution and nearly $1.2 million in civil penalties — bringing the total judgment to about $2.5 million.

In addition, MV Realty, its CEO and chief operating officer are barred from engaging in California businesses requiring a real estate license for five years.

“We will not tolerate predatory conduct that targets vulnerable Californians and puts their homes at risk,” Bonta said. “This settlement delivers the relief we sought in our lawsuit, including full restitution for consumers and the complete undoing of the unlawful practices at issue. At a time when Californians are facing an affordability crisis, exploitation like this only adds pressure on households struggling to make ends meet — and it is unacceptable.”

Case background

MV Realty began operating in California in early 2022. State officials secured a preliminary injunction against the company in September 2024 that required it to terminate its liens — a decision upheld on appeal in December 2025.

A trial had been scheduled to begin June 10 in Los Angeles County Superior Court before the parties reached the settlement.

Homeowner Benefit Agreements from MV Realty offered homeowners between $300 and $5,000 in exchange for granting the exclusive right to list their homes if they were sold at any point during the next 40 years.

If homeowners chose another agent or attempted to end the agreement early, they faced a fee equal to 6% of the home’s appraised value. Officials have said liens tied to those agreements could interfere with property transfers, refinancing or home equity loans.

“MV Realty placed profits ahead of people by taking advantage of struggling homeowners and locking them into decades-long agreements by employing deceptive and unlawful business practices,” Napa County District Attorney Allison Haley said. “It was a privilege to work with our colleagues at the Attorney General’s Office and the Santa Barbara District Attorney’s Office in obtaining a settlement that holds MV Realty accountable, provides meaningful relief to impacted homeowners, and reinforces that California will take action against predatory practices that exploit the financially vulnerable.”

Other efforts to halt listing agreements

California lawmakers previously responded to similar business practices by approving legislation that took effect Jan. 1, 2024 — limiting residential exclusive listing agreements to two years and prohibiting such agreements from being recorded with county recorders.

MV Realty launched its Homeowner Benefit Agreement program in 2020 and, at its peak in 2023, said it had enrolled more than 35,000 homeowners across 33 states while paying nearly $40 million to participants.

After facing lawsuits from multiple state attorneys general beginning in late 2022, the company suspended the program in February 2023 and later filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in September 2023.

This article was written by Jonathan Delozier and generated with the assistance of HousingWire Automation. It was reviewed by a HousingWire editor before publication.

This post was originally published on here. 

Rep. Nikema Williams (D-Ga.) reintroduced legislation on Thursday aimed at expanding access to mortgage credit by requiring lenders, at an applicant’s request, to consider additional financial information not typically reflected in traditional credit scores.

The legislation — titled the Expanding Access to Credit through Consumer-Permissioned Data Act and shared exclusively with HousingWire ahead of its reintroduction — would amend the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) by requiring mortgage lenders to consider alternative financial data when evaluating borrowers.

Under the bill, lenders would be required to consider consumer-authorized alternative financial data, including rental payment history, bank-statement information and other payment records not typically included in traditional credit reports, if a mortgage applicant requests it and authorizes its use.

The legislation would also require automated underwriting systems to incorporate consumer-permissioned data into mortgage credit decisions.

Williams, who represents Georgia’s 5th Congressional District and is a member of the House Financial Services Committee, said the legislation is intended to help consumers who are “credit invisible” despite demonstrating a history of paying their bills on time.

“I’ve been unbanked. I know what it’s like to work hard, pay your bills and do everything right, only to have the financial system tell you that you don’t qualify,” Williams said in a statement.

Williams said she is now a homeowner and wants others to have the same opportunity. She also framed the measure as a step toward narrowing wealth disparities.

“Homeownership is one of the most powerful tools we have to build generational wealth and close the racial wealth gap,” she said. “My legislation will expand access to homeownership by recognizing financial responsibility wherever it’s found, helping more families secure the promise of America and build lasting wealth for future generations.”

According to findings included in the bill, approximately 32 million Americans either lack a credit history with the nation’s major credit reporting agencies or do not have enough credit history to generate a score. The legislation cites prior research from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) showing that these consumers are disproportionately low-income, younger and people of color.

Supporters argue that incorporating alternative data into mortgage underwriting could help expand access to credit for borrowers with limited traditional credit histories while providing lenders with a more complete picture of an applicant’s financial behavior.

The bill would require lenders to notify mortgage applicants of their right to submit additional credit information and explain the potential benefits of doing so. Those notices would be required in the eight most commonly spoken languages among individuals with limited English proficiency.

The measure also directs the CFPB to develop implementing regulations and requires federal agencies and developers of mortgage underwriting systems to ensure compliance with the new requirements.

The legislation is co-sponsored by Reps. Sylvia Garcia (D-Texas), Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-N.J.), Gwen Moore (D-Wis.) and Alma Adams (D-N.C.). The Consumer Federation of America and the National Consumer Law Center are also endorsing the bill

If enacted, the CFPB would have 18 months to issue final rules implementing the legislation before the requirements take effect.

This post was originally published on here. 

The real estate industry just got a headline that reads like a misprint. Bed Bath & Beyond is buying a brokerage. The same Bed Bath & Beyond that filed for bankruptcy and closed every store it owned a few years ago. The brand name will grab the attention. The strategy behind it is what industry leaders should study.

On June 17, Fathom Holdings signed a definitive agreement to be acquired by Bed Bath & Beyond, Inc. in an all-stock transaction. The deal values Fathom at roughly $53.38 million, with Fathom shareholders receiving 0.2236 shares of Bed Bath & Beyond stock for every share they own. The companies expect to close in the second half of 2026, subject to regulatory approval and a vote of Fathom shareholders.

Not yesterday’s Bed Bath & Beyond

The company writing the check is not the retailer most people remember. The original Bed Bath & Beyond collapsed in 2023. Overstock.com bought the brand and the intellectual property out of bankruptcy, renamed itself Beyond, Inc., then in 2025 took the Bed Bath & Beyond name back because it was the most valuable piece of intellectual property the company owned.

Today, led by the television entrepreneur Marcus Lemonis, it owns Bed Bath & Beyond, Overstock, buybuy Baby, Kirkland’s Home, The Container Store and a portfolio of other assets. It is a holding company built around a famous name.

Lemonis has been direct about the vision. He is building what he calls Everything Home, an ecosystem organized around three pillars: homeownership and transactions, omnichannel commerce, and home services. Fathom fills the first pillar, bringing brokerage, mortgage, title, insurance and a technology platform. The pitch is a single company that can sell a consumer the house, finance it, insure it and then furnish it. On paper, it is a coherent idea, and Lemonis has assembled real scale to chase it.

Give both companies their due. Fathom is a respected, fast-growing platform. In 2025, it generated about $420 million in revenue, up 25% year over year, with transactions up nearly 15%, built on a technology-first model and a growing set of higher-margin mortgage and title services. Bed Bath & Beyond, for its part, has been mounting a real turnaround. In its most recent quarter it returned to revenue growth for the first time in 19 quarters, sharply narrowed its losses, and ended the period with about $163 million in cash.

The structure deserves a clear eye

This is an all-stock deal, so the value moves with the share price, and neither company has reached profitability yet. That is not unusual in this part of the industry, where plenty of well-regarded names have run at a loss while building scale, but it does mean the payoff here depends on execution.

When the news broke, Fathom shares jumped about 82%, a sign investors saw real upside in the pairing. The honest way to read it is two growth-stage companies, each bringing real assets, betting that together they can reach a scale neither could reach alone.

Here’s why this matters beyond one transaction. The deal is part of a sustained push to own the entire homeownership journey. Portals, national brokerages, lenders and now a retail conglomerate are all chasing the same outcome: a single front door that captures search, financing, title, insurance, the sale itself and everything the consumer buys after the keys change hands. Whoever owns that front door owns the customer relationship and the data that comes with it.

That ambition raises questions our industry should be discussing now

When one company controls every step of the transaction, where does independent advice live? What does real consumer choice look like inside a closed ecosystem? And what happens to open competition, and to the MLS, when the goal is to keep the consumer inside one funnel from the first search to the closing table? These are not reasons to panic. They are reasons to pay attention and to lead the conversation rather than react to it.

There is a larger point that often gets lost in deal coverage. You can bundle services. You can connect a brokerage to a lender to a title company to an insurance product to a furniture catalog. What you cannot bundle is trust and judgment.

The purchase of a home remains the largest financial and emotional decision most people ever make and consumers still want a knowledgeable professional who represents their interests, reads the local market and negotiates on their behalf.

No platform has replaced that, and the evidence keeps pointing the other way. The more the transaction gets automated and packaged, the more valuable independent, expert human guidance becomes.

Here’s the honest read for industry leaders

The name on this deal is a curiosity. The strategy behind it is the story. The race to own the full homeownership journey is accelerating, and it is not going to slow down. Our job is not to fear it. Our job is to compete on the one thing these platforms cannot manufacture, the trusted relationship between a skilled professional and the family they serve. That is where the lasting value sits, and it is not for sale.

Darryl Davis, CSP, is a speaker, coach, and bestselling author who has trained real estate professionals, and the leaders who build them, for more than 40 years. He is the founder of the POWER AGENT® Coaching Program and Darryl Davis Seminars. Learn more at darrylspeaks.com.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of HousingWire’s editorial department and its owners.

To contact the editor responsible for this piece: tracey@hwmedia.com

This post was originally published on here. 

Ralo, an AI-native mortgage broker founded by two former Google employees, has raised a $2.9 million seed round to expand its automated home loan platform, which the company says delivers interest rates below the national average and closes loans in roughly half the industry’s typical timeline.

Co-founders Arjun Lalwani and Helly Shah, who met while working at Google, position Ralo as the “first AI-native mortgage broker,” meaning the mortgage process, from initial rate shopping to post-closing, is handled primarily by an AI loan officer rather than a human one. 

Ralo, which is a portmanteau of the words “rates” and “low,” uses artificial intelligence to help consumers compare mortgage options, obtain preapprovals and navigate the loan process. 

“We started Ralo because we were homebuyers ourselves. Arjun bought a condo in San Francisco, I bought a condo in New York, and we went through the mortgage process. And as two Googlers … it was absolutely jarring how archaic the mortgage process is for consumers,” Shah said in an interview with HousingWire ahead of the launch.

Shah and Lalwani became licensed loan officers and built Ralo over the span of one year. As a licensed broker, the company is onboarded to lender platforms and uses its engine to surface the lowest rate available for a borrower’s scenario on a given day. Ralo’s technology aggregates and synthesizes price sheets from multiple wholesale lenders. 

“Helly and I took the hard path of getting licensed as loan officers ourselves … because if you’re building tech for this industry and for customers, we need to understand both sides,” Lalwani sai.

The founders, who are the sole employees of the company, did not disclose which lenders they are currently working with. 

New York-headquartered Ralo said it closed its first loans in March and is currently licensed in California, Colorado and Texas. The company did not disclose how many loans it has done, but it currently reports that customers are seeing an average savings of 0.6 percentage points relative to the national benchmark, with some cases reaching 1 full percentage point. 

“We use AI to shop for deals, eliminate a lot of the intermediaries, and reduce processing costs for end consumers, and that usually means that customers get rates that are more than half a point below the national average,” Lalwani said.

He added that Ralo is “hovering” at an average of 15 to 17 days to closing.

Shah said that the entire process is automated using AI and that customers can go to Ralo, answer a few questions without having to provide their email or phone number, and see what the best deal is available for them on that day. “That is automated with AI,” she said. 

Shah said that if a customer chooses to proceed, Ralo’s AI loan officer guides them through the entire process, but she and Lalwani are on standby if human help is wanted. 

The funding round included backing from investors like Y Combinator, Manresa Ventures and Pack Ventures, along with angel investors Charles Ferguson, the director of the documentary “Inside Job,” and Ryan Frazier, co-founder and CEO of Arrived.

The founders were part of startup accelerator Y Combinator’s spring 2025 cohort. Shah and Lalwani confirmed that the seed funding will be used in three main areas: product and engineering enhancements; sales and marketing to build brand awareness; and licensing expansion beyond the handful of states where Ralo is currently approved to operate.

This post was originally published on here. 

There is no denying that consumer usage of AI during a home sale or purchase transaction is on the rise. 

According to a study published earlier this month by Veterans United Home Loans, 53% of prospective homebuyers say they’d be comfortable buying a home without any direct human involvement. The study also found that 89% of prospective buyers would share personal financial information with an AI-powered lender tool for tailored mortgage advice. However, only just a quarter of survey respondents said they would be “very comfortable” closing a home purchase without any human involvement. 

Additionally, a Realtor.com study published in October 2025, found that 82% of consumers are using AI for real estate insights. Additionally, while 65.6% of survey respondents found getting information from real estate agents as a “positive use of time” this was closely followed by 61.9% of consumers reporting that getting information from AI was a positive use of time. 

So while consumer AI-usage is going up, it is clear that a large portion of homebuyers and sellers still want a human advisor involved in the transaction. However, brokers say this is changing the role of the human real estate agent.

“The conversation we’ve been having with our agents is how do we transition from information providers to real estate advisors because with AI and technology consumers can get all of the information, but the information is only as good as the questions you are asking,” Amy McCann, the head of agent success at The Keyes Company, said. “So, how do we take that information that the consumer was able to generate and then use judgment and local knowledge and really our experience to advise them on what makes sense.”

How consumers are using AI

Brokers said they are seeing clients use AI to do everything from find information about neighborhoods to advising them on lists or offer prices on properties. Due to this, Linda O’Koniewski, the broker-owner of Leading Edge Real Estate, said she has recently rewritten a series of letters the brokerage sends to clients over the course of their home buying or selling journey.

“We know the consumers are using AI, and we are telling them that AI is for research, not decisions or judgement as real estate is so nuanced,” she said. “The biggest thing is that they shouldn’t be outsourcing their thinking as they make the largest financial decision of their lives.”

While some agents may be frustrated or feel threatened that their clients are using AI, O’Koniewski said it is important for agents not to scold consumers for using AI. 

In addition to general research, pricing and even contract review, O’Koniewski said she and her agents have also seen consumers create repair lists for a seller based on home inspection reports. 

“Our listing agents and sellers have gotten repair lists back that are just ridiculous with things like gutter extensions and GFCI outlets and that just aggravates the sellers,” O’Koniewski said. “AI is a very poor gauge of the labor costs in most markets and it doesn’t understand local business customs and practices.” 

McCann said she and her agents in Florida have also seen these AI-generated repair lists. 

“What we’ve focused on with our agents is how to take this information and use judgement and understanding of the local marketplace to put the plan into action,” McCann said. “One of the things I tell our agents is that it’s an evolution of what we’ve been seeing. It went from information being passed from friends and family, to then the internet, to now having AI. They are checking with LLMs at every stage, and they are coming to the table armed with all this information and then asking the agents to put it into use and create the strategy for them to move forward.”

Could consumer reliance on AI impact commissions?

This increased consumer reliance and confidence in AI comes as industry experts predict that AI could drive down real estate agent commissions. “The Home Sale Transaction, Reconsidered,” published last week by Amit Kulkarni and Russ Cofano of Alloy Advisors, broke down the tasks bundled into a listing commission that have been commoditized by software and AI, finding that the remaining “human core” of the job does not scale with home price. 

Before AI, the report found that tasks like MLS entry, listing descriptions and transaction coordination had a combined market value of roughly $1,500 to $3,500 per listing, but with modern tools, the report found that their marginal cost of these services has fallen close to zero for a competent AI user, aside from $10 to $30 per deal for workflow software. As for the “human-value tasks” like skilled negotiation, emotional coaching, hyperlocal knowledge and licensed fiduciary accountability, the report estimated that costs to be roughly $2,000 to $6,500 per transaction, regardless of home price. If this cost does not scale with home prices, this, in theory, could drive down commissions for some agents. 

To O’Koniewski, this presents a great opportunity for the top agents and those willing to go the extra mile for clients to really shine. 

“The smart agents, the good agents, will always do extremely well because they don’t operate on an algorithm,” she said. “They work on high emotional intelligence, they bring amazing insight to the transaction and they protect people from themselves. People want to work with people who care.” 

McCann agrees, saying this change in consumer behavior has caused agents to “step up their game.” 

“There is so much information out there, so it is a matter of the agents coming to the table more informed and being able to translate that into what that actually means for pricing and strategy,” she said. 

Where to start

As for agents concerned about working with these AI-equipped consumers, O’Koniewski said the first thing she tells every agent to do is search the questions that buyers and sellers are most frequently asking AI so they can be aware.

