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Navigating Economic Uncertainty and Rising Delinquencies | March 24, 2025
Episode 2524th March 2025 • Optimal Insights - Real-Time Data and Capital Markets Insights - Optimal Blue • Optimal Blue
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Welcome to this week’s episode of Optimal Insights. In this episode, our experts discuss the latest economic trends and their impact on the mortgage industry. Host Jim Glennon, joined by experts Alex Hebner and Vimi Vasudeva, covers key topics such as the recent Fed meeting, the implications of rising delinquencies on government loans, and the effects on MSR valuations.

Highlights:

  • Economic Analysis: Alex Hebner provides insights into the recent Fed meeting, discussing interest rate projections, quantitative tightening, and the potential impact of tariffs on the economy.
  • Rising Delinquencies: Vimi Vasudeva explores the increase in government loan delinquencies, modeling their impact on MSR valuations and mortgage pricing.
  • Market Trends: The episode examines current mortgage rates, consumer spending, and producer price indices, offering a comprehensive view of the economic landscape.

Tune in to gain valuable insights to help you stay ahead and maximize your profitability in the ever-evolving mortgage landscape. #OptimizeYourAdvantage #MaximizeProfitability

Hosts and Guests:

  • Jim Glennon, VP of Hedging & Trading Client Services
  • Alex Hebner, Hedge Account Manager
  • Vimi Vasudeva, Managing Director

Production Team:

  • Executive Producer: Sara Holtz
  • Producers: Matt Gilhooly & Hailey Boyer

Commentary included in the podcast shall not be construed as, nor is Optimal Blue providing, any legal, trading, hedging, or financial advice.

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Keywords: Real-time data insights, Capital markets commentary, Mortgage industry, Profitability, Lenders, Investors, Rate fluctuations, Mortgage landscape, Expert advice, Optimal Blue, Secondary marketing automation, Pricing accuracy, Margin protection, Risk management, Originators, Originations

Mentioned in this episode:

Optimal Blue Hedging and Trading – CompassEdge Loan and Trading Platform

INDUSTRY-LEADING, PROVEN ACCURACY Optimal Blue Hedging & Trading + Automation & Efficiency + Real-Time Risk Management + End-to-End Data Connections + Comprehensive Analytics & Modeling + Industry Expertise & Support To learn more about the benefits of hedging and trading with Optimal Blue, visit http://OptimalBlue.com/HT

Transcripts

Jim Glennon:

Welcome to Optimal Insights, your weekly source for real time rate data and expert capital markets commentary brought to you by Optimal Blue. Let's dive in and help you maximize your profitability this week.

Welcome to Optimal Insights, your weekly source for timely market analysis and expert commentary from Optimal Blue. I'm your host Jim Glennon, Vice president of hedging and Trading client services at Optimal Blue.

Our clients and industry partners have long relied on Optimal Blue for trusted insights and commentary, and these podcasts are an evolution of our commitment to keeping the industry informed. Let's dive into today's episode. Welcome everybody. Thanks for joining us on this Monday. It is March 24th. Got a great show for you today as always.

First we'll talk econ and current events with Alex. A lot going on. It's not just, just tariffs. Had a Fed meeting that we'll, we'll touch on and some other things to watch out for.

And then later we will be joined by Vimi from our desk, who you've all met before. We're going to talk a little bit about the full impact of rising delinquencies on government loans.

So James Cahill, a rising star and great writer on our desk, has developed a model to measure the effects of delinquencies on MSRs, so on servicing value and thus on pricing for, for mortgages. That's going out to the street right now and wrote a really good article about that on LinkedIn. So we'll talk through that a little bit.

And first, just in the way of data, we are really close to six and a half on the OBMMI.

So conventional 30 year just really hovering around that six and a half to six and five eight level, which is still, you know, the lowest we've seen this year.

It's not the 6% that we all really want to see to see that major jump in rate in the, in volume rather, but still trading sideways and maybe that's what we can hope for at this point. I think with all of the, the inflation talk and just general uncertainty in the market, I think we have kind of pressures pushing in both directions.

Right. And some a little bit of change of, of speak out of the Fed. So really keeping that, keeping in that range.

