Refi Activity Surges, Joel Kan Discusses the MBA Application Survey Index | September 2024 Data

Olivia: 00:00:02

Welcome to Market Advantage, the monthly podcast from Optimal Blue. Tune in for valuable insights from the market advantage mortgage data report and in depth conversations with industry experts.

Stay competitive and optimize your advantage in the ever evolving mortgage landscape.

Olivia: 00:00:20

Hello and welcome to the first episode of the Market Advantage podcast by Optimal Blue. My co host Brennan O'Connell and I are so excited to be adding this additional piece to our monthly mortgage data report.

Today we are going to look at rate lock activity from September, and then we'll welcome a special guest, Joel Kahn, deputy chief economist for the Mortgage Bankers association.

Now, if you aren't familiar with the market Advantage Data report, I highly recommend you subscribe via the link in our show notes because we're going to cover just the highlights today and you can find all the great data in the full report.

Before we look at what happened last month, though, Brennan, could you share a little bit of information on where our data comes from and why it's considered to be such a trusted source in the industry?

Joel Kan: 00:01:04

Hey, Olivia. Yeah, absolutely. And welcome to our listeners here on our maiden voyage of the market advantage podcast, the optimal blue rate lock data.

It's all a byproduct of the use of the optimal blue pricing engine. So we've got about a third of the market who is using our system for price search, eligibility determination, and then ultimately locking loans.

So over 800 lenders are locking with us.

It represents over a third of all United States residential originations and is really seen as one of the best leading indicators of what's going on in the mortgage business overall, used by government agencies, lenders, investors, many economists and reporters as well.

Olivia: 00:01:46

Excellent. So let's dive in. What outcomes did we see in September's data?

Brennan: 00:01:52

Well, the big story was the FOMC finally reducing the target Fed funds rate by 50 basis points. That was the first cut since the Fed began its effort to tame inflation in March of 22.

Both borrowers and lenders alike celebrated, as did we, as a vendor to the industry. That really led to what has been a growing surge in refi volume.

l that it was in September of: 2023

So, so really we're in a new era in rates, and it's leading to what we expected, which was pretty significant, increases in refi volume in total. That refi production is nearly a third now of all production overall.

And on an absolute basis, the refi production, it's the highest level we've seen since January of 22.

Olivia: 00:02:55

So it sounds like all is well in Refi World. What about purchase locks?

Brennan: 00:03:01

Yeah, the refi production has been trending, as I mentioned. Mortgage rates have rallied for a few months now, and the refi production has ticked up.

But the purchase business has been a little bit more stubborn, a little bit more stagnant. However, September saw volumes that were, on a year over year basis, slightly up. And I should take a step back.

We look at specifically purchase lock counts, which are a key measure for market health that excludes the impact of home price appreciation and volatile refi activity. So this is really a bellwether indicator for us as we track the market health.

And that number ticked higher in September, which is very encouraging, the first time that that's happened since the spring of 22.

And so as we move into q four, I think there's really good reason to be optimistic that the improvement in rates is leading to now an improvement in purchase volume in the same way that we saw refi volumes tick up over the last 60 to 90 days. Also, just a few odds and ends as it relates to production. Both conventional and VA volume ticked higher. So conforming volume was up.

Nonconforming volume was up, VA volume was up, and then FHA actually lost share. FHA is now down to roughly 19%, down from kind of a low twenties percentage share of the market, which it was at earlier in this year.

And it kind of a local maximum, but has ticked down, I think, as affordability has improved.

Olivia: 00:04:27

Got it. How about rates?

Brennan: 00:04:29

Yeah, Fed cut rates by 50 basis points certainly found its way into the mortgage market as well.

But for folks who aren't familiar with how this tends to work, in most cases, the mortgage rates are going to be a little bit of a leading indicator, and market rates overall are going to be a leading indicator of what the Fed's going to do, folks, build in expectations of a rate cut. You had already seen rates start coming down.