“Then, make sure you are going into a listing appointment or a buyer meeting knowing the information that the LLMs can’t gain access to,” she said. “I am also encouraging my agents to go into and LLM in incognito mode in their browser and ask the AI what a fair price is on a property so they can go into a listing appointment and show the client that they asked AI too and then they can see the discrepancies in answers and have a conversation about how the AI lacks local context.” 

Here’s a strong ending that brings it back to the agent’s value without sounding defensive:

For brokers, the shift is less about competing with AI and more about helping agents understand where it stops.

Consumers may arrive with more information than ever, but that doesn’t mean they have the context, judgment or strategy to use it well. AI can summarize an inspection report, suggest a list price or explain contract language, but it can’t read the room during a negotiation, understand the seller’s motivation or know which repair requests are customary in a specific market.

That is where brokers say agents have to make the turn from being the source of information to being the interpreter of it.

AI may be changing the questions consumers bring to the table. But for agents who can provide judgment, local expertise and a steady hand through an emotional transaction, the answer may still be very human.

This post was originally published on here. 

Real estate fraud prevention firm CertifID has acquired CloseSimple, a closing experience platform used by hundreds of title companies, the companies announced Thursday.

Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

The acquisition combines CertifID’s fraud prevention infrastructure with CloseSimple’s communication and automation capabilities — creating a unified platform that aims to address what CertifID CEO and co-founder Tyler Adams described as customer demand for both security and efficiency.

“What [CertifID and CloseSimple] found was that our customers were trying to pull us closer and closer by saying, ‘Well, security would be great, but it needs to have communication and automation, and for communication and automation to be great, it needs to have more security,’” he told HousingWire. “So, we started to build overlapping features and functionality to the point where our customers were like, ‘Guys, why don’t you just get together? Why aren’t you guys doing this now?’

“I couldn’t think of a more natural evolution of how the two businesses have evolved, and also, how now we’re coming together.”

The acquisition comes as title companies face what Adams described as a “dual threat” — losing younger homebuyers to competitors with more streamlined digital experiences while operating on infrastructure that makes them targets for fraud.

Millennials are now the largest cohort of active homebuyers and Gen Z is projected to account for 30% of all homebuyers by 2030, according to CertifID.

CertifID said it has now blocked more than $283 million in fraud attempts and recovered $132 million on behalf of clients since its founding.

A modern closing experience

Adams said the combined company envisions a closing experience that operates with minimal manual intervention.

“We really see it as this automated experience that just happens — like you’ve got buyers, sellers, real estate agents and title companies that are all being seamlessly guided from start to finish,” Adams said. “That would be without having to do a follow-up or remind somebody to complete something.”

He described a future where every action is automated and completed securely, with all parties receiving continuous updates through an agentic system.

“What that feels like as a consumer is this very safe, secure, simple process where purchasing a home — which is one of the most important purchases of your life and the most valuable — has this incredible experience and feeling around it,” Adams said. “That’s not what it is today, which is stress and nerves and this horrific feeling of, ‘What’s going to go wrong?’”

Integration and metrics

Adams emphasized that the CloseSimple team would remain intact following the acquisition.

“I can tell you right now, the CloseSimple team is here to stay,” he said. “This acquisition, in large part, came because we wanted to work with every member of their team. We wanted them to be involved every step of the way. Their platform is remaining — and they’re going to continue to utilize their experience.”

Adams also said the company aims to help title companies win more business by making their services more attractive to real estate agents and brokerages.

“We believe that real estate agents and brokerages are going to choose companies that are utilizing our software, because it’s going to make the experience that much better for the clients that they serve,” he said.

Security and convenience — no longer a choice

Adams said technology has evolved to the point where security no longer requires significant friction.

“When we first entered the market eight years ago, we really had to focus on security and security equaled friction,” he said. “I think as we’ve developed our security to be even stronger, we’ve been able to do it in a manner where the friction has been reduced, where it can kind of happen seamlessly behind the workflow that they’re already operating in.”

The combined company will deepen integrations with title production systems and accelerate the use of artificial intelligence across the closing workflow, according to the announcement.

“I think that the resounding thing that keeps coming back is around the quality of our two teams and the trust that people have in these two businesses to be able to deliver something great,” Adams said. “As title gets bigger and noisier and everything else is happening, we want to be the safe place that they come to — to know that they’ve got a partner to help build a great business in real estate.”

This post was originally published on here. 

Compass is expanding its presence in northern Arizona with the addition of veteran real estate professional Shane Randall, who joins the brokerage after previously working with Russ Lyon Sotheby’s International Realty.

Randall will help lead Compass’ expansion in the Flagstaff, Arizona, market alongside Arizona Sales and Growth Manager Patrick Clark.

“Flagstaff has its own identity and energy,” Randall said. “You’ve got luxury buyers, retirement-home demand, university influence and very limited inventory all operating inside one market. There’s a lot happening here right now, and we see significant opportunity in northern Arizona.”

Randall moved to Arizona from Chicago in 2002 and previously worked in business, advertising and internet marketing before entering real estate.

He has built his business in Scottsdale’s golf and resort communities as well as Flagstaff’s luxury mountain-home neighborhoods, including Forest Highlands and Flagstaff Ranch.

Marie-France Dagenais also joined the northern Arizona team, while Kristina Henson, former Russ Lyon Sotheby’s International Realty agent and current president of the Northern Arizona Association of Realtors, joined Compass last week.

Existing Compass agents Keegan Olson and Chad Dragos will continue serving clients throughout the region.

The brokerage’s expansion comes as Flagstaff continues to attract buyers seeking luxury, second and retirement homes. The market also faces ongoing housing demand tied to the area’s university population and a limited housing supply. Buyers frequently come from the Phoenix metropolitan area, southern California and other western states, Compass added.

Dagenais brings more than 17 years of luxury real estate experience to Compass and is licensed in both Arizona and Florida. She also has experience in residential design, relocation services and home staging.

Compass said it plans to continue expanding its presence in northern Arizona and is exploring a permanent office in the region.

This article was generated using HousingWire Automation and reviewed by a HousingWire editor before publication.

This post was originally published on here. 

Homebuilder mergers and acquisitions (M&A) have changed dramatically since the Great Financial Crisis. What began as a survival-driven market dominated by public builders has evolved into a more competitive landscape shaped by private capital, foreign investment and the pursuit of scale. As builders seek greater operational efficiency and market expansion, consolidation activity is increasingly driven by long-term investors, secondary-market opportunities and evolving deal structures.

Founded in 2017, JTW Advisors is an investment bank specializing in M&A advisory for homebuilders and building products and services companies. Drawing from decades of operational and investment banking experience, the firm advises buyers and sellers nationwide on strategic growth and homebuilder consolidation.

In this conversation, Christopher Jasinski, CEO of JTW Advisors, Charles Schetter, Senior Managing Director and Ken McWilliams, Senior Vice President of Research, discuss how the homebuilder M&A market has evolved since 2010, why secondary and tertiary markets are attracting increased attention and how scale continues to reshape consolidation across the industry. 

HousingWire: How has the homebuilder M&A industry evolved since the Great Financial Crisis?

Ken McWilliams: Since 2010, we’ve tracked nearly 200 homebuilder transactions and seen the market evolve significantly. In the years immediately following the financial crisis, builders were still focused on survival, and transaction activity remained limited.

That began to shift in 2014 as the market regained strength. We saw a meaningful increase in transactions, particularly in larger primary markets, and public builders were the dominant acquirers because they had the strongest balance sheets and the most stability at the time.

Over the next several years, transaction activity continued to accelerate, but the biggest evolution has occurred during the last six years. The buyer pool expanded significantly beyond public builders. Today, the market includes large U.S. private builders, Canadian investors and especially Japanese buyers, who have become major players in the space.

In fact, roughly 30% of the transactions during the last several years involved foreign buyers. Year to date, most of the major acquisitions have involved Japanese firms. As public builder activity slowed, foreign investors and scaled private builders with strong balance sheets became more aggressive acquirers.

HW: How has the expanded universe of buyers impacted the industry?

Christopher Jasinski: The biggest impact is not simply the increase in buyers, but the diversity of buyers. Since 2010, 72 unique buyers have been involved in homebuilder transactions. Buyers now vary widely by strategy, targeting different geographies, product types and growth structures. 

Historically, selling to a public builder was often the only real option. In those deals, the acquirer typically bought the company outright and absorbed the operations. Today, sellers have far more flexibility.

Some buyers still want a full acquisition in which ownership is entirely transferred. Others prefer recapitalizations or partial acquisitions where founders retain equity, continue operating the business and gain access to additional capital to fuel growth. Founders can now access liquidity while remaining involved in the business and participating in future growth.

That diversity has made selling or recapitalizing a business a much more realistic option for private builders. It has increased overall transaction activity because builders now have multiple paths depending on their goals.

HW: What trends are emerging in homebuilder M&A?

Charles Schetter: One of the biggest trends is the industry’s move toward asset-light operating models. Builders are increasingly focused on improving asset turns and return on equity by reducing the amount of land they hold directly on their balance sheets.

That has elevated the role of land bankers in transactions. In many acquisitions today, a land banker participates alongside the buyer at closing, purchasing the lot pipeline and feeding lots back to the builder over time through takedown schedules.

For sellers, that adds complexity because they are effectively working with two sophisticated counterparties simultaneously: the buyer and the land banker. But it also allows builders to remain asset-light while continuing to scale.

Another major trend is the migration toward secondary and tertiary markets. These markets are often less competitive than major metros, which can create stronger margins. There is a concept we refer to as a “mid-sized defensible market”: Markets that are large enough to support growth but not large enough to attract every national builder.

Approximately half of the remaining private builders operate in these secondary markets, which is one reason acquisition activity has increasingly shifted there.

CJ: The margin opportunity is important. In many secondary markets, there are fewer institutionally backed competitors, which often leads to greater profitability. Well-capitalized builders can more effectively leverage scale advantages in those environments.

CS: The third major trend is the growing influence of Japanese homebuilder acquisitions. Firms like Sumitomo, Sekisui and Daiwa House have established a meaningful presence in the U.S. homebuilding market and collectively control a significant share of the industry by dollar volume.

Based on conversations we are having, we expect foreign investment to continue increasing steadily over time. The U.S. housing market remains highly attractive relative to opportunities in many foreign markets, and because homebuilding is fundamentally local, investors need a direct presence here to participate.

HW: What other trends are shaping the homebuilder M&A market today?

CS: Public builders, which historically led consolidation activity, are sitting out much of the current cycle. Many public companies believe that buying back their own stock yields a higher return than acquisitions because some are trading below book value.

At the same time, the market remains choppy. Interest rates, consumer sentiment and uneven demand have pushed public builders to focus heavily on quarterly performance. That has opened the door for large private builders and foreign investors who operate with much longer time horizons. Japanese firms, for example, often think in decades rather than quarters.

Another important development is that some public builders are now becoming acquisition targets themselves. Smaller public companies that struggle with profitability or scale may ultimately benefit from joining a larger organization.

KM: Homebuilding remains an extremely fragmented industry. Some efficiencies come with scale, and builders increasingly recognize that larger organizations can operate more profitably. That push toward scale is driving homebuilder consolidation at every level, including among public builders.

HW: Can you tell us what the future of homebuilder M&A looks like?

CJ: We believe activity will remain robust because the industry continues consolidating. Public builders now control more than half of the U.S. new home market, and when you include major foreign players, that percentage exceeds 60%.

On the supply side, there are still hundreds of private builders across the country that could become acquisition candidates. Because there are now so many different types of buyers and transaction structures, quality builders can usually find a partner that aligns with their goals.

On the demand side, scale remains the primary driver behind homebuilder consolidation because larger builders can spread overhead, improve margins and operate more efficiently within individual markets. Many builders pursuing acquisitions are focused less on entering new geographies and more on deepening scale in markets where they already operate.

CS: We often describe the middle market as “The Pit.” Builders generating roughly $25 million to $75 million in revenue can struggle because they are carrying the infrastructure required to operate, but lack enough volume to achieve strong margins. As builders move beyond that range and scale up to higher revenue levels, profitability improves significantly.

CJ: Scale matters at both the company and market levels. That is why builders continue pursuing acquisitions. Expanding within existing markets creates efficiencies and improves margins across the combined business. Ultimately, the desire to grow and operate more efficiently will continue to drive M&A activity regardless of where we are in the housing cycle.

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Your next prospect has already made up their mind about you. And you’ve never spoken.

Somewhere right now, someone who needs exactly what you do is typing your name into a search bar. They’re reading your LinkedIn profile. They’re scanning what you’ve posted, what others have said, what shows up and what doesn’t. They’re forming an opinion. And by the time you actually speak to them, that opinion is mostly complete. 

The online experience is where the decision actually gets made now. Not on the call. Not in the pitch. In the quiet research you never see, before you even know the prospect exists. Gartner and Forrester have tracked it for a decade: a prospect is about 70% of the way to a decision before they ever reach out. Seventy percent before the first call, before they fill out a form, before they reply to an email, before they even hear your voice.

It climbs every year. The figure was 57% in 2015. Seventy percent by 2019. It’s pushing 80% now. The conversation you think of as the start of the relationship is really the last step of a decision that’s nearly finished.

By the time they call, they’re not shopping around. They’ve already decided you’re a finalist. The call confirms what the research already told them, that you’re credible and you’re the smart choice. The call is the formality.

You’re not winning deals in the pitch. You’re winning them in the research, or losing them there, in an online experience you’ve either intentionally curated or unintentionally ignored. 

Trust has moved from institutions to individuals

For years, the industry ran on a simple promise. Do good work, and the referrals follow. The work still matters, but the referral doesn’t wait anymore. People research first. They shortlist before they reach out. And the ones who get the inquiries were already visible, already authoritative, already clear about who they are.

The person doing the research doesn’t believe much of anything anymore. Trust in institutions has cratered. Seventy percent of people now believe business leaders, government officials and journalists deliberately mislead them. That’s the perspective a prospect brings to your name before you’ve said a word. And it sits heaviest in financial services, a sector that has always had to earn belief the hard way.

But trust didn’t disappear. It moved. As faith in institutions fell, people started trusting individuals instead, and not just anyone. They trust experts and peers, the people who clearly know the thing and have lived it. Edelman’s data shows technical and subject-matter experts ranking as the most credible voices, while corporate executives and institutional spokespeople rank near the bottom. The expert is trusted now. The logo isn’t. You carry the logo. It doesn’t carry you.

The AI skepticism crisis

That rewrites how you get chosen. The borrower isn’t evaluating your lender. The referral partner isn’t evaluating your brokerage. They’re evaluating you. The institution behind you can’t earn that trust on your behalf. That job is yours now, and it gets done in public, online, before the first call.

AI poured fuel on all of it. The skepticism, the doubt, the sense that nothing online is quite what it claims, AI took that and multiplied it. The research phase your prospect is standing in is flooded. Same automated outreach. Same AI-written posts. Same polished profiles that all sound like they came off an assembly line, because most of them did. And buyers know it. Sixty-nine percent of consumers say they’re more skeptical of online content than they were a year ago, specifically because of AI. Less than four in ten believe they can even tell what’s real.

Imagine the actual moment. Someone is researching three professionals who do what you do. The credentials look alike. The websites are similar. The LinkedIn profiles are incomplete or inactive. The content could have been written by the same bot, and it probably was. They can’t verify any of it, and they don’t trust their own ability to try.

So the brain does what it always does under uncertainty. When it can’t trust the message, it judges the messenger.

Your lived experience is your best asset

When buyers can’t trust what they’re reading, they look for who they can trust instead. A real person with a real point of view becomes the smart choice, the signal that cuts through everything that looks machine-made. Researchers have measured the penalty on content people suspect came from AI, and it runs the other way too: a clearly human point of view carries a premium, one that grows as AI gets more capable.

The part AI can never touch is what you’ve actually lived. The deal that collapsed and taught you what to watch for. The borrower you talked off the ledge at 9 pm. The pattern you catch in seconds because you’ve seen it a thousand times. AI assembles information. It was never in the room. Your lived experience is the one input it can’t generate, and it’s the foundation of a brand worth trusting.

So go do what your next prospect is about to do. Search your own name. Read what comes back the way a stranger would, someone deciding whether to trust you with the biggest financial decision of their life. The gap between what you know and what they can see is the only thing standing between you and the deal.

By the time they call, the decision’s been made. The only question is whether it was made in your favor, and whether you gave them any reason it would be.