We're not worried about seven anymore for now, I guess. But we're also kind of hesitant to say that we're going to hit 6% before the end of the year.

I think a lot of variables could change that here in the near future. For now, volume is super healthy when you really look at it over the long term.

y close to what we had in, in:

Alex Hebner:

Morning Jim. How's it going? Doing well, doing well.

Jim Glennon:

A lot going on in the world.

I was on, I was on spring break last week, Jenny and I and the kiddos and we, I tried to keep up on what was going on, but I'm kind of scrambling this morning to get more up to date on, you know, tariff talk and all the details that came out of the Fed meeting last week. Anyway, what are the highlights right now that we should be paying attention to and what we, what do we miss last week?

Alex Hebner:

Yeah, I don't think it was a terrible week to take for spring break. Did see the fomc, that was definitely the highlight of the week. Wednesday and Thursday they had their meeting. Thursday we saw PAL speak.

As was widely expected, no cut to the interest rate environment. Still seeing on the projections. May will be the same boat, no cut there. And then in June is the expectation for the first cut for the year.

And then later in the year I'm seeing right now September with the CME's Fed watch tool. That's where the most futures contracts show it ticking down to 375 to 350 basis points.

So yeah, we're still on track for two cuts this year, but really, really no, no major changes. We did get a new dot plot from this Fed meeting which they do every, every three months.

You know, looking out to:

Jim Glennon:

Okay, so two cuts this year. Was there any change? I feel like there was. They talk about quantitative tightening a little bit.

Alex Hebner:

Yep, yep. They, they said they're going to continue to quantitatively tighten. They did not however announce any changes to mortgage backed securities.

They're going to continue to let those roll off at the same rate that they have been. So for the mortgage industry, business as usual.

Jim Glennon:

Right. The speculation there I believe is if they do start cutting back on what they let roll off, it's probably going to start with Treasuries. Right.

So might drop treasury rates a bit if that happens, which is helpful for mortgage backs. But doesn't Directly have the, the Fed coming back in to buy some of the supply that, that exists.

Alex Hebner:

Right.

It's not, it's not directly touching mortgages, but yeah, if they're going to impact treasury rates then, then we'll see it flow through to mortgages as we have been for the past few months here with 10 year down towards 4%.

Jim Glennon:

All right, so what is going on this week?

Alex Hebner:

This morning we got Stand and Poor's kind of flash index which, which kind of point in two separate directions. It showed weakening sentiment from producers. They're seeing rising costs to their, to their inputs.

But consumer spending was still extremely strong for this, this print. So, so it's pointing two conflicting directions. We could see those input prices feed through to the economy. PPI leads cpi, generally speaking.

So that one was pointing in two conflicting directions for the rest of the week. It's definitely going to be the PCE release on Friday.

Again, that's that Federal Reserve's benchmark rate that they're really looking to when they're making their policy decisions. That one is expected to be at two and a half percent year over year.

Anything, you know, under that inflation wise that could lead to some cuts faster than we expect.

But if, but if it's over 2 and a half percent and if it's floating around 3% which is where CPI and PPI have been, obviously they have slightly different ways that they conduct these surveys.

But if it's floating up towards 3% or even north 3% the same way CPI and PPI have been, I would see a reevaluation of the rate cut expectations for the year.

Jim Glennon:

Right. Maybe we go back to 1 or 0. It feels like we've been in that, I don't know, very wide range for the past few months on what expectations are there.

And you mentioned earlier that producers are starting to have issues, I guess with what producer prices are, what the wholesale prices look like, yet the consumer is still spending, which could that be a symptom of the, the talk of tariffs? Right.

Europe is now going to get a:

You know, maybe when you're at the store you're buying twice as much as you normally would just to put some in the in stock in your own home because you know your favorite liqueur is about to double in price.

Alex Hebner:

Definitely, definitely, definitely.

We're definitely seeing people still participating in the economy and you know, spending money as they have been, it's been these consumer, the sentiment indexes, you know, University of Michigan, the Standard and Poor's ones I cited just a few moments ago. Those ones which are forward looking are kind of, you know, do you expect to be spending money in three months and six months?

Those are the ones that are kind of flashing warning signs on the economy right now. But yeah, for the time being we do definitely see the consumer seems to still be in a decent spot.