So although the Fed reduced rates by 50 basis points in September, rates fell across the board somewhere between an 8th and a quarter of a point, depending on the product. You're looking at our benchmark conforming OBMMI 30 year product fell 23 basis points on the month.

FHA, VA and Jumbo were all down somewhere between an 8th and a quarter of a point because much of that, or at least half of that rate cut had been built in to expectations leading into September ahead of the FOMC decision. Then just a few other odds and ends here ticking off from our market advantage report. So we saw borrower credit increase across the board.

I think folks recognizing that this is a good time to get into the market now, both in the purchase and refi lending space, we saw particularly rate and term refis. This is a pretty significant jump for us, six points on average for the average credit score.

So now the average borrower getting a rate term refi and a average purchase loan is nearly prime. So both are in that kind of high 730s range.

And then I think also this improvement in production, probably a growth in some nonconforming loans, larger loans like jumbo production increased. We saw a rise in both the average loan amount and purchase price. Purchase price now and edits it's up over $10,000 month over month.

So we went from purchase price in that kind of mid $4.60 range, up to 475 is the average purchase price we're seeing in our data now. So pretty significant increase there after a couple of months of decline.

Again, I think it's more data that indicates there's maybe a groundswell from the borrowing community based on some of the affordability improvement that we're getting from rates falling.

Olivia: 00:06:44

Thanks, Brennan. All in all, it sounds like things are trending in a pretty positive direction.

Really looking forward to seeing where we're at again this time next month.

Brennan: 00:06:53

Thanks a lot, Olivia. Looking forward to Joel.

Olivia: 00:06:55

Now that we spent time looking at September's rate lock activity, I'm so excited to welcome our guest, Joel Khan, deputy chief economist for the Mortgage Bankers Association. Joel is a prominent voice in the industry who regularly shares his expertise on the economy and the housing market, at events and in the media.

And something we appreciate very much is that Joel is a friend of optimal blue. He and my co host frequently discuss mortgage market related topics. Joel, we are so glad to have you today. Welcome to the Market Advantage podcast.

Joel Kan: 00:07:25

Thanks, Olivia. Happy to be here.

Olivia: 00:07:27

Now, before we dive into the matters at hand, there was something in your bio that piqued our interest. Both Brendan and I happen to be midwesterners, he from Wisconsin and myself originally from Nebraska.

And we noticed you're an alum from the University of Michigan.

Joel Kan: 00:07:43

Yep, that's right.

I was a proud undergrad at Michigan, and I'm absolutely still proud of the tradition and having gone there and all the experiences that have come with it. So yeah, thanks for recognizing that.

Olivia: 00:07:55

Very good. It's always good to have midwestern company.

Brennan: 00:07:59

With that background and being from the Midwest. There's really no holes in your resume other than potentially fraternizing with me a little bit too often. But we won't fault you for that.

I think we'd like to jump in here and for our maiden voyage here. We're so excited to have you on, Joel. And this podcast is going to be a compliment to the market advantage report that optimal blue puts out.

And I thought no better way than having somebody represent the MBA. The application survey is really the gold standard in the industry when it comes to tracking mortgage activity.

Sort of think of MBA's application survey as the Dow Jones of housing finance, if you will. This is how we determine how things are going in the mortgage industry.

So with that, often we're talking about what is the survey telling us in the current market.

I feel like very rarely do we talk about the background, the history, methodology, and so wanted to just give you an opportunity to tell all of our listeners about how it came to be. Anything you can share about the history?

hich goes all the way back to: 1990

Joel Kan: 00:09:15

Yeah, absolutely. And thanks to you too, Brennan, for the invite to be here. As you said, we've talked a lot about data and about mortgage in the past.

So now I guess we're doing it where it is going to be recorded and eternalized, if there is such a word. But in any case, we absolutely love putting our data together. It's a weekly survey.

As you know, the weekly application survey, it is a little bit high pressure just because it's a quick turnaround. I know you guys are doing something similar, but we get the data in.