Stephanie Armstrong is the Founder and CEO of Moxie Creative Studios
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of HousingWire’s editorial department and its owners. To contact the editor responsible for this piece: zeb@hwmedia.com.

This post was originally published on here. 

Today, Kevin Warsh finished presiding over his first meeting as Federal Reserve chair, and boy, it was interesting to say the least. Now, keep in mind that I’m the only person on Earth who had #AnyOneButWarsh, so my feelings are well known, but as always, I’m going to call it down the line on what his comments means for the economy.

For now, I’m going to give you quick three-step takeaway. Tomorrow’s HousingWire Daily podcast will dive into today’s topic in more detail and will be just me speaking, as Editor in Chief Sarah Wheeler couldn’t join me today to talk about Warsh.

‘Uneven’ policy impacts housing

For our audience, mortgage rates matter.  The issue with mortgage rates is that inflation has taken off stronger than the Fed would like, and then the Iran conflict piled on top of that.

Without the labor data getting softer, it’s hard for mortgage rates to go much lower than where we are today. But Warsh did say that monetary policy is “uneven,” meaning that it’s tight for housing but not for other parts of the economy.

That’s a fair statement to make on his part and something former Chair Jerome Powell would never say. So, on that point, it’s a positive for the housing market that Warsh is thinking about this. This also means that if the economy softens, lowering rates to boost housing is something the new Fed leader is already considering.

Rest in peace, forward guidance

Another positive thing that I saw today is the end of forward guidance. I wasn’t a fan of the dot plot or the Fed’s projections, because they became very sloppy at times in capturing market reactions. So, death to the dot plots — which basically tells you what Fed members think about future federal funds rate policy — is fine with me. 

With that said, the knock on Warsh has always been that he isn’t an economic thinker. Nobody really knows what he believes, except that he’s been bashing the Fed for eight years and now he’s the chairman.

Once again, #AnyoneButWarsh, so he needs to do a better job of providing guidance for forward-looking market thinkers — or the markets will do it on their own. If this means he needs to leak stuff out to the Fed, so be it.

The task force is coming

Since we won’t have forward guidance, we will be getting a task force to review everything about the Fed. To me, this means that Warsh really wants to lose the dual mandate; he wants it to only be about price stability, so look for the task force to eventually recommend losing the dual mandate that also includes maximum employment.

But that move will need congressional approval, and I highly doubt he can muster the political support right now to make it happen. Warsh wants new ways to track labor and inflation data, which is fine. For the task force, a big question remains until we read about its findings.

Conclusion

I’ll admit my bias against Warsh. And it’s possible that when President Trump leaves office — especially if a Democrat returns to the White House — we will get Kevin Warsh 1.0 back.

That said, today’s press event was fine. Warsh can’t be seen as Trump’s boy who does anything to derail dovish policy efforts. The real issue here is that inflation has taken off and the labor market has stabilized.

The 10-year Treasury yield is at 4.50%, and with rate hikes now being priced in, that’s perfectly normal. Can things change six weeks from now when the Fed meets again? Yes, especially with the Iran conflict ending, but we must take it one day at a time.

This post was originally published on here. 

PNC Bank closed a $251.4 million Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) fund that will help finance the development and preservation of affordable rental housing across the country, the bank said in an announcement on Wednesday.

The transaction, PNC Multifamily Capital’s LIHTC Fund 104, includes capital from nine financial services and insurance companies, along with PNC. The fund reflects the bank’s strategy of using syndicated tax credit investments to expand affordable housing supply at a time of growing demand and limited inventory.

Fund 104 is expected to support 16 multifamily properties and more than 1,700 affordable rental homes for families, seniors and underserved households. The portfolio combines new construction and rehabilitation projects in Arizona, California, Kentucky, Minnesota, New Mexico, Nevada, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Washington, D.C.

Twelve properties will target families and four will serve seniors, according to the announcement. Seven properties will offer rental assistance, which can be a key tool for maintaining long-term affordability and stabilizing operating cash flow for owners in higher-cost or volatile markets.

“For nearly 30 years, PNC Multifamily Capital has brought together investors focused on delivering meaningful impact through the creation and preservation of quality, affordable homes,” said Megan Ryan, senior vice president and manager of tax credit equity syndication for PNC Multifamily Capital. “We are grateful for their continued support, which will help strengthen 16 developments across the country and provide lasting stability for residents.”

The fund’s projects are aimed at serving families, seniors and people who have experienced homelessness. Residency at the Mayer in Los Angeles will provide permanent supportive housing for seniors who are chronically homeless or living with disabilities. On-site services will include case management, benefits counseling, health care, substance use services, legal assistance, transportation and employment support.

Three properties in Kerrville, Texas — Heritage Oaks, The Meadows and Paseo de Paz — will deliver 224 rehabilitated apartments for families across multiple sites. Planned resident services include life skills training, help navigating social services, preventative health resources, transportation assistance and educational and community programming.

Malabu Manor in Lexington, Kentucky, will cater to seniors, with services focused on housing stability, connections to community resources and ongoing resident engagement. The property will also feature housing assistance aimed at keeping rents affordable relative to household income, an increasingly important feature for fixed-income renters facing higher costs.

PNC Multifamily Capital is a major provider of affordable multifamily equity as well as affordable and conventional debt. Through tax credit equity, agency lending programs and bank balance sheet lending, the platform finances multifamily properties, historic rehabilitations and community facilities.

As of Dec. 31, 2025, PNC Multifamily Capital oversaw approximately $16.2 billion in tax credit equity supporting 1,280 affordable rental properties, 138 New Markets Tax Credits investments and 78 historic properties nationwide. The company also manages a $35.2 billion agency loan portfolio, giving it significant scale across the housing-finance capital stack.

This post was originally published on here. 

Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate announced the merger of three affiliated brokerages in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, creating a combined company with more than 1,100 affiliated real estate professionals operating from 22 offices.

The merged brokerage will operate as Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Realty Connect, with a footprint extending from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to Westhampton, New York.

The merger combines Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Maturo, Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Dream Properties and Realty Connect USA.

Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Maturo reported just under $475 million in 2025 volume to RealTrends Verified, while Realty Connect USA recorded $1.06 billion.

Multiple agents from Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Dream Properties reported annual volume approaching or exceeding $10 million.

Realty Connect USA, founded in 2009 by Michael Ardolino, John Fitzgerald, Bart Cafarella and Fern Karhu, has grown to 16 offices and approximately 700 affiliated agents serving Long Island from Flushing to Westhampton.

The four founders will remain in executive leadership positions.

Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Maturo, led by co-owners Albert Faiola and Frank Stimiloski, expanded from a single office to eight locations with more than 400 affiliated agents over the past decade.

Under the merger, Faiola and Stimiloski will lead the combined brokerage, while Steve Deans, chief operating officer of Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Maturo, will oversee New Jersey operations.

Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Dream Properties, founded in 2016 by Aret Kayserilioglu and Fred Bollinger and based in Massapequa, New York, also joins the combined brokerage.

The company will become part of the Long Island operations, with Kayserilioglu and Bollinger remaining in leadership roles.

This article was generated using HousingWire Automation and reviewed by a HousingWire editor before publication.

This post was originally published on here. 

Wait! What?!?

Just curious. Is it me, or is anyone else getting at least a chuckle out of one of those moments when the housing universe seems to have hired a comedy writer?

For years, if you said “Clayton” in any kind of housing audience, people instantly thought of Berkshire Hathaway‘s Maryville, Tennessee-based manufactured housing giant — the company that sits at the center of perhaps the most vertically integrated housing ecosystem in America, and one that has engaged both federal agencies and Capitol Hill vigorously and successfully for years.

And if you said “Pulte,” nobody would conjure an image of the Washington intelligence agencies.

They thought of Bill Pulte’s grandfather’s brand-recognized company, one of the largest homebuilders in the nation. They thought of Pulte Homes‘ communities, model homes, golf course and active-adult developments, and quarterly earnings calls.

Now, suddenly, the headlines feed our devices like a fever dream:

“Clayton replaces Pulte.”

“Pulte to remain acting DNI while Clayton nomination delayed.”

An average political reporter regards these statements as workday standard-issue federal agency and Capitol Hill personnel stories.

Among housing professionals, these same headlines sure read like:

“Wait … Clayton Homes is taking over PulteGroup?”

“Did Berkshire just acquire PHM?”

“What happened while I was in a land committee meeting?”

The confusion gets even richer because the actual housing significance of both names is enormous.

“Clayton” represents the industry’s most consequential experiment in scale, vertical integration, factory-built housing, financing, insurance and distribution.

“Pulte” represents one of the most successful public homebuilding operating platforms of the past generation. Neither headline has anything to do with either company.

And yet every housing executive who scrolls their news feeds during their pro forma meetings has probably done the same double-take at least once over the past two weeks.

It’s almost as if the housing gods — you know, the ones that say, “Man plans; God laughs!” — looked down at 2026 and decided: “You know what would be funny? Let’s make ‘Clayton’ and ‘Pulte’ the two most confusing surnames in Washington at exactly the same moment.”

The irony becomes even more delicious when viewed through the lens of the broader housing conversation.

At the very moment HousingWire TBD, Wall Street analysts and builders themselves are debating affordability, scale, vertical integration, operational excellence, land-light strategies, manufactured housing, deregulation, attainable housing, and Berkshire Hathaway’s growing influence in residential construction, the names “Clayton” and “Pulte” have jumped the fence of housing entirely, wandering into the middle of a national security and congressional procedural drama.

You couldn’t script it that way if you tried. How many times has the name had to be clarified? Or, maybe more troubling, how many times is the name NOT clarified and consequently misunderstood?

“No, I meant that Clayton, not that Clayton.”

“Which Pulte did you mean during our policy advocacy meeting this morning?”

“I thought you were talking about Pulte and Clayton?”

“I was.”

For one brief moment in 2026, a homebuilding executive could legitimately open their phone and see a headline that says: “Pulte remains in place while Clayton waits for confirmation” … and have no honest idea whether the story is about housing, intelligence, Washington politics, Berkshire Hathaway, manufactured housing, public homebuilders or all of the above.

Which, even the soberest of us has to admit, is a pretty fitting metaphor for 2026 itself.

This post was originally published on here. 

The Federal Reserve on Wednesday left its benchmark interest rate unchanged at a target range of 3.5% to 3.75%, marking its fourth consecutive pause as it enters the Kevin Warsh era.

Monetary policy watchers, however, have changed their forecasts on the Fed’s next moves as they react to an economic landscape that has shifted dramatically since the start of the year amid rising inflation and a developing U.S.-Iran peace agreement.

The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) maintained its policy rate in a unanimous 12-0 vote.

“Economic activity is expanding at a solid pace despite elevated uncertainty that owes, in part, to the conflict in the Middle East,” the FOMC said in a statement. “Productivity growth and capital investment are strong. Job gains have kept pace with the workforce, and the unemployment rate has changed little. Inflation remains elevated relative to the Committee’s 2% goal, in part reflecting supply shocks that have driven price increases in certain sectors, including energy. The Committee will deliver price stability.”

On the macroeconomic front, inflation was running at an annual rate of 4.2% in May — more than double the Fed’s 2% target — driven in part by higher energy prices. Meanwhile, the labor market continues to show resilience, with the U.S. economy adding 172,000 nonfarm payroll jobs in May. 

“At the beginning of the year, markets expected the Fed to begin cutting rates by midyear as inflation cooled and labor market conditions softened,” First American deputy chief economist Odeta Kushi said in a statement. “Markets have largely abandoned the idea that easing is the default path. The conversation has shifted from ‘When will they cut?’ to ‘Will they cut at all?’”

Policymakers must now determine whether recent price pressures are temporary or likely to become more deeply embedded in the economy. As long as labor market conditions remain stable and inflation stays above target, policymakers have little urgency to lower rates, Kushi said.

Charles Goodwin, vice president and head of bridge and DSCR lending at Kiavi, pointed to the labor market’s continued strength as a key factor behind the Fed’s decision.

“The latest jobs report indicated stronger-than-expected economic performance, reducing the likelihood of a near-term Fed rate cut and reinforcing a higher-for-longer interest-rate environment,” Goodwin said.  

Precautionary rate hikes?

While investors in April largely expected the Fed to maintain current rates through the end of the year, about 7% now anticipate a rate hike in July and 30% expect one in September, according to the CME Group’s FedWatch tool.

Some investors are even beginning to price in the possibility of several rate hikes this year. In its midyear market outlook, asset manager PGIM warned that inflation risks remain elevated while the labor market appears to be somewhere between stabilization and reacceleration. 

As a result, the firm expects the Fed to raise rates three times this year to “shore up institutional credibility and anchor inflation expectations.”

“Our sense is that there will be political cover if the rate hikes are framed as a ‘precautionary’ response to supply-side inflation and recent volatility in long-term Treasurys,” PGIM wrote in its report. “We expect the Fed to reverse these hikes relatively quickly with three rate cuts in 2027 and one additional cut in 2028, resulting in a terminal rate of 3.375% — slightly below the current rate and likely close to the neutral rate.”

For the mortgage industry, however, a potential peace agreement with Iran plays a large role. 

“If a long-term deal is implemented and honored, inflation expectations could fall, pulling bond yields and mortgage rates lower as well,” said Dave Meyer, chief investment officer at real estate investing platform BiggerPockets. 

According to Kushi, mortgage rates are influenced far more by inflation expectations and Treasury yields than by the Fed’s policy rate itself.

“While the recent decline in Treasury yields is encouraging, a meaningful and sustained reduction in borrowing costs will likely require more than easing geopolitical tensions,” Kushi said. “Persistent federal deficits, elevated debt issuance and lingering inflation concerns continue to put upward pressure on long-term interest rates, reinforcing a higher-for-longer borrowing-cost environment.”

Joe Panebianco, CEO at AnnieMac Mortgage, added that now that oil has fallen sharply following the preliminary agreement with Iran, lower energy prices remove a major near-term inflation risk. But it is too early for the Fed to declare victory while energy flows remain disrupted.

“Counterintuitively, the clearest path to lower mortgage rates may be a Fed that stays firm. If its guidance reduces the inflation premium embedded in long-term Treasuries, the 10-year yield and mortgage rates can move lower even without a rate cut,” he said.

Editor’s note: This is a developing story and will be updated.

This post was originally published on here. 

Many brokerages were built for a different market — one where recruiting more agents, adding more leads or offering a bigger split could mask deeper operational issues.

But today’s market is exposing those cracks.

When a brokerage doesn’t have the right systems, support and accountability in place, everyone feels it. Brokers see lower revenue and higher churn. Agents feel unsupported or unclear on how to grow. And what should be a scalable business becomes a source of constant frustration.

I’ve seen this firsthand while building two successful brokerages with more than 1,200 active agents each. My previous brokerage ranked among the top 100 U.S. brokerages by sales volume. I launched my current brokerage this year, and based on early performance trends, we are projecting similar transaction volume by year-end.

Our internal data also shows that our agents close more transactions, generate more revenue and earn more repeat business than the industry average.

That experience has shaped how I think about brokerage growth. The strongest companies are not simply recruiting more agents or chasing more leads. They are building the systems, support and accountability that help agents produce consistently — and help the brokerage grow sustainably.

With that in mind, here are three areas brokers should rethink if they want to build a stronger, more scalable business.

Training and support

Some brokers see agent training and support as just another cost. On one hand, I understand their thinking — agents tend to hop from brokerage to brokerage throughout their career, so it may seem to be a waste of capital. On top of that, it often takes a while before the impact of training and support starts to show up in the bottom line.

I see this from a very different perspective though.

My agents are the foundation of my business, and because of that, I see their training and support as an investment in them and in my own brokerage.

Throughout my own career, I’ve consistently offered comprehensive training and support for my agents, because in my experience, I’ve found that it helps them start closing deals sooner and more consistently. It can also help them to close the tougher deals that other agents shy away from and to earn more repeat business.

As a result, our internal data shows that they tend to stay with me longer than the industry average because they feel supported and valued in their career here.

That typically means more revenue for my agents, and it also means more revenue, fewer HR headaches and lower recruiting and marketing costs for my brokerage.

Commission model

There isn’t a single source of data on commission models, but most industry data indicates that a majority of brokerages follow the traditional broker/agent commission split.

My brokerage runs on a different model. Agents pay a flat monthly fee and keep 100% of their commissions. For us, that structure works because it creates a clear, predictable business model for both the brokerage and the agent.

From the agent’s perspective, their costs are capped. No matter how many transactions they close, they know what they will pay each month while still having access to the brokerage’s full infrastructure, including training and support, document management and administrative services.