But, but like you said, producers who are going to see those, those, those costs up front, they're the ones importing things for the most part, you know, a lot of those materials from abroad, they're going to be the ones first impacted by tariffs and then we'll see things flow out to the economy. As you said, you know, if you see that there's rumors of 2% tariff on your favorite drink, you know, you're gonna go buy some right now.

That's gonna look great for this upcoming GDP release and current spending levels.

But if you doubled or tripled up on what you usually buy and you're not buying for the next six months, that's gonna reflect poorly in, in the coming months.

Jim Glennon:

Right. It's just, still that uncertainty is just eating people I think and causing some, some odd behavior.

But it, when it comes out in the actual data, it still looks good. It still likes, looks like the economy is strong. DOGE hasn't hit the jobs numbers yet. Tariffs haven't hit the inflation numbers yet.

So if you know, the Fed and traders are looking at the data, things are still looking pretty good. That seems to be part of what's keeping us capped in this range for mortgages at like 6 and a half ish percent on a conventional. Right. Yeah.

Alex Hebner:

And that's why I'm really interested in this coming month or two months set of releases as these are going to be the first ones that are fully encompassing of the new administration and tariffs.

This PC releases for February, which is the first full month we have of the Trump administration since they're inaugurated, you know, late in January. So I think starting this Friday we could start to see, you know, you know, concrete results of what they've been doing.

That isn't to say that we won't be seeing it flowing in for, for, for months to come.

Jim Glennon:

Right. All right, what else? With tariffs, I feel like obviously things have changed quite a bit.

You know, there's more highlighted headlines whether it's, you know, this morning it was Hyundai is going to invest $20 billion in building cars in the US which is not a new thing, apparently.

You and I were talking about this earlier, but it's something to, I don't know, maybe the new policies are starting to sway some of the carmakers, for instance, into thinking a little bit differently about their future investment plans.

Alex Hebner:

Absolutely. Yeah. For first of all, there's definitely a lot of whiplash.

I think this morning, you know, we're seeing equity markets pop on rumors I don't even think they've officially stated. Maybe Trump tweeted something on, you know, Twitter or True Social or whatever it may be.

There's going to be sector specific exemptions for these tariffs. So we're at the kind of, the backing off.

We're a week and a half out from the April 2 deadline, which is when he said all the tariffs are going to go into place. We're seeing the carve outs already. You know, equity markets are happy to see that.

As to what you were saying about Hyundai and some other companies, Taiwan Semiconductor, they come to mind that they're making these, these grand overtures, I guess you could call it, to, to, you know, America, the Trump administration saying, you know, don't tariff us. You know, we'll invest in the US Economy, we'll create jobs here, we'll create, you know, homegrown GDP that isn't just consumption spending.

In the case of like Hyundai and other auto manufacturers, we see this a lot. I was going to say Asian manufacturers, but you know, BMW and Mercedes do the same. They have final production plants here in the United States.

I know there's a couple in Tennessee and Alabama.

And this has been a trend since the Obama administration, I think, where we see some on shoring of final, you know, putting the whole car together and then that, that makes it exempt from, you know, import taxes, tariffs, etc.

Jim Glennon:

Right.

So again, maybe kind of indirectly getting what the administration wants by threatening first and then seeing what the reaction is and then coming back and saying, okay, if you follow through Hyundai or whoever it is, we're going to Tibet. You're going to be exempt from the, from these tariffs.

Alex Hebner:

I mean, $100 billion investment.

I mean, you know, if we're looking at the lead times on, on the infrastructure that needs to be built for these new fabrication plants, I mean, these are going to go longer than the Trump administration will be in office. So they could easily call their bluff, you know, two years from now and withdraw the investment.

But, you know, that's a million different decision points from between that here and now.

Jim Glennon:

Right. And then further, like, how do you make French wine in America. That's for someone else to figure out. All right, what else do we have?

Alex Hebner:

Yeah, it's like I said, you know, really just look forward towards PCE this week. There's some consumer confidence again, as I said, we've been seeing some. Some warning signs being flashed regarding consumer confidence.

That one comes out tomorrow, Tuesday morning. Just see if that one shows continued weakening. The Michigan sentiment survey the last week, I believe it was, definitely showed some weakening.