It's data that we collected from a handful of mortgage lenders across the country. The focus really is on the retail and consumer direct channels. But in any case, we have a representative group of participants in the survey.

And by a representative, I mean we look at the HMDA data that comes out every year, and we look at the market share based on depositories, non depositories, community banks, credit unions, et cetera. And we compare that to what we're getting in our survey.

And I can say that as of the: 2023

you noted, it does go back to: 1990

So I started the MBA in: 2006

And something that we're always trying to make sure we do is to keep that mix representative.

say is back in, I want to say: 2010

But really what I mean by that is we had the traditional, conventional and government pieces of data and all sort of the related indexes below that, but we expanded to the government piece, sorry, to include a breakout for FHA VA and the USDA RHSP. So that was, I would say, the most recent refresh or update.

But like I said, the representative is important to us and that's something that we're always working on.

Brennan: 00:11:46

Yeah, that edit or that change you made ten plus years ago.

Now if I recall, that brought your representative portion of the market from something like 50% up to, is it like a three quarter representation or something in that range today where you feel like three and four lenders or three and four loans are being represented in the way you're putting together the indexes?

Joel Kan: 00:12:12

Yeah, that's right. So at the time, that was the estimate. I will say too that we are actually reworking that right now.

Again, just given how dynamic the industry is and given the changes, I guess in the channels and the channel shares respectively.

So this is a retail consumer direct focused survey, but we know from our conversations and from other studies that we do that you also have a really active wholesale correspondent market look out for a new benchmark or coverage estimate in the future.

Brennan: 00:12:47

Yeah, that make me think a little bit.

We've got optimal blue, about: 1100

Is there any, anything that they can do or should, you know, folks like they should reach out to in order to be included if that was something that one of our listeners was interested in?

Joel Kan: 00:13:17

Yeah, absolutely. We're always looking to expand our sample size and being that it is a MBA survey, we are always looking to engage with our members.

So members do find, MBA members do find a good return in doing this little data exchange with us because they also get the results back and through a lot of the conversations, so the onboarding conversations, you know, we learn a lot about their business.

They learn about the nuts and bolts that go into the survey and then how they can use the data as they're doing their own planning or benchmarking once they're in the survey. So, yeah, always looking to supplement that so they can always come to me or find someone else on my team and we'd be happy to have that discussion.

Brennan: 00:14:02

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I think our perspective just from folks we talk to is there's a growing demand for data, which I think from both of our perspectives is a good thing.

It's good for the market overall, data driven decision making.

It's probably going to both increase profitability and probably also ultimately lead to better pricing for the end user and the borrower, improving housing finance as a whole. More data decision making, more folks involved.

We've got the MBA survey, which if that's the Dow Jones, there's probably a few other indexes out there, other data sources that folks look to.

And if I put myself in, whether it's somebody in capital markets or maybe a loan officer who likes to track the market closely, I might have my, my MBA application survey that I'm looking at.

What are some of the other data sources that you think are good complements as someone's putting together a mosaic of what's going on in the mortgage industry? You mentioned one that always comes to mind.

It's a little bit longer dated, Humda, in the sense that it shows up several months after the end of the year in terms of tracking current market data, maybe is not so relevant, although it's very complete. But I think of the Freddie Mac PMMS survey, I know inside mortgage finance does really pretty thorough reporting in their data subscriptions as well.

When you're talking to folks, what do you think the right mix is? How do you feel like these different data sets interact with each other?

Joel Kan: 00:15:41

I think we could spend all day talking about that.

I think there are actually, before I do that, maybe just a quick side step or backward step, because I did want to highlight some, I think, important characteristics of our application survey, too. So really quickly, and you'll see why this is relevant when we get to the other sources. So as you noted, we do publish a set of indexes.

er time. So the base year was: 1990

Similarly, for the refi side, we have an index. So the reason why I'm emphasizing that is because we don't actually publish the level or the counts of applications that we're capturing.