From the brokerage side, it also creates clarity. Rather than building the business around taking a percentage of each agent’s production, we focus on providing the systems, support and accountability that help agents become more productive. The model only works if agents see enough value in the platform to stay, grow and produce.

That is why it fits the way I run my company. I want agents to think like business owners. When they have a fixed cost to cover each month and know they will keep the commission they earn after that, the incentives become very clear. The more productive they are, the more upside they keep.

It also changes the relationship between the brokerage and the agent. Instead of the brokerage benefiting more every time an agent closes another deal, the brokerage has to earn its value by helping agents build consistent, sustainable production.

In my experience, that alignment matters. It rewards agents for growth, gives them more control over their income and pushes us as a brokerage to keep improving the infrastructure around them.

Work environment

Income is just part of what attracts top performers.

Most people want to enjoy their time at work, and for many, this is more important than their income. There are a lot of factors that go into creating an empowering work environment.

Training and support plays a big part because it helps your team become more effective and make more money. Respect and acknowledgment does too, because people want to feel like their efforts are recognized. And opportunity is critical because it gives your agents a path to bigger achievements.

There are also things you need to identify and ruthlessly remove from your brokerage.

Negativity is a big one because that spreads like wildfire. This means squashing gossip, complaining, and infighting. A common mistake brokers make is keeping agents around who cause internal conflict just because they close a lot of transactions.

You have to be highly intentional about building and nurturing a culture that aligns with your vision.

Derek Carlson is the president and managing broker of Realty ONE Group MVP, a Florida based real estate brokerage firm with over 1,100 real estate agents.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of HousingWire’s editorial department and its owners.

To contact the editor responsible for this piece: tracey@hwmedia.com

This post was originally published on here. 

At the start of 2026, the housing market appeared to be entering another year defined by familiar questions.

Would mortgage rates move lower? Would inventory continue growing? Would affordability challenges continue to suppress demand?

Six months later, some answers are becoming clearer. Others remain open questions.

The first half of 2026 didn’t produce a housing boom or a housing bust. Instead, it revealed a market that continues to adapt to higher rates, normalize after the pandemic era and diverge across regions in ways that national headlines often miss.

Some assumptions held up. Others didn’t.

Here are five lessons the data revealed during the first half of the year.

1. The housing market normalized, it didn’t break

Perhaps the biggest takeaway from H1 is that the housing market increasingly resembles a normal market rather than either extreme that defined recent years.

Average inventory during the first half of 2026 reached 731,069 homes. That’s well above the historic lows of 2021 and 2022, but still below pre-pandemic norms. Months of inventory averaged 2.44, compared to just 0.99 in 2022 and 2.13 in 2019.

Homes are taking longer to sell. Sellers are making more concessions. Buyers have more choices than they did during the pandemic boom.

At the same time, demand has remained remarkably resilient.

Weekly absorbed inventory averaged 77,877 homes during the first half of the year, nearly identical to 2025 despite mortgage rates remaining elevated and affordability challenges persisting.

The result is a market that looks increasingly balanced compared to the extremes of the past several years.

The anomaly was 2021 and 2022, not 2026.

Why it matters: For much of the past three years, housing conversations have focused on whether the market would break under the weight of higher rates. H1 suggests a different outcome: normalization.

2. Market strength became increasingly local

One of the clearest themes of H1 was how difficult it became to describe the housing market with a single national narrative.

Markets such as Hartford, Rochester, Cleveland and Columbus spent much of the first half of the year posting stronger absorption rates, tighter inventory conditions and shorter days on market than many of the markets that dominated housing conversations during the pandemic.

In Hartford, homes spent a median of just 21 days on market. In Rochester, the median was 14 days. Both markets maintained less than one month of inventory available.

Meanwhile, homes spent a median of 56 days on market in Dallas and Austin and 63 days in both Phoenix and Tampa.

That doesn’t mean Dallas, Phoenix or Tampa are weak markets. They continue to generate substantial transaction volume and remain important drivers of national housing activity.

What changed is that local fundamentals increasingly mattered more than broad regional narratives.

Why it matters: National trends can explain direction. Local market conditions increasingly determine outcomes.

3. The pandemic winners became normal markets

Several markets that defined the pandemic housing boom spent the first half of 2026 continuing their transition back toward more traditional market conditions.

Homes are taking longer to sell in many Sun Belt markets. Price cuts remain elevated compared to many Midwest and Northeast markets. Inventory has recovered significantly from pandemic-era lows.

Importantly, this doesn’t mean these markets are failing.

Dallas, Phoenix, Tampa, Atlanta and Denver continue to generate substantial housing activity. What changed is that they are no longer operating under the extraordinary conditions that defined 2021 and 2022.

Many of the markets that captured headlines during the pandemic are now behaving more like traditional housing markets again.

The pandemic boom normalized, it didn’t reverse.

Why it matters: Normalization and weakness are not the same thing. Many of today’s “slower” markets are simply returning to more sustainable conditions.

4. The markets that never needed a correction are standing out

Another theme that emerged during H1 was the difference between markets that experienced dramatic pandemic-era swings and those that didn’t.

Since June 2022, Rochester’s median list price has increased 51.2%. Cleveland is up 40.7%. Hartford has gained 31.3%.

By comparison, Austin’s median list price remains 25.4% below its 2022 level. Phoenix is down 11.0%, while Dallas, Denver and Tampa have all posted modest declines.

Many Midwest and Northeast markets never experienced the same combination of rapid price appreciation, investor activity and migration-driven demand that defined several Sun Belt markets.

As a result, they required less adjustment when mortgage rates rose and affordability pressures increased.

Their strength today often reflects stability rather than recovery.

Perhaps the clearest illustration of the first half of 2026 is this: Rochester is up 51% from June 2022, while Austin is down 25%.

That doesn’t mean Rochester is “better” than Austin. It highlights how differently markets experienced — and emerged from — the pandemic housing cycle.

Why it matters: Some of the strongest-performing markets in 2026 are benefiting from what didn’t happen during the pandemic as much as what did.

5. Inventory remains one of the market’s biggest unanswered questions

If there was one topic that repeatedly surfaced throughout the first half of the year, it was inventory.

Inventory growth slowed considerably from 2025 levels and recently turned negative year over year nationally. At the same time, new listings remain below historical norms.

The latest HousingWire Data shows 81,754 new listings during the week ending June 12. That’s an improvement from recent years but still below the roughly 94,000 listings typically seen during a pre-pandemic June.

Meanwhile, more than 420,000 homes are currently under contract nationwide.

The data suggests demand remains present. What remains less clear is how much activity the market could support if listing activity returned to historical levels.

The first half of 2026 answered some questions about inventory, but it also raised new ones.

Is inventory tightening because demand improved? Because new listings remain constrained? Because homeowner mobility remains unusually low? The answer is likely some combination of all three.

Why it matters: Inventory remains one of the most important variables shaping housing activity, but it may also be one of the least understood.

What to watch in the second half of 2026

If the first half of the year revealed anything, it’s that the housing market is becoming increasingly regional, increasingly local and increasingly nuanced.

Three questions stand out heading into H2:

• Will the Midwest and Northeast continue to outperform many higher-profile markets on absorption, days on market and pricing power?
• Will inventory continue tightening in parts of the South and West as those markets work through their post-pandemic adjustments?
• Will new listings recover closer to historical norms, or will homeowner mobility remain constrained?

The first half of 2026 didn’t settle the housing debate. If anything, it challenged several assumptions about where demand is strongest, what inventory growth means and which markets are setting the pace.

That may be the most important lesson of all.

The housing market is no longer defined by a single national story. It is increasingly shaped by local fundamentals, regional differences and the long tail of decisions made during the pandemic housing boom.

Understanding those differences may be the key to understanding what comes next.

To follow these trends in real time, explore HousingWire Intelligence, which provides inventory, pricing, demand and market activity data at the national, metro and ZIP-code level. For weekly analysis of mortgage rates, housing demand and the macroeconomic forces influencing housing activity, read HousingWire’s Housing Market Tracker.

HousingWire used HousingWire Data to source this analysis. This article is based on single-family residence data through June 12, 2026. Enterprise organizations interested in licensing housing market data at scale can learn more about HousingWire Data.

This post was originally published on here. 

Mortgage banking veteran Dave Hurt has joined Home Value Lock as an adviser, bringing more than five decades of experience in capital markets, mortgage banking, servicing and risk management to the position.

Hurt moves to the advisory role at Home Value Lock after serving in senior leadership positions at Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), Black Knight and Cotality (formerly CoreLogic). He’s also held executive roles at General Electric Mortgage Co., Redwood Trust, North American Mortgage Co. and Perpetual Bank and Mortgage Co.

“Dave’s experience is unmatched,” Oliver Tickner, founder and CEO of Home Value Lock, said in a statement. “He has spent decades helping shape the mortgage industry from nearly every angle, and he immediately recognized the opportunity Home Value Lock presents for consumers, lenders and builders alike.”

Home Value Lock offers an insurance product designed to help homeowners protect a portion of their home’s value against future market declines. The company is positioning the product as a tool for consumers, mortgage lenders and homebuilders during periods of housing market volatility.

“For many buyers, today’s decision isn’t simply about mortgage rates. It’s about protecting what is often their largest financial asset,” Hurt said in a statement. “Home Value Lock brings an entirely new layer of confidence to homeownership by helping protect against market downturns while preserving the long-term opportunity of homeownership.”

In his advisory role, Hurt will work with the Home Value Lock leadership team on growth strategy, lender and builder partnerships, market expansion and positioning the firm within the housing ecosystem, according to the company.

Hurt said consumer confidence remains a key challenge in an environment of elevated mortgage rates and economic uncertainty, noting that downside protection and risk transfer are becoming more central to discussions among lenders, investors and regulators.

He also pointed to potential adoption in the homebuilding sector, where incentives have increased as builders aim to move inventory without lowering list prices.

“Builders today are spending tens of thousands of dollars per home on incentives designed to move inventory while protecting headline pricing,” Hurt said. “Home Value Lock represents a potentially more efficient alternative because it addresses something buyers genuinely care about — protecting the value of what is often their largest investment.”

This article was generated using HousingWire Automation and reviewed by a HousingWire editor before publication. 

This post was originally published on here. 

A 6-foot-2 guard who was nearly passed over in the draft just outdueled the most physically dominant player in basketball. Every agent competing against a bigger, better-funded rival should pay attention.

This past Saturday night, the New York Knicks won their first NBA championship since 1973. The headline everyone will run is the 53-year drought finally ending. The story I want agents to see is the matchup at the center of it, because it is the cleanest David and Goliath you will ever find, and a version of it is playing out in your market right now.

You do not need to follow basketball to feel the weight of this one. It is a story about size, about being counted out and about winning anyway, and it belongs to anyone who has ever looked at a bigger competitor and wondered how on earth to compete.

David didn’t win by becoming Goliath

Start with this story’s Goliath. Victor Wembanyama, the San Antonio Spurs’ center, is the most physically dominant player in basketball. He stands 7 feet 4 inches tall with an eight-foot wingspan. He is the reigning Defensive Player of the Year, the youngest ever to win the award and the first to win it unanimously. He is, quite literally, what you would build if you could design a basketball player from scratch, the prospect every franchise on earth covets.

Now meet its David. Jalen Brunson, the Knicks’ point guard, stands 6 feet 2 inches. By NBA standards he is small, so small that for years the book on him was a single word: undersized. He won two national championships at Villanova and was still told he could never be the centerpiece of an NBA team. He was not a lottery pick or a sure thing. He was taken 33rd overall, in the second round, after 32 other names were called. He spent the early years of his career as an afterthought who simply kept betting on himself.

On Saturday, with a championship on the line, the 6-foot-2 player nobody drafted in the first round scored 45 points, was named Finals MVP, and walked off with the title. The 7-foot-4 phenom went home without it. Fourteen inches separated those two men and it did not decide a thing.

Here is the part that makes this a lesson and not just a feel-good story: David did not win by becoming Goliath. Brunson did not magically grow. He won with everything that has nothing to do with height. Footwork. Preparation. Relentlessness. Nerve in the final minutes, which is exactly why his nickname is Captain Clutch. And one detail should make every agent sit up: Brunson got to the free-throw line 15 times and made 13. Those are the unglamorous, uncontested, high-percentage points you earn by driving straight into the giant, over and over, instead of running away from him. The boring, repeatable play is what beat the freak of nature.

You already know who Goliath is

If you work in this industry, you already know who Goliath is. Goliath is the mega-team with the seven-figure marketing budget. It is the national portal that seems to own every lead. It is the deep-pocketed competitor who can outspend you on every billboard, every postcard, and every closing gift. It is the brokerage down the street with 100 agents and a name everyone recognizes. And if you are an independent agent, or a small team, or someone still building, you may feel exactly like that old scouting report said about Brunson: too small to compete with all of that.

You are not. But here is the trap, and I watch agents fall into it constantly. When they look at Goliath, they try to beat him at his own game. They try to outspend a budget they cannot match. They try to be on every platform the giant is on, all at once. They copy the big team’s playbook and then wonder why it does not work for a team of one. They burn themselves out chasing a size they were never going to have. That is the losing strategy. You will not out-budget, out-staff, or out-shine the giant, and the good news is that you do not have to.

Four ways to out-work the giant

You beat Goliath the way Brunson did. You win with the things you actually control:

Out-prepare him. Walk into the listing appointment having studied the property, the neighborhood, the comparable sales and the seller’s real motivation, while the big team sends someone who skimmed the file in the car. Preparation is free, and the giant rarely bothers.

Out-follow-up him. The portal buys the lead, but it does not call that lead seven times. It does not send the handwritten note. It does not remember the names of the client’s kids. You do. Relationships are the one thing a giant’s budget cannot buy at scale, and they are entirely within your reach.

Do the high-percentage work, over and over. Brunson’s 15 trips to the free-throw line are your daily prospecting, your database calls, your open houses, your past-client check-ins. None of it is glamorous. All of it scores. The agent who does the boring, repeatable work every single day beats the flashy competitor who does it in bursts.

Drive straight at him. Brunson did not avoid the seven-foot-four shot-blocker. He attacked him, drew the foul, and went to the line. In your business, that means competing for the listing the big team assumes is already theirs, showing up in the neighborhood they think they own, and walking in with confidence instead of conceding before you start.

Notice that none of those four require money, size or a famous name. They require effort and consistency, the two things a giant most often takes for granted, and the two things entirely within your control.

Height you cannot change. Effort you can. Preparation you can. Follow-up you can. Nerve you can.

The most physically gifted player in the world just lost a championship to a man more than a foot shorter, because the smaller man mastered the things that were his to master. There is a Goliath in your market right now. You do not need to become him to beat him.

Darryl Davis, CSP, is a speaker, coach, and bestselling author who has trained real estate professionals, and the leaders who build them, for more than 40 years. He is the founder of the POWER AGENT® Coaching Program and Darryl Davis Seminars. Learn more at darrylspeaks.com.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of HousingWire’s editorial department and its owners.

To contact the editor responsible for this piece: tracey@hwmedia.com

This post was originally published on here. 

United Wholesale Mortgage (UWM) announced on Wednesday the expansion of its product lineup with the addition of Doctor Loans, a mortgage program designed for medical professionals who may face barriers to homeownership despite having strong income potential.

Although medical professionals typically have strong long-term earning potential and stable career paths, many carry substantial student loan debt and begin their careers with relatively modest incomes and limited savings for a down payment, which can make it more difficult to qualify for a mortgage.

The loans are available to medical doctors, dentists and other eligible health care professionals. Through UWM’s network of mortgage brokers, eligible borrowers can access financing options that include low or no down payment programs, no mortgage insurance requirements and more accommodative treatment of student loan debt during the underwriting process.

UWM joins a growing niche of offerings geared towards medical professionals. Earlier this year, Newrez launched its Medical Professional Home Loan, which offers up to 100% financing, no traditional private mortgage insurance (PMI), and flexible treatment of student loan debt for physicians, dentists, residents, fellows and other eligible health care professionals.

The program — which is available through Newrez’s direct-to-consumer, retail, joint venture and wholesale channels — also allows some borrowers to qualify using projected future income rather than historical earnings.

Other lenders, including Bank of America and CrossCountry Mortgage, also offer doctor loans, with CrossCountry’s program waiving PMI and requiring no down payment on loan amounts below $1 million.

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Nearly 3 million New Yorkers will receive more than $2 billion in property tax relief this summer and fall through the state’s School Tax Relief (STAR) program, according to an announcement Tuesday from Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office.