So look for it from the official consumer confidence report. And, yeah, it should be a relatively quiet week. A lot of the other releases are kind of sector specific.

There are new and pending home sales, but those, generally speaking, unless they're really knockout numbers, don't push the market one way or another or push down the benchmark mortgage rate.

Jim Glennon:

Right. So watch the headlines. Right. When there's no data, you're really watching headlines. And the headlines lately have been pretty spicy, I would say.

Alex Hebner:

Absolutely. Yeah. It definitely feels like the headlines have moved away from strictly economic topics. Definitely.

The judiciary has been in the spotlight the past week with, you know, you know, deportations. Did the administration, you know, kind of flaunt a court order not to do certain deportations?

And then Chief Justice Roberts and Trump have kind of butted heads over the direction of what the administration's been doing. We'll see how those things play out. Expect econ to come into the spotlight again if you're an econ head like me.

Like I said, April 2 set deadline for terrorists, so keep an eye on that.

Jim Glennon:

Cannot wait to see what happens leading up to the April 2 deadline.

Alex Hebner:

Shaking with excitement.

Jim Glennon:

Yes. All right. Anything else, Alex?

Alex Hebner:

I don't think so. I think that wraps it up for today.

Jim Glennon:

Very good. All right. Appreciate the time and the wisdom as always.

Alex Hebner:

Absolutely. Thank you, Jim.

Jim Glennon:

Thanks, Alex.

Alex Hebner:

Sounds good. Thank you.

Jim Glennon:

All right, welcome. Vimy Vasudeva, manager on the desk and also runs our MSR team. Y'all met Vimy before. If you've been listening to the podcast. Vimy, how are you doing?

Vimi Vasudeva:

Doing well on this Rainy Monday in.

Jim Glennon:

D.C. oh, is it raining?

Vimi Vasudeva:

Yeah.

Jim Glennon:

Are the cherry blossoms out yet?

Vimi Vasudeva:

The cherry blossoms are out, yeah. We're about to hit peak this weekend, so it should be sunny and sevent and just perfect for cherry blossom season.

Jim Glennon:

Very cool. I have not seen them in real life, but I guess I'll see some this week.

I will be heading out tomorrow just for a day or two to the DC office, so that'll be fun.

Vimi Vasudeva:

Yeah, we're very much looking forward to that. I'll make sure we, we pick a spot that has a peak cherry blossom view for you.

Jim Glennon:

Nice. Love that. So yeah, we have talked quite a bit on, on this podcast.

Just in this point where we are in the credit cycle, we're starting to see delinquencies on things like credit cards, auto loans, subprime mortgages. Those numbers are starting to tick up, which is what you see in any credit cycle. Right.

Things get really good, debt gets paid down, people have money, their savings rates go up.

But we're in the part of the cycle now where savings rates go down, credit card balances go up, delinquencies start going up and that starts to bleed into mortgages, starting with government loans. And we are starting to see that now.

There was actually an article that we'll talk a little bit about that was in Bloomberg very recently that just is highlighting the fact that government loan delinquencies are up and that could be, you know, a sign of a fatigued consumer. Right. It doesn't seem, given what houses are going for, it doesn't seem like it's an issue with the housing market.

Seems like it's more of an issue just with the consumer being a little bit close to tapped out.

So besides the longer term impact of this on our industry and on rates, we also wanted to talk about, you know, what are the financial and process impacts of some of this delinquency right now. So James Cahill, as I mentioned, modeled out the effect that this has on MSR valuations, wrote a really good article about that on LinkedIn.

So how does this increased delinquency effect MSR valuation which then affects pricing? Right. So that's why we all want to be concerned about this.

Whether we have an MSR portfolio or not, the valuation of servicing is going to impact front end pricing, the pricing we're putting on the street right now for originators and borrowers. So let's talk a little bit about that. Vimy, what's like what should we be, how should we be thinking about this?

Vimi Vasudeva:

Yeah, so very topical right now. So Bloomberg actually published this article in late February and I'll get to why, mentioning the timeline here in a few moments.

But they published this in late February indicating that delinquencies have actually increased to nearly triple their pre pandemic average rates, which is quite significant. And there are many factors at play here.