And the reason is because, again, things change, the sample changes. But also we want to make sure there is, I guess, clear communication on what we're measuring.

So it's the percent changes from different periods in time. And it's not sort of an absolute count number, which I know has its values too, or the uses too, right.

It's a high value to have what the actual size of the market is. This is more how the market is moving, if that makes sense. So a lot of the indexes that we put out are just purely indexes.

And then the other component or the other part of it is rate. So we have a rate survey as part of that. So we have the 30 are fixed, we have an FHA rate, jumbo rate and an arm rate, to mention a few.

So just wanted to point that out real quick because I know that's kind of why some people like to use our data or some people might use HMDA. It really depends on what you're looking to measure and what questions you're looking to answer.

I think maybe HMDA is the logical one because I think you might agree that that is the closest thing that we have to a census for the mortgage industry.

It's the only place you can go to for annual data that shows how many originations were done in 23, how many apps were taken in 23 with as close as possible to full coverage of the market. Because like I said, we have a subset.

You have other studies that are either, again, specific channels or different lender types or also other surveys, right, that are extrapolated to cover, to value the entire market. So, Humda. Yeah, I mean, annual data, I know they're starting to put out quarterly data, which is a subset of the annual data.

But that's really important for our benchmarking.

Like I said, we use it to check on the composition that we have, but we also use it to benchmark the purchase and refi share, you know, what the application counts look like from year to year and where we think our coverage might be. So, you know, that's, that's a really important piece of information. And then HMDA does publish loan level data.

So you can see all these different characteristics of the borrower. So I'm going to stop there and I, before I keep going, but see if you want to jump in on anything HumDa related.

Joel Kan: 00:18:38

No, I completely agree. I think you noted the loan level detail as well.

I think the trend going back to what we're seeing in terms of a secular trend towards more use of data and decision making, and we see optimal blue offers loan level data too. We see more folks saying, hey, look, summary statistics are great, but how do I get into a little bit more detail?

I think it's great what you can get from HMDA, obviously, shameless plug for the optimal blue rate lock data and what we put in our market advantage, our monthly production report, it's Ratelock based. So I often think of the rate lock in the application tending to have the same timeline somewhere between 30 and 60 days ahead of the close.

Although as you and I have talked about this year, there's often times where those two numbers might deviate.

The MBA application survey and the obtained rate lock data might deviate if lenders are floating locks, for example, not locking in until some sort of market moves.

So really, I think it comes back down to, and again, we have these conversations with folks you want to be looking at multiple pieces of information, and there just continues to be, I think, more and more added to the quiver for folks in terms of data that they can dig into and track the market. And I think it actually segues into here to another topic I wanted to cover, which is those two sides of the same coin.

First question is, where are you seeing gaps in terms of data in the market? And I actually think, which is great.

I think the NBA is already starting to address some of these, and a few that I know you've already launched are some builder related data as well as some affordability index.

It would be great if you could touch on those and then anything else that you're working on or that folks should be looking out for coming from the MBA.

Joel Kan: 00:20:31

Yeah, thanks for that. Absolutely. So I think I'll start with gaps and then maybe see where we can fill in.

I think as much as we rely on HMDA as the industry annual source for industry sort of loan level originations data, I mean, I think it's still not 100% because it's a reporting dataset. So I think there are thresholds for who has to report. So it's not 100%. I guess it's getting closer to that.

So I think that's one if we could get, again, higher coverage or maybe a bigger data set, even if that's possible. I know that the GSEs have loan level data, you guys do. But everyone is sort of really good in their own segment.

But I think it's hard putting everything together to get that complete picture of the world. Kind of why we're having this discussion, because there are so many pieces of information that we all need.

I think in terms of what we're doing, we do try to utilize the data that we collect. So the weekly survey actually is based on low level data. We just, again, don't publish it that way.