The program will deliver an estimated $2.1 billion in relief to 2.78 million recipients across New York, according to the announcement. STAR provides ongoing property tax relief to eligible homeowners and seniors, and is designed as an affordability tool in a state with some of the highest property tax burdens in the country.

Most homeowners eligible for a STAR credit will receive between $350 and $600, while most seniors eligible for an Enhanced STAR credit will receive between $700 and $1,500. Some recipients will receive the benefit as an exemption on their school tax bill, while others will receive it through a refundable state income tax credit paid by check or direct deposit.

Checks have started going out and will continue throughout the summer and fall, Hochul’s office explained. Homeowners in areas with June and July school tax due dates — including New York City, Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse — are expected to receive their benefits soon, with the rest of the state following as local due dates approach.

State officials said homeowners who are eligible and registered for the STAR credit should receive their payment before their school tax deadline.

For housing professionals, the timing and scale of the payouts matter. Property taxes are a key driver of monthly housing costs in New York, influencing both purchase affordability and long-term cost-of-ownership calculations for buyers and lenders. A predictable, recurring state benefit like STAR can help some owners stay current on taxes and reduce pressure to sell or defer needed repairs.

The annual STAR benefit is a recurring factor in total cost of ownership and escrow management. The size and timing of credits can affect borrowers’ effective tax burden, delinquency risk, refinance eligibility or factors for moving — especially in higher-tax regions like Long Island, Westchester and downstate suburbs.

As New York continues to wrestle with affordability and out-migration pressures, statewide programs that offset property tax bills are likely to remain central to policy debates and to underwriting conversations with borrowers who are evaluating whether to buy, sell or stay put.

Regional breakdown

The governor’s office released the following estimates for 2026 STAR relief by region:

• Long Island: $659.2 million to 572,000 recipients
• Mid-Hudson: $461.1 million to 397,000 recipients
• New York City: $149.7 million to 474,000 recipients
• Capital District: $136.4 million to 238,000 recipients
• Finger Lakes: $193.7 million to 274,000 recipients
• Central New York: $123.7 million to 173,000 recipients
• Western New York: $168.5 million to 314,000 recipients
• Southern Tier: $103.4 million to 153,000 recipients
• Mohawk Valley: $62.5 million to 99,000 recipients
• North Country: $44.5 million to 86,000 recipients

Long Island and the Mid-Hudson region — high-cost housing markets of importance to mortgage lenders and real estate agents — account for more than half of the total STAR dollars.

Eligibility, enrollment, direct deposit

STAR benefits are available to eligible owner-occupants on their primary residence, subject to income limits that vary by program type and year. The governor’s office said most homeowners with incomes below $500,000 qualify for the basic STAR credit ranges listed, while most seniors with incomes below $110,750 qualify for the enhanced ranges.

The New York State Department of Taxation and Finance is urging new and current homeowners who are not yet receiving a STAR benefit to register through the agency’s website. Acting Commissioner Amanda Hiller said in the announcement that the department wants every eligible homeowner to participate.

To speed payments and reduce check handling, the state is promoting a STAR Credit Direct Deposit option through the Homeowner Benefit Portal in the department’s Online Services system. Homeowners are advised to enroll at least 15 business days before their local school tax due date to ensure timely direct deposit this year.

Beginning in July, the tax department will host regional STAR seminars, starting with Erie County on July 7 and continuing through the summer. The sessions are aimed at helping homeowners understand eligibility, sign up for STAR and maximize available benefits.

In addition to the governor, several legislative leaders and state senators framed the distribution of STAR checks as a response to affordability pressures from rising housing, energy and everyday living costs, particularly for seniors on fixed incomes and working-class homeowners.

“At a time when actions in Washington are increasing costs and reducing support for working families, seniors, and homeowners, New York is continuing to put affordability first,” Andrea Stewart-Cousins, the state Senate’s majority leader, said in a statement. “The Senate Majority was proud to work with Governor Hochul to include continued funding for the STAR program in this year’s State Budget, delivering meaningful property tax relief to homeowners across our state.”

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Leaders in the House of Representatives and the Senate announced Tuesday that they have reached an agreement on the final version of the first comprehensive housing bill in a generation.

The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, which has garnered support from virtually all major housing trade groups, is set for consideration in the Senate this week. If passed, the legislation is expected to receive presidential approval next week.

The bill includes a number of provisions aimed at increasing housing supply and reducing costs. The final text is the culmination of years of bipartisan and bicameral negotiations, incorporating priorities from the Senate, House and White House into a single package.

“Senate action on this bill is a tribute to both parties’ ongoing commitment to bipartisanship in adopting housing policies,” said Scott Olson, executive director of the Community Home Lenders of America. “CHLA hopes this is a springboard to Congress adopting bold tax policies and a national focus on entry-level housing, as part of a Moonshot Commitment CHLA called for last month to address Gen Z homeownership challenges.”

“The BAC is thrilled to see the updated bill text for the ROAD to Housing Act,” said Brendan McKay, co-founder and chief advocacy officer for the Broker Action Coalition. “We are encouraged not only by the legislation itself but also the willingness of policymakers from both parties to work together on an issue that impacts every American family. We’ve said it for years, and this bill proves it: Housing is bipartisan.”

While the legislation leans more heavily toward affordable rental housing than homeownership, it introduces sections relevant for the mortgage industry.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is authorized to review the performance of housing counseling agencies and establishes a pilot program designed to expand access to small-dollar mortgages with original principal balances of $100,000 or less. Meanwhile, the measure requires the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) to increase multifamily loan limits, a move intended to better align with current market costs and boost affordable housing development.

A provision requires the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to issue a report to Congress studying the effect of various aspects of loan originator compensation (LO comp) on the availability of small-dollar mortgages. Another section aims to bolster appraiser workforce capacity by allowing both licensed and credentialed appraisers to conduct appraisals for FHA-insured mortgage transactions.

Additionally, the final version limits institutional investors‘ acquisitions of single-family properties — a mandate pushed by the White House. But the bill does not require institutional owners to sell built-to-rent properties within seven years, as initially proposed.

Shannon McGahn, executive vice president and chief advocacy officer of the National Association of Realtors (NAR), noted that the cost of building a new home has increased dramatically, with regulatory costs alone adding more than $131,000 to the price tag of the typical home.

“This legislation helps reduce barriers to building, modernize housing programs, and creates more opportunities for homeownership,” McGahn said in a statement.

The legislation also authorizes a Community Development Block Grant–Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) program for three years and establishes the Office of Disaster Management and Resiliency within HUD to administer the program. The House had originally pushed for a seven-year authorization.

The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) is urging the Senate to pass the bill, noting that recent House revisions addressed key concerns raised by the MBA and other stakeholders. Specifically, the MBA had warned that earlier restrictions on institutional investment in single-family housing would limit financing for built-to-rent communities, and that FHA multifamily provisions would constrain capital for new rental development.

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Lamacchia Realty is now licensed to provide residential real estate brokerage services in Vermont, marking its seventh licensed state and completing the firm’s coverage of all six New England states, the company announced on Tuesday.

The move into Vermont stems from Lamacchia Realty’s recent acquisition of Steepleview Realty in North Adams, Massachusetts, which already held a Vermont license. Six Lamacchia agents are currently licensed in Vermont, with more expected to follow, according to the announcement.

“Adding Vermont is an exciting milestone for our company and our clients. As more buyers and sellers relocate throughout New England and to Florida, our expanded footprint allows us to provide seamless service across the markets our clients care about most,” founder and owner Anthony Lamacchia said in a statement.

Angela Rastellini is serving as the managing broker of record for Vermont, as well as for Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Rhode Island. With the new license, Lamacchia aims to support more relocation, second-home, investment and traditional residential transactions across the Northeast and Florida.

Lamacchia Realty positions itself as a full-service, value-focused brokerage, with a stated mission to “guide Realtors, employees and clients to their success.” The company said its growth strategy relies on a mix of lead generation products, training, systems, technology and marketing support that it provides to its agents. Those offerings are designed to help agents capture more business in a competitive, low-inventory environment where market-share gains often come via recruiting and M&A-driven expansion rather than organic volume growth alone.

In 2025, Lamacchia Realty closed 5,944 transaction sides totaling $3.27 billion in sales volume, earning the firm the No. 70 and No. 81 ranks by sides and volume in the 2026 RealTrends Verified rankings.

This article was written by Brooklee Han and generated with the assistance of HousingWire Automation, then reviewed by a HousingWire editor before publication.

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Every time consumers complained about real estate, the industry seemed to hear the same thing: opportunity.

Confused buyers struggling to understand the process? Build a new platform to explain it. Agents losing leads? Launch another subscription layer. Communication breaking down between parties? Add a coordination tool. Transaction stress hitting record highs? Bring in another vendor to manage it.

The pattern is consistent enough that it deserves a name. Call it the monetization reflex, the instinct to treat every friction point as a product gap rather than a structural failure. Over the past two decades, this reflex has shaped how our industry was built, and it’s a big part of why transactions feel heavier today than they did when there was a fraction of the technology.

I want to be clear about what I’m actually arguing here, because it’s easy to misread. This isn’t a complaint about software proliferation or vendor overload. Those are real problems, but they’re symptoms. The root issue is about incentive structures, specifically, who benefits when real estate transactions become more complex, and who doesn’t.

The industry monetized friction, deliberately or not

Think through how each pressure point in the transaction cycle became a business.

Lead generation fragmented into an ecosystem of competing platforms, each taking a slice. Transaction coordination became its own professional category, billed separately. Compliance requirements spawned dedicated software verticals. Showing management tools. Digital signature layers. CRM platforms that don’t talk to each other. Referral marketplaces. Title portals. Each one arrived with a legitimate pitch (efficiency, transparency, speed) and each one added a participant to a transaction that the consumer had to absorb in time, cost or cognitive load.

The thing is, none of these businesses were built to simplify the transaction. They were built around it. There’s a meaningful difference.

A system designed to simplify would reduce the number of hands a transaction passes through. What we built instead was a system where more participants meant more touchpoints, and more touchpoints meant more monetizable moments. Complexity wasn’t a bug. For a lot of business models in this industry, it was a feature.

Complexity started masquerading as professionalism

Here’s where it gets uncomfortable.

At some point, consumers began to internalize the layers as a signal of legitimacy. More steps, more specialists, more approvals, it must be serious. This is how a $500,000 transaction ends up requiring sign-offs from six different parties, each of whom the buyer or seller encounters once and never interacts with again.

I’ve sat across from clients who assumed the complexity meant they were being protected. In some cases they were. In a lot of cases, they were paying for handoffs.

That distinction matters because the industry has long used the language of professionalism, fiduciary duty, specialized expertise, compliance requirements, to justify processes that, examined closely, exist primarily because removing them would threaten someone’s business model. Not because consumers need them.

The honest version of this conversation requires acknowledging that much of what passes for industry infrastructure is really accumulated operational bloat, defended by the people it pays.

Consumers never asked to become their own transaction managers

I want to draw a line here, because this argument gets conflated with an anti-agent position and that’s not what I’m making.

Consumers still want guidance. They want someone who knows the market, who can read a negotiation, who they trust to flag the things they’d miss. That hasn’t changed. What has changed is the gap between what consumers need from experts and what they’re actually asked to absorb.

There’s a version of the transaction where expert guidance is genuinely present at the moments it matters. And then there’s what most buyers and sellers actually experience: duplicated effort across parties who don’t share information, unpredictable costs that materialize late in the process, delays created not by complexity of the deal but by the process’s own machinery and a general sense that nobody is actually responsible for the whole thing.

Consumers aren’t asking for less expertise. They’re asking for fewer handoffs. Those are very different requests, and the industry has spent years responding to the first one while ignoring the second.

The next winners will build around removal, not addition

The businesses that win the next decade of real estate will not be the ones that add the most features. They’ll be the ones that take the most away.

Specifically: fewer coordination points between parties, workflows that collapse rather than expand, cost structures that are transparent from day one rather than revealed at closing, and someone who accepts centralized responsibility for the transaction rather than distributing it across seven vendors with limited liability.

None of this is technologically complicated. Most of it has been technically possible for years. What made it commercially complicated was that simplifying the transaction meant dismantling business models built on its complexity. That’s a harder problem than building software.

The NAR settlement cracked this open. It made the structural incentives visible in a way that even non-practitioners could see. But the commission structure was always just one expression of a much broader pattern, one where the industry organized itself around friction rather than resolution.

Eventually someone was going to build the other way. The question was always whether the industry would get there first, or whether consumers would stop waiting.

Blake O’Shaughnessy is a real estate broker turned co-founder of Ownli.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of HousingWire’s editorial department and its owners.

To contact the editor responsible for this piece: tracey@hwmedia.com

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House Representative Ben Cline (R-Va)., is urging the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate whether online real estate marketplaces are using deceptive agent referral tools and mortgage steering practices that increase homebuying costs, according to a letter sent on June 12 to FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson.

In the letter obtained by HousingWire, Representative Cline commended the FTC for filing its lawsuit in September 2025 against Zillow and Redfin over an alleged illegal agreement in the multifamily rental advertising market and said similar conduct may be occurring in owner-occupied housing. He framed the issue in terms of affordability pressures facing working families.

Citing National Association of Realtors (NAR) data, Representative Cline noted that the national median home price recently hit about $429,400, the share of first-time buyers fell to a record low of 21% and the typical age of a first-time buyer climbed to 40. High rent was identified as a major obstacle to saving for a down payment.

In the letter, Representative Cline asked the FTC to examine two practices he said fall squarely under the agency’s purview:

• Misleading “contact agent” interfaces: According to the letter, some online marketplaces use contact tools that divert buyers away from “knowledgeable (and compensated) listing agents” to platform-affiliated buyer agents. Those agents have pre-agreed, without buyers’ knowledge, to share a significant portion of their incremental commission with the platform, which Representative Cline argued helps maintain “high dual commissions” and raises transaction costs.
• Mortgage steering to affiliated lenders: Representative Cline said some programs allegedly require affiliated agents to route buyers to platform-affiliated mortgage lenders, “often at higher rates and on worse terms,” again without transparent disclosure. He warned that this can leave buyers with higher-cost mortgages and “thousands of dollars in platform-related agent fees.”

Practices especially harmful to first-time buyers, says Cline

Representative Cline also warned that these practices can be especially harmful to first-time buyers, who have less equity and industry knowledge. While online platforms are often marketed as ways to avoid fees, Cline said “the opposite may all too often be the outcome.”

He asked the FTC to “examine these practices more closely” to protect consumers and “help make the dream of homeownership a reality for the next generation of Americans.”

By sending this letter, Representative Cline joins fellow Virginia-based federal lawmakers Representatives Jennifer McClellan and Donald Beyer, both Democrats, in raising concerns with the FTC regarding the referral practices of online real estate platforms. 

In a letter sent to FTC Chair Ferguson in late May, the two democratic representatives claimed that “certain deceptive or insufficiently transparent internet advertising and solicitation practices may be steering consumers.” 

The representatives claimed that, in some instances, these referral practices could impact a buyer’s choice of agent or lender, without any type of referral or financial relationship being disclosed to the consumers. The letter highlighted “contact agent” buttons employed by some online real estate portals that connect consumers to an agent paying the portal for leads and not the listing agent of the property the consumer is interested in.

Zillow and Redfin did not immediately return HousingWire’s request for comment.

This article was written by Brooklee Han and generated with the assistance of HousingWire Automation, then reviewed by a HousingWire editor before publication.

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Fathom Holdings Inc., a national, technology-focused real estate services platform, has signed a definitive agreement to be acquired by Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. in an all-stock transaction valuing Fathom at about $53.38 million, the companies announced on Wednesday.

The deal gives Fathom shareholders 0.2236 shares of Bed Bath & Beyond common stock for each Fathom share, subject to certain closing adjustments. The companies said the transaction is expected to close in the second half of 2026, pending regulatory approvals and a vote of Fathom shareholders.

Bed Bath & Beyond, which is positioning itself around an “Everything Home” strategy, said the acquisition will expand its Homeownership & Transactions pillar by adding Fathom’s capabilities in brokerage, mortgage, title, insurance and homeowner financial services. Fathom operates through brands including Fathom Realty, Encompass Lending, intelliAgent, Real Results and Verus Title.

Fathom’s cloud-based intelliAgent platform and bundled services are expected to be combined with Bed Bath & Beyond’s omnichannel retail business and a growing home services line to build what the companies describe as an end-to-end homeownership platform, spanning home search, financing, closing and furnishing.

For real estate and mortgage professionals, the deal underscores how nontraditional players are pushing deeper into the transaction stack, seeking to own the customer relationship from first search to move-in and beyond. If completed, the combination would give Fathom agents and loan officers access to Bed Bath & Beyond’s large customer base and marketing reach, while potentially introducing new referral, cross-sell and lead-generation channels tied to household purchases and services.

Fathom said the merger is expected to deliver enhanced scale, greater capital resources for its technology and agent network and “significant cross-selling synergies” across home products and services. The companies also pointed to potential operational efficiencies from shared infrastructure and increased adoption of intelliAgent.

As part of the announcement, Fathom said board member Adam Rothstein has been appointed interim CEO and Daniel Weinmann, previously vice president of finance, has been named chief financial officer, both effective immediately. Leadership stability and agent retention will be key execution risks as the company navigates integration planning and regulatory review.

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If all goes well, a string of low-slung retail buildings along the Los Angeles River could become one of the largest apartment developments to rise from California’s housing reforms.

Los Angeles City Planning Commissioners last week unanimously approved Riverwalk at Studio City, an 814-unit residential building on six acres of underused commercial property in L.A.’s Studio City. The vote marked a significant milestone for a project that would not have had a realistic path to approval not long ago, as its height and density far exceeded local limits.

California has become the nation’s most aggressive laboratory for housing reform, dismantling decades of local zoning control through a succession of state laws designed to force cities to build more homes. Facing a shortage economists estimate at more than 2.5 million units, Sacramento has systematically stripped away the defense mechanisms — height caps, environmental review mandates, parking minimums, discretionary approval processes — that municipalities long used to limit growth.

“The Housing Accountability Act is a game changer for us,” Sheri Bonstelle, a Greenberg Glusker attorney representing the developers, told HousingWire TBD. It combined with new environmental review exemptions “made this project much more feasible.”

California’s accountability law has barred cities from denying housing projects without cause since 1982. Designed as an early anti-not-in-my-backyard measure, it precludes rejections unless a project poses a specific threat to public health and safety.

But lawmakers have gone through three separate rounds of adding muscle to close loopholes and end-arounds in the law since 2017 as part of broader housing reform.

Last year’s changes to the accountability law came alongside reforms to the 1970 California Environmental Quality Act. Together, those updates shield certain residential projects from lengthy environmental reviews.

What has emerged now stands as a new legal architecture that other states are watching closely. It effectively subordinates neighborhood preferences to a statewide imperative to build more housing at greater density.

Project in the making

Genton Property Group, RC Development, and the Torino Companies plan to demolish the existing retail buildings and replace them with a series of two-to seven-story structures reaching as high as 84 feet. The project will include 76,000 square feet of commercial space and a landscaped pedestrian corridor connecting Ventura Boulevard to the river. MVE + Partners designed the project.

The team had been eyeing the site for a couple of years and considered filing earlier. But Bonstelle said they held off, waiting for legislation moving through the state legislature to pass. With the law signed, developers filed the application last October.

“We got to a hearing in seven months, which is unheard of in the City of L.A.,” Bonstelle said.

Without the new state laws, none of it would be permissible under local rules. A 1991 corridor plan limits buildings on the site to 30 feet tall. It also caps how much of a lot can be developed.

Riverwalk’s proposed building heights of 84 feet are nearly three times the local limit. Developers cleared that barrier by promising to set aside 46 affordable units for very low-income renters under a 99-year covenant. That commitment legally obligates the city to approve the larger project.

In exchange, state law compels the city to approve height waivers, density increases, setback reductions and the near-elimination of a transitional height buffer that would otherwise protect the single-family neighborhood directly behind the site.

Two formal appeals came before the commission at its June 11 hearing. Opponents argued the project’s scale was incompatible with the surrounding neighborhood, inconsistent with the Specific Plan and damaging to the river environment. Commissioners denied both appeals.

What’s next

The project is not out of the woods. The commission’s decision is appealable to the Los Angeles City Council, and opponents have indicated they intend to take that step.

A Council appeal puts elected officials in an uncomfortable position: block a project backed by state law and invite legal exposure or approve one that a vocal constituency has fought at every stage.

That friction is built into California’s housing reform architecture by design. Laws passed in Sacramento over the past decade were written to make local resistance costly, while making building more housing easier.

They shift discretion away from neighborhood councils and planning commissions toward a statewide calculus that treats density near transit and infill sites as a public good.

The L.A. City Council members may have the final say on the Studio City project. Council members opposed state reforms and have now shown resistance to them following their enactment.

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The housing industry has spent the last several years trying to understand what artificial intelligence means for builders. Most of the conversation has focused on generative AI and large language models, but a new category of AI is emerging for homebuilding operations: spatial AI.

Unlike traditional AI systems built to process language or text, spatial AI is designed to understand physical space and the relationships between objects inside it. For builders managing floor plans, elevations, estimating data, construction documents and buyer-facing visualizations, that distinction matters.

Higharc, a homebuilding AI  platform for design through construction, is applying spatial AI directly to residential construction workflows. The company’s technology transforms architectural plans into structured, connected data models that can generate construction documents, estimating information and sales assets in minutes rather than months.

As builders face affordability pressures, changing buyer preferences and growing operational complexity, the ability to move faster while maintaining accuracy is becoming increasingly important.

Why Higharc spatial AI is different from traditional AI

Large language models excel at processing and generating text, but buildings are not fundamentally language-based systems. Homes are spatial environments composed of rooms, walls, windows, materials and objects that relate to one another in three-dimensional space.

That creates challenges for conventional AI tools. Where generative or agentic AI fails, spatial AI focuses on understanding how physical spaces are organized and how the components within them interact. Instead of simply reading a floor plan as an image, the system identifies kitchens, living rooms, bedrooms, windows, fixtures and structural relationships while understanding how those elements function together.

This becomes especially important in construction applications, where errors can lead to costly downstream consequences. Traditional generative AI systems are known to hallucinate or invent information. In homebuilding, inaccurate assumptions can lead to flawed estimates, incorrect documentation or construction mistakes.

Higharc’s approach to homebuilding AI combines machine learning, computer vision and structured spatial data to reduce those risks and improve reliability across builder workflows.

Turning floor plans into connected intelligence

One of the biggest operational challenges builders face today is fragmentation. Critical information often lives across multiple disconnected systems, including CAD drawings, spreadsheets, renderings, purchasing documents and institutional knowledge held by individual employees.

Builders frequently maintain separate versions of the same home for different stakeholders. Buyers see renderings and marketing assets. Construction teams rely on field documents. Purchasing departments work from spreadsheets and takeoffs.

Higharc’s platform aims to unify those disconnected representations into a single centralized database. From one connected model, the system can generate the outputs needed across the organization, including construction documentation, estimating data and buyer-facing visualizations.

The underlying technology relies heavily on computer vision models trained to understand residential design and construction. Similar to how self-driving cars identify roads, obstacles and pedestrians, Higharc spatial AI recognizes sinks, appliances, walls and room layouts within architectural drawings. The platform then translates those elements into structured three-dimensional building information models.

That process requires extensive training data and specialized machine learning models designed specifically for architectural plans. Higharc’s research team has spent years developing an AI system capable of recognizing spatial relationships and interpreting highly abstract construction drawings, which are often difficult even for non-technical people to understand.

The result is a workflow that can dramatically shorten the timeline between concept development and construction readiness.

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Compressing design timelines from months to weeks

One example of Higharc spatial AI’s practical impact comes from Signature Homes, a builder operating in Alabama and Nashville. Facing changing homebuyer demand and evolving affordability pressures, the builder needed to adapt existing plans to create smaller, more market-aligned homes. Using Higharc’s platform, the team imported a floor plan into the system, automatically converted it into a structured model and rapidly modified the design using AI-assisted workflows.

According to Higharc, the builder was able to move from concept refinement to permit-ready construction documents in approximately two weeks, despite the timeline including the holiday season. Traditionally, that process can take six months or longer.

The builder also used Higharc’s AI capabilities to evaluate design options, receive layout suggestions and iterate on materials and window placements during the design process. Within six weeks of documentation approval, framing had already begun on the project. Multiple homes based on the design were reportedly sold within months.

For builders operating in highly dynamic markets, speed increasingly represents a competitive advantage. Buyer preferences, lot constraints and affordability considerations can shift quickly, making long design cycles harder to sustain.

Spatial AI allows builders to adapt product offerings faster while maintaining operational continuity across estimating, purchasing and construction.

Improve estimating and reduce operational risk

Estimating remains one of the most complex and risk-sensitive functions in homebuilding. Errors in takeoffs, material calculations or purchasing workflows can significantly impact margins and construction timelines.

Many builders still rely on manual processes involving rulers, spreadsheets and static plan reviews. Higharc’s spatial database approach introduces automation and traceability into the process by connecting estimating data directly to the building model.

The platform enables users to interact bidirectionally between purchasing data and the model. Estimators can click individual line items in a spreadsheet and immediately visualize where those materials exist within the home design. That visibility helps teams validate quantities, improve trust in the data and reduce inconsistencies between design intent and purchasing execution.

Accuracy remains central to the system’s development. Higharc spatial AI models are continuously trained using curated architectural datasets, multiple validation layers and human oversight. Rather than relying on a single AI model, the company uses layered systems that compare outputs and improve confidence levels over time. Human experts remain involved throughout the validation process to monitor performance and intervene when necessary.

This human-in-the-loop approach reflects a broader industry reality: Builders need AI systems that can support production-level reliability, not just generate interesting concepts.

Why builders are paying attention now

Many builders have already experimented with consumer AI tools like ChatGPT to analyze plans or generate estimates. While these systems can produce convincing outputs, they often lack the spatial reasoning and validation required for real-world construction workflows.

Higharc argues that spatial AI provides a more practical entry point for builders because it is designed specifically around housing data and building relationships. Instead of treating homes as generic text problems, the platform understands how rooms, materials and construction systems interact spatially.

As AI capabilities continue advancing, builders that establish structured spatial data foundations today may be better positioned to capitalize on future automation opportunities across design, estimating, purchasing and sales.

The implications extend beyond operational efficiency. Faster design iteration and improved production flexibility could ultimately allow builders to offer buyers greater personalization, adapt more quickly to affordability challenges and deliver more responsive housing products.

Looking ahead to spatial AI for homebuilders

The homebuilding industry is entering a period in which AI adoption is moving from experimentation to operational use. But unlike generic generative AI tools, spatial AI addresses the specific complexities of designing and constructing homes.

Higharc’s approach demonstrates how builders can transform floor plans from static documents into intelligent, connected data systems that support the entire building lifecycle. By combining computer vision, machine learning and structured spatial databases, the company is helping builders shorten timelines, improve estimating accuracy and respond faster to changing market conditions.

As housing markets continue evolving, builders that can move quickly without sacrificing precision may gain a meaningful advantage. Spatial AI for homebuilders is emerging as one of the technologies that could help make that possible.

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Master-planned communities are gaining renewed relevance as buyers seek a sense of predictability in an uncertain housing market.

Even as the broader housing market continues to wrestle with affordability pressure, interest rate sensitivity and uneven buyer demand, many master-planned communities have held up better than expected. Some master-planned communities have remained on national top-selling rankings for more than a decade, sustaining demand through the Great Recession and post-pandemic volatility. That kind of longevity suggests something important: The communities that endure are rarely the ones optimized for a single market moment. 

That resilience makes sense. Master-planned communities can offer what today’s market often lacks: product variety, infrastructure certainty, established amenities and a clearer sense of lifestyle value. For buyers, that can reduce perceived risk. For builders, it can create a more predictable environment in an otherwise fragmented market.

Strong performance in one market cycle should not be mistaken for long-term durability. The more important question is not which communities are selling well today. It is which communities are structured to remain relevant 10, 20 or 30 years from now.

At Centerra, a 3,000-acre mixed-use master-planned community in Loveland, Colorado, that question has shaped development decisions for more than 25 years. Over that time, the community has evolved through multiple economic cycles, changing buyer expectations and shifting municipal priorities, reinforcing how difficult, but critical, it is to build a place designed for long-term relevance rather than short-term momentum.

The danger of rigid entitlements

Large-scale communities are often launched around a compelling promise: a signature amenity, a retail district, a school, a trail network, a lifestyle concept or a particular housing product. Those elements matter. They help create identity and early momentum.

But a plan that feels perfectly calibrated at launch can become constrained if it is too rigid to respond to the next cycle. Buyer preferences evolve. Interest rates shift. Municipal priorities change. Employers move. Capital markets favor different asset classes at different times. 

That is why flexibility may be the most valuable entitlement in long-term community development.

The strongest master plans are not fixed scripts. They are frameworks. They provide enough structure to create certainty for municipalities, builders, residents and investors, while preserving enough adaptability to respond when market conditions change.

Centerra benefited from this kind of flexibility early on. Unlike many traditional suburban developments that begin almost exclusively with residential product, Centerra’s early phases leaned heavily into commercial development because of its strategic location along Interstate 25 and U.S. 34. That sequencing helped establish jobs, tax base and regional visibility before the residential footprint expanded. The approach remains somewhat unconventional, but it reinforced for our team at Realberry the value of allowing a master plan to evolve alongside market realities rather than forcing a rigid development sequence.

This is especially important as master-planned communities increasingly move beyond traditional suburban development models into a wider mix of housing, employment, retail, recreation, open space and civic life. That complexity requires a planning approach that can evolve without losing coherence. It also requires the foresight of a municipality that recognizes the benefit of a flexible zoning code. 

Sustainability is a SMART operating strategy

For years, sustainability in residential development was often discussed as a branding or values exercise. Increasingly, it is an operational strategy.

Water use, landscape maintenance, stormwater systems, native plantings and long-term public realm upkeep all affect the financial performance and durability of a community. These decisions may not always be the most visible to a buyer on day one, but they shape how a place ages and in its resilience in the face of both climate and economic pressures.

A turf-heavy landscape may photograph well early, but it can become expensive and resource-intensive over time. Native and climate-adapted landscapes may require more education and patience upfront, but they can reduce water demand, lower maintenance pressure and create a stronger connection to regional identity. These landscapes, properly tended, are also better able to withstand extreme weather conditions — from heavy rain to drought. Recent research on prairie-based stormwater systems found native prairie strips reduced runoff volume by as much as 84% and peak stormwater discharge by nearly 64% compared with conventional landscapes, reinforcing the long-term resilience benefits of deeper-rooted native systems

At Centerra, long-term investments in native and xeric landscape systems were initially driven less by branding and more by this kind of operational thinking. Over time, those decisions helped reduce irrigation demand, lower maintenance intensity and create a landscape identity more reflective of northern Colorado’s ecology. The lesson was that sustainability decisions often generate value gradually, through performance and resilience rather than immediate visual impact.

For long-term holders and developers, those distinctions matter. The economics of a community are not only determined by lot sales or absorption pace. They are also shaped by what it costs to operate, maintain and steward the place over decades.

That means sustainability should be considered less as an add-on and more as infrastructure. Done well, it supports environmental resilience and financial resilience.

The public realm has real economic value

Some of the most important investments in a master-planned community are also the hardest to underwrite in a conventional pro forma.

Public art, parks, trails, gathering spaces, cultural programming and ecological partnerships do not always produce a simple, immediate return. Yet over time, these investments can become central to a community’s identity and competitive position.

Investments like Chapungu Sculpture Park at Centerra and the longstanding partnership with the High Plains Environmental Center ultimately created value beyond amenity alone. They helped reinforce a distinct sense of place, supported ecological stewardship and strengthened relationships with residents and municipal stakeholders alike.

Unlike many community amenities added later as programming features, HPEC was intentionally envisioned and funded early by the development team and public partners as part of the long-term stewardship strategy for Centerra’s lakes, open space and native landscape systems. Just as importantly, these investments created continuity across decades of development, helping newer phases feel connected to the broader vision of the community.

This is where many long-term developments underestimate the work required; communication across key audiences cannot stop after approvals are secured or the first homes are sold. Developers have to keep explaining what is being built, why certain decisions were made and how the project continues to serve the broader community.

In that sense, storytelling is not just marketing. It is part of governance. It helps maintain alignment through political transitions, development phases and market cycles.

The next generation will need to do more

The next wave of master-planned communities is entering a more complicated environment than many of its predecessors. Buyers want affordability, but also quality of life. Municipalities want housing, but also infrastructure, positive fiscal impact and public benefit. Builders want velocity, but also margin and predictability. Residents want modern amenities, but also authenticity and connection.