We recently, maybe a few years now, we put out an affordability index that's based on the median purchase loan amount that we're getting from the application survey. We use the average rate that we have for that month, apply that to the loan amount to come up with a median mortgage payment like a P and I payment.

Just to give folks a sense for how has that trended over time? What was the impact of the big run up in rates that we saw?

And then on top of that, also adjusting that for income growth so that you have some way of comparing how that evolution, I guess, of the P and I payment looks like, or has looked like relative to income changes so many different ways you can do that. That's kind of how we chose to do it. But either way, I think it's been really useful.

And then because we have some of the detail, we're able to break that down into the various different loan types. So conventional VA FHA, we have different p and I's or median p and is for each of those loan types. So I think that's pretty cool.

That's, that's something that people have used recently.

And I think it's a good gauge for the industry in the sense that we all know affordability has been a challenge for many households, especially for first time homebuyers or just younger households looking to purchase. So that's a big one. You brought up the builder side of things. And so the weekly doesn't, I guess, doesn't really focus on the new construction piece.

And so we have a survey called the Builder Application survey that is a survey of lenders who are affiliated with home builders. And so we have about, I think, about a third of the market in terms of coverage there. And so pretty representative.

I think our strength might be, might lean on maybe sort of the larger builders in that one.

But in any case, that's been really useful, I guess, over the last year or so because the market segmentation I don't know if that's the right word to use. I think because of the inventory issues, you've had the existing market and has performed very differently from the new construction market.

Let's just think of it that way.

So the weekly apps survey, I think has a better look into what the existing home sales market looks like or purchase apps for existing homes has looked like, whereas the builder is more focused on, as you know, new construction. And so all that to say, there's just been a difference in performance.

So the weekly apps numbers on the purchase side were showing year over year declines for the longest time. And I guess the breaking news is that this week's release showed the first year of year gain in a long time.

So we've, the weekly is finally showing positive purchase year over year gains, but the builder survey has seen year over year gains, sorry for the last, you know, two years really, because again, of how strong that segment of the market has been, so really important, I guess to see how those two segments have looked like. So we're really happy that we're able to get participation for that, to produce that set of data.

Brennan: 00:24:42

Yeah, I think that's great. We've seen the exact same thing in the builder space.

We've covered a handful of the top builders and many of those associated or lenders that are associated with builders on our pricing engine.

And so we're capturing their rate locks and I think the share of the market purchase lending in terms of the existing home sales versus the new construction, I feel like the numbers were in that kind of ten ish, ten to 15% maybe total production, new construction going back a few years, and now it's crept up to something like almost a third, I think, of new purchase origination, at least in the data that we're seeing is coming from new construction. So to your point, very different stories. They're driven by different market dynamics.

This inventory and the single family home shortage is something that's going to continue. It's great to see that the MBA has put out some data to track that directly.

I want to go back to the affordability piece of, on the surface, it might not necessarily be something that a lender can do anything about or can act on immediately.

On the other hand, I think it's really very critical for folks who are originating loans to be aware of what is the position of their borrower in terms, historically speaking, in terms of the financial commitment that they're making to buy a home and whether youre a loan officer or somebody in capital markets. I think just being aware of that, its nice to say, well, affordability is bad.

Its really nice to know how bad are we getting better when rates come back down? How much does that improve the financial situation of my borrower?

Again, I think of the loan officer, which more and more loan officers are looked at as financial advisors to their borrowers.

What a good way for folks to be able to track this affordability issue that we're seeing in the market and be able to have really good, thoughtful conversations with their borrowers about what's happening to borrowers just like them. I think it's invaluable to be able to have that conversation and be empathetic with your borrower. Yeah.

Joel Kan: 00:26:59

And I think what one piece of one data point from the builder survey that has been really interesting to us is the FHA share. So the FHA share of applications, again, these are new purchase applications for new construction.

he survey, which goes back to: 2012

So if you think about FHA being about 80 plus percent first time home buyer, I think it's a pretty, pretty direct correlation with how many first time homebuyers are looking at new construction for various reasons. I'm sure affordability is one because we know that some builders are starting to do more in townhouses, more in starter homes.