Meeting all of those expectations requires communities that can accommodate different housing types as demand shifts. It requires public-private partnerships built on transparency and shared value. It requires landscape and infrastructure systems designed for long-term performance. It requires a public realm that can mature into a true community asset rather than a collection of amenities.

New projects like Avenue South, Centerra’s forthcoming mixed-use district in Loveland, reflect how many developers are now trying to apply these lessons more intentionally from the outset. The goal is no longer simply to deliver housing or retail, but to create districts capable of evolving alongside changing economic conditions, mobility patterns and lifestyle expectations.

The master-planned communities that endure will not be the ones optimized for a single buyer profile or a single point in the cycle. They will be the ones designed to absorb change. That may be the real measure of success for this sector going forward; not whether a community can outperform the market for a year, but whether it can remain useful, relevant and economically resilient across generations.

Kyle Harris is the Senior Vice President of Master Planned Communities at Realberry 
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of HousingWire’s editorial department and its owners. To contact the editor responsible for this piece: zeb@hwmedia.com.

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Taylor Morrison, the sixth-largest builder in the HousingWire Homebuilder Rankings, has appointed Mike Carlo as president of its Sarasota division. 

Carlo brings more than 25 years of homebuilding experience to the role.

“Mike is a proven leader with an impressive track record of operational excellence and strategic growth across several homebuilders,” said Area President Steve Kempton. “We are thrilled to welcome him to oversee our Sarasota division and are confident that his experience in driving growth, leading high-performing teams and executing thoughtful land and sales strategies will further strengthen our position in the region.”

Before joining Taylor Morrison, Carlo spent nearly nine years at Richmond American Homes, serving as division president of Jacksonville and most recently, senior division president of Orlando and Jacksonville. He previously was president of real estate investment and development firm CenterPoint Properties LLC in St. Johns, Florida, and held roles as vice president of sales and vice president of land acquisition for Lennar‘s Northeast Florida operations. Carlo earned a Bachelor of Science in finance from the University of Illinois and a law degree from American University.

“I look forward to building upon the strong foundation the Sarasota team has established and continuing to deliver exceptional homes and customer experiences,” Carlo said. “Taylor Morrison’s commitment to quality, innovation and culture deeply resonates with me and I’m enthusiastic to work alongside this talented group as we grow our presence and help more individuals achieve homeownership across the market.”

Taylor Morrison’s Sarasota division currently has seven open communities and plans to add two new Esplanade resort lifestyle communities over the next year: Esplanade at Wellen Park, which recently opened for sales, and Esplanade at Cammaray in Lakewood Ranch, anticipated in early 2027.

Located in Venice, Esplanade at Wellen Park is planned for approximately 877 single-family homes and a range of amenities, including a resort-style pool and spa; Bahama Bar & Grill; The Resort Club, a state-of-the-art amenity center with group fitness rooms, fitness equipment and spa therapy suite; dog park; massage treatment room; and tennis, pickleball and bocce ball courts. The community will be part of the 11,000-acre Wellen Park master plan, which features multiple districts, established neighborhoods and a walkable downtown.

Esplanade at Cammaray will be Taylor Morrison’s third Esplanade community in Lakewood Ranch and is planned for about 1,200 single-family homes and condos. The gated community is expected to include amenities such as a resort-style pool and spa with towel service and poolside cabanas; Culinary Center with multiple dining venues; Wellness Center; trail network; fitness center; tennis, pickleball and bocce ball courts; signature spa services; Bahama Bar; and event lawn.

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Social Security’s long-term financial outlook deteriorated significantly in the latest annual report from the program’s trustees, with officials projecting a larger funding shortfall and an earlier depletion date for the retirement trust fund.

The 2026 Trustees Report estimates Social Security‘s 75-year funding gap at 4.42% of taxable payroll, up from 3.82% a year earlier.

That increase, laid out Tuesday in a brief published by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, stems largely from lower projected birth rates, reduced immigration and federal tax changes that are expected to decrease revenue flowing into the system.

The report projects that the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance trust fund will be exhausted in 2032, one year sooner than previously forecast. At that point, incoming payroll tax revenue would cover only about 78% of scheduled retirement benefits.

Despite the worsening outlook, researchers at the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College said the program’s challenges remain manageable and that “all that is needed is the political will.”

Lower fertility, immigration policy drive revenue declines

A major change in this year’s report is a substantial reduction in the trustees’ long-term fertility assumption.

The projected lifetime birth rate was lowered from 1.90 children per woman to 1.75, reflecting years of declining U.S. fertility and the absence of a post-pandemic rebound.

Fewer births today translate into fewer workers contributing payroll taxes in the future, reducing revenue available to support retirees.

The report also assumes lower levels of temporary and unauthorized immigration. Trustees reduced projected annual entries in those categories and incorporated expectations of stricter immigration policies, leading to a smaller future workforce and lower payroll tax collections.

Together, changes related to fertility and immigration account for a significant share of the increase in Social Security’s projected deficit.

Tax law adds pressure

The report also factors in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which permanently extends tax provisions first enacted in 2017 and expands deductions for many taxpayers.

Because fewer retirees are expected to pay income taxes on their Social Security benefits, trust fund revenue is projected to decline. Trustees estimate the legislation reduced the program’s actuarial balance by 0.16% of taxable payroll.

While trustees adopted assumptions that reduce projected revenues, they also introduced changes that improve Social Security’s financial outlook on paper.

The report assumes somewhat faster productivity growth during the next decade, which would boost wages and payroll tax revenue. It also projects higher mortality rates, meaning beneficiaries would receive payments for fewer years.

Researchers at Boston College questioned both assumptions, arguing they may be overly optimistic.

They noted that Congressional Budget Office projections are less aggressive on productivity growth and that Social Security’s life-expectancy projections are lower than those used by other federal agencies.

According to the researchers, these assumptions partially offset the financial impact of lower fertility and immigration, making the system’s challenges appear smaller than they otherwise would.

Pressure mounts for congressional action

The report reinforces a conclusion that has remained largely unchanged for decades: Lawmakers must act to preserve full benefits.

Trustees estimate that permanently closing the funding gap would require an immediate payroll tax increase of 4.42 percentage points, equivalent to 2.21 percentage points for employers and workers alike.

Alternatively, benefits could be reduced by roughly 22% immediately, with larger reductions required over time.

The Center for Retirement Research said delaying action will limit available options and increase the eventual cost of reforms.

“Despite the larger deficit, the 2026 Trustees Report confirms what has been evident for almost three decades — namely, Social Security is facing a long-term financing shortfall and needs to be fixed,” researchers said. “Even with a deficit that equals about 1.5 percent of GDP, the changes required to fix the system are well within the bounds of fluctuations in spending on other programs in the past.”

This article was generated using HousingWire Automation and reviewed by a HousingWire editor before publication.

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CoStar’s attempt to enter the ongoing legal battle among Zillow, Midwest Real Estate Data (MRED) and Compass International Holdings has been denied. 

In a ruling on Tuesday, Illinois-based federal judge John Tharp denied CoStar’s motion to file an amicus curiae brief. No reason for the judge’s denial was given. 

“We sought to call attention to Zillow’s obvious hypocrisy: Zillow is asking the Court to guarantee its access to MLS listing data while simultaneously creating its own pre-market listing channel and seeking to restrict others,” Gene Boxer, CoStar’s general counsel, said in a statement. “That contradiction matters to the entire residential real estate industry. Zillow cannot claim to be defending openness and transparency while building a system that advantages Zillow, withholds inventory from competing platforms and undermines the very principles it invokes in court.”

Boxer said regardless of if the court considered the brief, CoStar believes it is “important for brokers, agents, MLSs, consumers and regulators to understand what Zillow is really asking for: open access for itself, but different rules for everyone else.”

“Zillow has already had plenty of time to refute the facts in our brief, but it hasn’t, because it can’t,” Boxer added. “We expect that the other parties to the case will continue to highlight our arguments as additional reasons why Zillow should lose. We are pleased to stand with the industry to expose Zillow’s wrongdoing.”

The legal history

Last Wednesday, CoStar, the parent company of residential real estate listing portal Homes.com, filed an amicus brief in opposition to Zillow’s motion for a preliminary injunction seeking to prevent MRED from suspending its listing feed. A hearing on this motion is scheduled for early July. 

In the filing, CoStar claimed that Zillow’s motion is part of its “scheme to expand its ecosystem and replace the non-profit MLS system.” 

“It seeks to fragment the market in its favor, locking out rivals like Homes.com, while barring others’ pre-market listings and maintaining broad access to MLS feeds, until it no longer needs them,” the brief stated.

The firm also claimed that its Homes.com portal had been “directly harmed” by Zillow’s exclusive pre-market listing practices, which it launched in mid-March with Zillow Preview, a new offering providing agents and their sellers with the option to publicly pre-market their listings before the properties transition to an active listing status.

In the brief, CoStar called the product “hypocritical,” claiming that Zillow Preview is the same thing as the defendants’ private listing networks, stating in the filing that the losing portal “trumpeted the very thing it had said was anathema when offered by a rival.”

Zillow’s preliminary injunction motion is part of its antitrust battle with MRED and Compass. The lawsuit, filed in mid-May claims that the Chicagoland MLS and the nation’s largest brokerage company conspired to withhold listing data and pressure Zillow to carry private “hidden” listings nationwide.

After suspending Zillow’s listing data feed in May, MRED is under a temporary restraining order requiring it to continue supplying Zillow with a listing feed, while Zillow is prevented from banning any MRED listings from its site. 

Zillow did not immediately return HousingWire’s request for comment on the ruling.

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NorthstarMLS and REcore Solutions, along with the WAV Group’s Fluente AI team have unveiled Project NexusRE, a patent-pending infrastructure layer intended to give multiple listing services (MLS) and brokers more visibility and control over how listing data is accessed, used and monetized by artificial intelligence systems, according to an announcement on Friday. 

Project NexusRE is positioned as a governance foundation that sits between MLS databases and the growing number of websites, applications and AI systems consuming listing data. Rather than replacing local MLSs, the companies said the platform is designed to apply permissions, policies and compliance rules consistently across channels and interfaces.

System will be owned and governed by the industry

In the announcement, the firms said Project NexusRE is structured to be owned and governed by the industry. NorthstarMLS, which serves as patent assignee, originated the concept. The application is being built with WAV Group’s Fluente AI team, led by technologist David Gumpper, with additional support from WAV Group executives Jennie MacIntosh and Victor Lund. REcore,the industry-owned services organization that only accepts investment from brokerages and MLSs and whose largest partner is California Regional MLS (CRMLS), is commercializing the platform and will operate it as an industry-facing service.

“We started this about a year and a half ago and it began with conversations about strategic objectives and where the industry was headed, which surfaced a lot of the things everyone is talking about now like control of listings, marketing and the need to redefine things like MLS participant and subscriber,” Tim Dain, the president and CEO of NorthstarMLS, said. “We realized that all of these arguments were a symptom of a larger disease, which is that the MLS infrastructure was built years ago and not during the era of AI. So, we realized we needed to reposition the infrastructure to give us some answers as to how we move forward in this new era.”

Both Dain and Art Carter, the CEO of CRMLS will be speaking at HousingWire’s AI Summit in Dallas this August. 

As AI tools increasingly process MLS data across the web, brokers often lack clear insight into where their listings are used, which systems are accessing them and under what terms. According to the announcement, Project NexusRE is intended to address that gap by providing a common framework for managing permission, monitoring usage and maintaining accountability as data flows to large language models and other AI tools.

The initiative is a response to growing concern that general-purpose AI platforms could capture the “intelligence layer” of real estate — how data is interpreted, summarized and used — even though brokers and MLSs spent decades building and curating the underlying listing data. By keeping the governance and learning layer under broker and MLS control, Project NexusRE aims to preserve data sovereignty and prevent AI value from migrating entirely to outside platforms.

“The platform addresses that argument that brokers and MLSs should have a say in what entitlements different vendors or tools have with the data,” Dain said. “It gives control over to the people that own the data and not sure who gets the data, but under what terms they can have it and use it.”

When brokers login to the platform, Dain said they can see where an MLS authorized their listing data to go and under what terms, enabling them to have an open dialogue with their MLS about how their data is being used and by whom. 

Governance for AI-era listing data

The announcement notes that much of today’s MLS data infrastructure was built before AI-driven systems were common in real estate. Listing rules are often spread across participant agreements, vendor contracts, APIs and policy documents, making consistent enforcement difficult when data is ingested by AI systems at scale, as it now is. 

“There is a hierarchy of policy that exists from federal fair housing laws, to state statutes, MLS rules and even broker rules, so as vendors or even agents begin doing more and more with AI, brokers can put in rules that their branding can only be used in certain ways and the platform ensures that the policies are applied everytime at both the data in and data out levels,” Dain said.

Economic alignment and broker visibility

The companies said the initiative is expected to support contribution-based credits for brokers who supply listing data into the system. As AI systems extract and use data, usage metering could inform how credits are earned and how value flows between contributors and consumers. Consumers of the data — including AI workflows and proptech applications — would participate based on usage.

“Anybody that contributes value should be rewarded for that, while anyone that extracts value should be charged for that,” Dain said. “Currently a brokerage with one agent that belongs to an MLS and gets a data feed pays the same per-agent fee as a brokerage with 2,000 agents. But the one with one agent is usually the one that is hitting the data at scale by putting AI and other tools against it — they are a high demand customer in terms of data. But the brokerage with a lot of agents is usually a high supply customer, so you have two different relationships with the data and one cost structure.” 

In its report, WAV Group stresses this is not about “selling listings,” but about recognizing that AI reshapes where value is created. Instead of a simple yes/no access model, MLSs may need usage reporting, accountability and economic structures that track how machine-scale consumption evolves over time.

Deployment timeline and participation

Project NexusRE is currently in active development, with initial testing expected to begin in summer 2026, according to the release. NorthstarMLS and REcore are inviting MLSs, associations and industry partners to engage early to evaluate use cases, governance models and deployment options.

The companies emphasize that Project NexusRE is designed to strengthen, not centralize, the existing cooperative MLS structure. The platform is intended to be open to MLSs and brokers of any size and to apply “updatable” permissions and policies regardless of how listing data is accessed.

“There are a lot of companies that could have built something like this, but the industry shouldn’t want them to because their motive is different and the brokers and MLSs are really the only ones that should have a say in this because it is their data,” Dain said. 

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Last week, the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts struck down the Trump administration’s $100,000 fee for new H-1B visa applications, which many American employers utilize to recruit highly skilled foreign workers. 

Will the ruling, which grazes a highly sensitive policy debate over immigration pulsing through our nation’s politics, inject a needed adrenaline burst in a once-typically-reliable segment of home buyer demand, H1-B visa holders?

A broader policy crackdown on H-1 B visa holders has taken a chunk out of housing demand in local markets – particularly those with higher concentrations of tech- and professional-level households.

While the national impacts are unremarkable, demand in such communities – where average household incomes tend to be higher – has been dramatic. 

H-1B visa buyers leaving the housing market has had a substantial impact on certain suburban towns north of Dallas, Ted Wilson, Principal at Residential Strategies, a market research and consulting firm that consults with homebuilders in Texas, told HousingWire TBD.

According to Wilson, 70% to 75% of new home sales in Celina – about 40 miles north of Dallas – between 2021 and 2025 were to international buyers, many of whom were H-1B visa holders who had laid down roots in the DFW area.

By the end of last year, this buyer segment accounted for only about 15% to 20% of buyers in Celina, he said.

Celina’s population grew a whopping 276.8% between 2020 and 2025, from just over 16,000 residents to more than 64,000. Skilled and knowledge-worker immigrants, attracted to nearby jobs in tech and other sectors, drove the bulk of that growth. With many of those buyers now exiting the housing market, local builders have been caught flat-footed. 

“What we have really witnessed over the last couple of years is a complete retreat of the H-1B visa buyers’ impact on the DFW market, and it has created challenges within the DFW homebuilding market,” Wilson said. “Not only have sales withered from it, but in markets such as Celina, there was an expectation that we were going to continue to see the presence of these buyers in the market. Builders planned for it, and we now have a lot of neighborhoods… with a huge excess supply of lots in the Celina market. That’s creating a negative financial impact on a lot of people in that market.” 

A broader crackdown on H-1B visa holders

The downturn in Celina’s housing market cascaded after the $100,000 fee for new H-1 B visa holders took effect last September. Other policy shifts, such as a 60-day window for these workers to find a new job before leaving the country, along with a broader reduction in immigration levels, further reduced the presence and impact of these buyers in the local market.

H-1B visa holders account for a very small fraction, less than 0.5%, of the overall U.S. workforce. As a result, fluctuations in H1-B visa policy don’t exert an outsized impact on the national housing market.

There have, however, been noticeable impacts in certain areas. Furthermore, these buyers, with a median salary of $140,000, according to an analysis by Deel, tend to be more discretionary buyers who purchase homes priced above the local average.

According to data from Manifest Law, these high-income immigrant households were most heavily concentrated in states such as California, Virginia, New Jersey, New York and Texas.

Meanwhile, metro and market areas such as Silicon Valley, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Boston, New York City, Austin and Dallas-Fort Worth had the highest concentration. 

The administration’s policy shifts somehow made Celina an epicenter of homebuyer-demand destruction. Homebuilders who had anticipated – and invested and budgeted on – continued growth in the city are now grappling with a market where demand has largely evaporated.

Given the rapid decline in demand, Celina is now a ‘poster-child’ of standing new-home inventory, with little prospect of moving it profitably. 

While a balanced market would typically have about a two-year lot supply, the Celina market ended the first quarter of 2026 with an annualized start pace of nearly 1,700 homes and more than 7,000 finished lots, representing roughly 50 months, or more than four years, of supply, Wilson said. An additional 7,600 lots were under development, adding another 54 months of future supply that is expected to come online over the next year. However, demand has dried up.

“It’s a wipe out, and I think the expectation we had, and that others had, was that Celina was going to follow the same pattern that we’ve seen in Plano, Frisco and Prosper, and grow to be about 4,000 starts per year, but that’s just not happening, because we’re missing that buyer in this market,” Wilson explained.

The muted impacts of the federal ruling

U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin struck down the Trump administration’s $100,000 fee for certain H-1B visas on June 12, finding that the fee functions as a tax that must be approved by Congress.

Within days, the Trump administration appealed the decision, so the ruling is now in limbo. 

The consensus is that the federal ruling, even if it stands, likely would not, in isolation, be sufficient to unlock demand from this buyer segment, whether in Celina, Texas, or other impacted markets across the country.

High-income immigrant buyers still face significant uncertainty, and until there is a more fundamental policy adjustment and a shift in the vibe, many might stay on the sidelines. 

“With the uncertainty revolving around immigration reform, I think that even if this is removed after appeal, there will still be hesitancy about what’s next. I am not sure there will be stability in that area until policy is changed,” said a homebuilding executive from Northern Virginia, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly. 

Dr. Selma Hepp, Chief Economist and SVP at Cotality, who originally hails from Croatia, agreed with that sentiment. 

“Being an international person myself, I don’t think that one specific ruling will change things immediately. I think it’s more about this overall narrative around not welcoming international employees and foreign visa seekers. It’s just a general feeling of, ‘maybe I should sit this out,’” Hepp said in an interview, noting the lingering policy uncertainty. “It makes it very difficult to make some long-term decisions, such as purchasing a home.”

However, Compass Chief Evangelist and New York-based broker Leonard Steinberg said brokerages under the company’s umbrella have felt the impact of the $100,000 H-1 B fee. The recent ruling, if it stands, could have some implications for the luxury market, Steinberg argued. 

“We have seen the adverse effects of this fee; to be certain,” he said. “Eliminating this fee could be extremely helpful in attracting underserved talent in the US. This is usually a prime audience for real estate. The impact is likely to be felt most on the high end, as very highly skilled workers in short supply locally often have well-paid jobs.”

“[Effects of doing away with the $100,000 fee] will vary greatly from region to region based on supply and inventory levels,” Steinberg added. “This audience will find ready-to-move-in, renovated homes most attractive.” 

How AI and tech layoffs play into the mix

Policy is only part of the story. Recent layoffs and a pullback in hiring across the tech industry, historically the largest source of H-1B employment, have also weighed on demand among these buyers. The slowdown in hiring has affected not only immigrant workers but also the overall labor pool.

Markets that attract many highly educated immigrants, such as Seattle, Silicon Valley, Northern Virginia, and portions of Dallas-Fort Worth, have borne the brunt of tech layoffs. 

“A lot of these markets have suffered from slowing demand otherwise, so we cannot necessarily always tease out slowing of demand due to these international buyers versus overall slowing of demand,” Hepp noted. “You may want to attribute something to one driver, but there are actually a lot of things going on at the same time, so just a caveat there,” Hepp said. 

Ram Konara – a Texas-based Realtor with StarPro Realty who works with many immigrant buyers – noted that most foreign nationals who eventually become homebuyers have already spent years in the U.S. building credit histories and stable employment records before seeking a mortgage.

Even if the $100,000 fee is ultimately eliminated, Konara said he doesn’t expect a meaningful surge in housing demand from newly arriving H-1B workers. Rather, broader labor-market conditions are weighing more heavily on the decisions of many highly skilled foreign professionals.

“The main thing is, especially on the software side, AI is taking a lot of jobs,” he said. “Even if they have a stable job, they are worried about their jobs here.”

Konara also noted that many H-1B professionals earn salaries high enough that the proposed fee alone would not necessarily deter relocation decisions.

Rather than the visa application fees themselves, Konara argued that policies that disrupt workers’ ability to remain in the country during the process might create even greater uncertainty for prospective homebuyers.

“The green card processing will affect a lot [of buyers],” Konara said. “That’s because the Trump administration has said people have to leave the country when they are processing their green cards. If that is implemented, I think that will affect a lot of people. They would have to leave their job and go back to their country and wait for the [processing] dates to be current.”

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RLTYco has launched a national consulting division, RLTYconsulting, to help large brokerages and teams scale their brands while offloading back-office financial operations, the company announced on Tuesday.

The New York-based firm, which bills itself as a one-stop financial infrastructure provider for 1099 real estate professionals, said the new unit will be led by growth strategist Danielle Garofalo and Douglas Elliman broker and regional manager Scott Elwell.

RLTYconsulting will work at the brokerage level and with large real estate teams, focusing on strategic growth, brand positioning and operational efficiency. The offering is paired with RLTYco’s existing services — including tax planning, payroll and other financial logistics — as part of a membership model intended to reduce the friction of running high-volume real estate businesses, according to the announcement.

Garofalo, who previously held senior roles at Disney and IBM before moving into residential real estate, brings experience as former chief strategy officer at Stribling & Associates and chief business development officer at CORE. Her consulting work has included assignments for brands such as Compass, REMAX, Lennar and The Agency, the company said.

Elwell, co-principal of RLTYconsulting and a broker with Douglas Elliman in Greenwich, Connecticut, has served as a regional manager, broker of record and agent across New England. He said the goal is to bridge the gap between brokerage business models, day-to-day agent realities and long-term growth plans.

“Having served as a regional manager, broker of record, and boots-on-the-ground agent throughout New England, my mission has always been to advocate for brokers and help them scale,” Elwell said in a statement. “By marrying our operational expertise with RLTYco’s infrastructure, we are bridging the gap between the brokerage business model, a broker’s day-to-day realities and the long-term growth goals of both.”

Garofalo said the partnership is aimed at allowing brokerage leaders to focus on brand and measurable growth while RLTYco simplifies back-office administrative work.

This article was generated using HousingWire Automation and reviewed by a HousingWire editor before publication.

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Roomvu has introduced a new landing page creation tool designed to help real estate and mortgage professionals convert online marketing traffic into client inquiries and appointments.

The new product, called Engage Pages, is integrated into the company’s Roomvu Engage platform and allows users to create customized landing pages for specific marketing objectives.

Users can generate pages by selecting a marketing goal and design style, after which artificial intelligence (AI) generates page layouts, written content and lead-capture forms.

“Most agents think building a great web page means hiring a developer or spending thousands on a premium web service. Engage Pages changes that entirely,” said Sam Mehrbod, CEO of Roomvu. You describe what you want, the AI builds it, and in a few clicks you have an elite, custom grade page – without the price tag or the wait. We put a web designer inside the platform.”

Templates designed for several common business objectives, such as buyer lead generation, luxury property marketing and market expertise positioning, are also included.

The landing page builder is connected to Roomvu’s broader marketing platform. The company said its follow-up system combines AI and human assistance to respond to inquiries and schedule appointments.

“I’ve worked with web developers, paid for high-end custom web design services, and waited weeks for revisions,” said Tricia Lehane, a Realtor with REMAX Excalibur in Arizona. “With Engage Pages it felt like having a web designer in the chat. I described what I needed, made a few clicks, and had a page I would have spent thousands on is now done in minutes.”

This article was generated using HousingWire Automation and reviewed by a HousingWire editor before publication.

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For months, the military conflict between the U.S. and Iran has weighed on mortgage rates as oil supply shocks and rising inflation have kept investors on edge. But with the two countries set to sign an end to hostilities on Friday in Switzerland, housing professionals and their clients can expect the costs of a home loan to stabilize.

Rates dropped slightly in the two days since President Donald Trump’s confirmation of a deal. On Tuesday, HousingWire’s Mortgage Rates Center showed that 30-year conforming rates averaged 6.73%, down 5 basis points from one week ago. Rates for 30-year jumbo loans were down 2 bps to 6.75%, while 30-year loans backed by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) also shed 2 bps to average 6.31%.  

Fed will ‘absolutely’ hold rates

While the macroeconomic picture should improve as the Strait of Hormuz reopens and oil prices come down, inflation is now at a 4.2% annual clip, which likely ended any slim hopes of the Federal Reserve lowering benchmark rates this week.

The Fed will conclude its two-day meeting on Wednesday — its first under the leadership of Kevin Warsh — but the federal funds rate is all but certain to remain at a range of 3.5% to 3.75%. Moving forward, a rate hike could be more likely than cut. According to the CME Group’s FedWatch tool, 9% of interest rate traders expect a 25-bps increase in July and 26% anticipate one by September.

“The Fed is absolutely going to hold rates [this week],” said Melissa Cohn, regional vice president of William Raveis Mortgage. “Even though Warsh is more dovish, he’s one of 12 voting members of the Fed’s Board of Governors, and he’s going to have a hard time getting a majority of them to agree to cut rates in this current inflationary environment.”

“Mortgage rates are likely to remain stable or uptick slightly at the next June Fed meeting, as the market points toward short-term rates holding steady,” said Charles Goodwin, vice president and head of bridge and DSCR lending at Kiavi.

“The latest first Friday jobs report indicated better-than-expected economic performance that suggests a reduced likelihood of a near-term Fed rate cut and sustained higher interest rates, adding 172,000 jobs in May while the unemployment rate held steady at 4.3% — effectively sealing the fate of no Fed rate cut in June.”

Odeta Kushi, deputy chief economist at First American, noted that expectations today have shifted significantly since the start of the year, when markets believed the Fed would begin cutting rates by this point. But with headline inflation running at its highest level since 2023, “markets have largely abandoned the idea that easing is the default path,” she said.

“The conversation has shifted from ‘when will they cut?’ to ‘will they cut at all?’” Kushi added.

Housing market activity stays resilient

This week’s Housing Market Tracker shows that homeownership demand continues to grow even as fewer properties are being listed for sale. HousingWire Lead Analyst Logan Mohtashami wrote Saturday that weekly pending sales increased to 75,856, up from 72,039 during the same week in 2025.

Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) data for the week ending June 5 also showed that consumers are hungry to purchase a home as total applications were up 10.8% from the prior week. The higher demand coincides with an increase in mortgage credit availability, with jumbo loan programs driving a slight uptick in the MBA’s index from April to May.

“Mortgage applications increased for the first time in four weeks, jumping 10% overall with sizeable upticks in both purchase and refinance activity. The rise in purchase applications points to continued homebuyer demand despite affordability challenges and broader economic uncertainty,” said Bob Broeksmit, the MBA’s president and CEO.

Kyle Bass, production business manager at Refi.com — a subsidiary of Mortgage Resource Center and Veterans United Home Loans — said that recent stability in rates has benefited refinance origination opportunities as prospective borrowers “may be settling into the current rate environment rather than waiting for a meaningful decline.”

Kushi also expressed optimism for the purchase market as existing home sales recorded their largest monthly gain of the year in May.

“The most important thing to understand about today’s housing market is that demand has been delayed, not destroyed,” she said. “We estimate there are roughly 4 million missing home sales relative to historical norms, highlighting the amount of pent-up demand still waiting on the sidelines.

“For homebuyers, the question is no longer simply whether rates move lower. It’s whether households gain enough confidence in the path of inflation, borrowing costs and the broader economy to move forward with major financial decisions.”

This post was originally published on here. 

Wealth growth, changing buyer demographics and an increased focus on health and wellness are reshaping the luxury housing market, according to Sotheby’s International Realty.

The company’s 2026 Mid-Year Luxury Outlook report found that wellness-focused features and long-term livability are becoming more prominent considerations among affluent buyers, particularly in the highest-priced segments of the market.

The report draws on feedback from Sotheby’s International Realty agents involved in transactions valued at $10 million or more, along with data from organizations like the Federal Reserve, UBS, the National Association of Realtors and the Global Wellness Institute.

Among the report’s findings, roughly 38% of surveyed real estate professionals working in the $10 million-and-above market said aging in place has become a growing factor in home purchase decisions.

The report also cited projections that the global longevity market could grow from $5.3 trillion in 2023 to $8 trillion by 2030, while wellness-related real estate is expected to exceed $1.1 trillion by 2029.

“As we celebrate 50 years of Sotheby’s International Realty, this report mirrors the strength of a brand built on insight, trust, and global perspective,” said Bradley Nelson, chief marketing officer of Sotheby’s International Realty.

“This edition of Luxury Outlook reveals a housing market that consumers are actively experiencing. What stands out this year is the emergence of longevity as a defining force in luxury real estate. Homebuyers aren’t just investing in a home; they’re investing in how they want to live and age.

“At the same time, wealth at the top end continues to expand, and homebuyers are younger and more open to seeking properties in new locations. The result is a luxury property market that moves faster, feels more competitive, and requires more informed decision-making. This report helps bring clarity for both affiliated agents and the clients they serve.”

Luxury stays ahead of broader market

The report also points to continued strength in the luxury housing sector despite slower activity in the broader housing market. Researchers attributed demand in part to gains in financial markets and wealth creation among high net worth households.

According to Federal Reserve data cited in the report, the net worth of the top 1% of Americans reached $54 trillion by the third quarter of 2025. Additionally, nearly 40% of the world’s millionaires live in the U.S., and researchers project the creation of 5 million additional millionaires globally by 2029.

More than half of surveyed professionals specializing in properties priced above $10 million reported an increase in luxury buyers during the past year, while average prices rose about 5%, according to the report.

Millennials continue to account for a growing share of luxury buyers. Sixty-six percent of respondents reported an increase in millennial clients, a share that rose to 73% among professionals working in the $5 million-and-above market.

Lifestyle valued above taxes, stability

Lifestyle considerations ranked as the most frequently cited factor that influences purchase decisions, with 62% of respondents identifying it as increasingly important.

Taxes, economic stability and political stability followed.

The report also highlighted continued activity in major international markets, including New York City, San Francisco, Hong Kong and Milan, where demand for high-end properties remains steady.

Tax policy may also influence future buying activity. The report noted that the increase in the federal deduction cap for state and local taxes from $10,000 to $40,000 could encourage purchases of luxury homes in states with higher property taxes.

“The global luxury real estate market continues to endure, even as the forces shaping it evolve,” said Philip White, president and CEO of Sotheby’s International Realty. “This resilience is most evident in leading global cities, which continue to attract strong interest from the world’s most sophisticated homebuyers. Longevity is increasingly driving that interest too. It’s no longer just where folks want to live, but how they want to live as they age.

“What we are seeing in the industry is not a short-term change, but a sustained shift in how global wealth is stored, transferred, and expressed through property. It underscores a simple reality: while motivations are changing, prime real estate can be one of the most trusted ways people preserve and express wealth.”

This article was generated using HousingWire Automation and reviewed by a HousingWire editor before publication.

This post was originally published on here. 

U.S. Reps. Mike Flood, R-Neb., and Maggie Goodlander, D-N.H., have introduced legislation aimed at easing federal procurement requirements that housing advocates say are delaying affordable housing developments and increasing construction costs nationwide.

The measure, titled the Build Housing Affordably Act, would temporarily suspend the application of Build America, Buy America (BABA) requirements for certain affordable housing projects while federal officials study the policy’s impact on housing development.

Flood, who chairs the House Housing and Insurance Subcommittee, said the legislation is intended to address barriers that have contributed to rising housing costs.