And so a lot of households out there are having to compete on the existing market with people in a lot of these homes, maybe more expensive or bigger than they can afford.

So I think it's kind of a nice or even a natural progression that because builders are changing what they're building, you are seeing that FHA share, maybe more first time homebuyer activity on the new construction side. I mean, I think in the past you could agree new construction wasn't really a first time homebuyer entry level type market. Right.

Unless you're looking at a townhouse or a condo. But I think more and more we are seeing that shift over.

Brennan: 00:28:19

Yeah, you had the natural progression.

You live in an existing home, you save up enough, and then maybe you go move to a new home that you built or customize to your, to your needs as a growing, you know, growing family or something like that. Yeah.

And, you know, I guess if you do that for long enough and you run out of single family homes for people to move into, then you sort of need to cycle back, which we're seeing.

Joel Kan: 00:28:43

And I'll just add actually, this is a complete tangent, or related tangent, if that you can even call it that.

But I think that is really unique to the US housing market, the whole moving up aspect of it, because we meet with lots of folks from different places, including other countries. So I met with some european investors and they were. They had us explain that, but you know, we take that for granted.

But in some countries, people rent till they're in their forties and then they buy a house and that's their forever home. They don't actually have this move up from condo to entry level to, I don't know, single family with three rooms and then single family six rooms.

So anyway, I think that that's kind of why the whole world of housing and mortgage data is so expansive and so interesting because of the dynamics that we have in this market. I think it makes it for more complicated analysis, but also pretty interesting when you think about it that way.

Olivia: 00:29:39

Joel, if I could build on your tangent a little bit, I think thats so interesting that you regularly meet with individuals from other countries. Are there any other really interesting nuances in the american housing economy versus other countries that most of us wouldn't be aware of?

Joel Kan: 00:29:55

I think the biggest one is that we have a 30 year fixed pre payable mortgage. I think a lot of countries, it's as extreme as a payment adjustment every month.

% in: 2022

So I think that's been the biggest eye opener, I guess, that I've seen as far as how other mortgage markets are different. But yeah, like I said, the other was really just the housing culture, I guess, and just how people view housing differently than we do here.

So I don't know. Hopefully that was somewhat interesting, but that was a good question too.

Olivia: 00:30:38

Thank you.

Brennan: 00:30:40

Somewhat related housing market where there's a shortage of supply, which has led to pretty significant increase in home prices as that demand has outpaced supply. And so a lot of folks sitting on material equity in their home.

Another one that we get a lot of questions about, data related to second liens or helocs.

Joel, anything that you guys are either seeing or looking to put together more data related to as it relates to this, I'm just going to say sort of like tappable equity dynamic that's going on.

Joel Kan: 00:31:20

Yeah.

You know, I think as much as I like our own indexes, we don't have that breakout between a rate term and a cash out refining that has been really handy as an analyst for me in the past when just thinking about what the refi potential is, etcetera. And I know you asked about home equity, I'll get to that in a second.

And I know you guys have sort of rate terminal cash out breakout, which is great, something that I look to because I think it does kind of tie in with what's the refi potential, what's the trade off.

I guess now that rates are at 6%, you have people with 3%, let's just say first lien mortgages, and they don't necessarily want to make that trade off. But a 6% rate versus a 7% rate makes that cash out a little less painful, I guess. And so it'd be nice to see the dynamics of how that's changed.

But then also that has led to the need for more, I guess, both data and opportunity for second liens and for home equity and helocs. So we do have a separate HELOC study that we do.

It captures both trends on the operational trends, you know, how lenders are dealing with the HELOC operation, how much it costs to originate.

But it also has, I think, some pretty good sort of high level market data, like how much of these lines are being utilized, what the trends are in terms of how people are using their equity.

I think that's always been an important one, because we've always wanted to just see where the cash is going, because I think it impacts both the borrower, but then also the broader economy, without getting too far into that. But anyway, I think we have, those are, to me at least, the two biggest pieces of information that have been useful, just what the money is used for.

And I know you're going to ask. So a lot of it is for remodeling and renovation, and another big component is for debt consolidation, cash management, stuff like that.

So those are the two biggest pieces. And then utilization rates, they have been up in the most recent year's data.

In the past, a lot of people would get approved for HELOC but not use it, just have it there as a safety, safety vehicle or safety net if they need to pull cash. But we are seeing more usage of it again, whether it's for home improvement or for debt or consolidation, things like that.

So, yeah, that's been a nice thing to have. Talking about data gaps, that's always been, I think, a blind spot for us.

On that note, I actually also will say that portfolio lending, that's another one that we would love to get more insight into because as we know portfolio lending, it does cover some home equity as well. Lots of banks used to do home equity products and those were put on portfolio. And Jumbo's obviously is a big one.

But wish there was more data out there on what the appetite is for portfolio lending and what the volumes look like.

Joel Kan: 00:34:26

Yeah, the bank involvement, credit union involvement, any depository. It's a question we get.

We certainly are able to track some of that in our rate lock data in the sense that we can track these products, which are non agency in nature. So you can get some sense. Typically those are loans that are going to end up in a depository's portfolio, but not all. So, to your point.

Yeah, it's an area that you can kind of scratch around and sniff around the edges, but maybe don't have the total transparency.

Joel Kan: 00:35:03

Yeah, I think there's a flag for that in the HMDA data, but because it's annual, it's more backward looking. It would be nice to be able to see what portfolio lending looks like at a higher frequency, so.

Brennan: 00:35:15

Yeah, well, in any event, we're living in a new era. September marked the first rate cut that we've seen in over two years here.

Whatever we're talking about today, I'm sure if we have this interview again next year, I'm sure we'll have a whole new host of topics to discuss. It's really been great to have you on. Thanks again.

And I know before we wrap most of our lender clients, that's really the folks who we're intending to provide some value to with this podcast. So Olivia, I think, wants to wrap up and kind of bring us home with a bonus question.

Olivia: 00:35:53

Yeah, I have no doubt you two could discuss these topics all day. So Joel, truly, thank you so much for joining us. Now, I'd like to pose a little bonus question, as I'll call it.

So at optimal blue, our mission is to help lenders maximize their profitability on every loan transaction. And of course, one key way we do that is through data. So I would like to pose the question to you.

In your opinion, what is one thing lenders should be doing to maximize their profitability in today's market?

Joel Kan: 00:36:22

So I'm going to break the rule. You said one thing, but I think there are two things, or two half things that have been important.

You know, one has absolutely been technology and process related.

So as you know, we came off of two really lean years for originations, and lots of lenders were forced to really streamline how they ran their business and streamline their processes and their operations. Some of it was to use technology, some of it was to use technology better.

Some of it was to just really stick to what you have to do to get that loan done or to get the new business. So that leaning out was one big thing. And again, using technology tools where necessary.

But I think the second part of that is we're hearing anecdotes that it still is a huge financial decision for lots of people, whether it's a refi or purchase.

So you can have all the fancy tools and customer facing interfaces that you want, but at the same time, you still have to have that connection with the borrower. You have to figure out what they need and how to get them there.

So I think it's still sort of remembering that even with technology and self service and all the efficiencies, there is still a need to have that connection with your bar, with your client. So that's kind of where I think things are going based on all the conversations that we're having right now.

Olivia: 00:37:53

Very good, Joel, thank you so much for joining us today.

Joel Kan: 00:37:57

Thanks for having me, and thanks to.

Olivia: 00:37:58

Everybody for tuning in to the market advantage podcast by optimal blue. You can look for our next episode in early November, where we'll examine October's rate lock activity and have another engaging guest conversation.