So when we saw this article we thought it would be really interesting to model, model this out as you had mentioned. But a couple of things to note.

One is that the Bloomberg article mentioned that this increase in delinquencies is really in the 90 day plus delinquency bucket, if you will. And the industry considers this 90 day plus delinquency a serious delinquency as opposed to the 30, 60 day.

You know, I think it's pretty, it's pretty common to have a 30 day delinquency and not have it be a red flag necessarily.

Jim Glennon:

Sure. I just, I'm bad at paying bills. I missed it or I had to wait for an additional paycheck, but three months late is like, I, I might not pay anymore.

Vimi Vasudeva:

Yeah, for sure. And you know, some people don't have auto pay, which still surprises me, but some people don't have auto pay.

And so yeah, like you said, Jim, you could just very easily miss a payment and get categorized as 30 days delinquent.

Another thing that we've seen over the last couple of years which has been interesting is that the 30 day delinquency bucket has been increasing not by nature of a borrower actually going into default, likely to go into default, or someone forgetting to make their payment, as you said, but when the mortgage payment actually increases due to an increase in taxes and insurance. So a borrower again might have autopay and might not have paid attention to the notification and so didn't increase their payment.

Or it might take a minute for a borrower to understand like, hey, why is my, why is my mortgage payment increasing? And you know, to further increase their payment that they're passing through.

So by the time they adjust their payment, they could be flagged as 30 days delinquent.

Jim Glennon:

I get that. Well, you, yeah, I had one of those because I do auto pay from my bank.

So I just had it kind of on autopilot and then suddenly I was late because one of the two things went up. Taxes, insurance, something. And everybody's, everybody's seeing that now, right?

Vimi Vasudeva:

Yeah, you're a classic example of that stat. So. But in any case, it's not an alarming number. It's not super alarming for there to be higher delinquencies in the 30 day period.

Where servicers start to get concerned is when it is that 90 plus, it's very like it was much more likely that a borrower will go into default at that point and of course wreak all the havoc that happens when a borrower does go into default. So this article was really specific about the 90 day. And so as we were, as the MSR team was discussing how we might want to model this out.

James Cahill, as you'd mentioned he's, he's the author of this study and of the article and he decided to increase the delinquency rates that we have in our average model by a multiple of three. Three.

And what I, an interesting idea that he had was to actually, while the article quoted 90 day delinquencies, he increased starting a 60 day delinquency. It's just kind of thinking about the process and the workflow and how the 60 days might end up in the 90 day bucket.

So we wanted to take a look at that with respect to how this type of change would impact an MSR price. So one thing I do want to point out is that it's very important to isolate all other variables.

So nothing else was changed in our standard model except for this increase in delinquencies during the buckets that we just talked about. Of course, that's how you isolate the price impact.

But the other thing that's important to note is that given that the composition of every MSR portfolio is going to be different, whatever we might have seen in our portfolio is not going to be the exact impact to another portfolio or to just a general pricing of a Ginnie Mae msr.

Jim Glennon:

Sure. Plus every borrower's behavior is different. And yeah, I think there, there's this, you know, we're talking very general terms here.

If we, you know, if we continue to see increases in delinquency or we just see this current trend continue, like what does that do to multiples and pricing for the, you know, for those of us that have an MSR portfolio, but also for those of us that are trying to originate new loans and, and worried that it could, it will affect the price on the street for those, those loans.

Vimi Vasudeva:

Yeah, certainly.

So in our standard model that we used, it was, let's say it was about, I think it was a $20 billion UPB with an average whack of 4 and 7, 8 and again comprised completely of Ginnie Mae's. So we actually saw a hit to the MSR by a 3,8 of a decrease to the, to the multiple of the MSR. So about 36 basis points.

Points is what we saw as the impact. And I mean that's, that's, that's a pretty big number.

Jim Glennon:

Right. To the multiple, but it's a slightly smaller number in terms of price, right?

Vimi Vasudeva:

Absolutely, yes. And you bring up a good point, Jim, because MSRs are often quoted as multiples as opposed to the actual basis point price.

This, in this particular case, I think it was about a 12 basis point decrease to the price. But, but the reason why the industry quotes MSRs in terms of multiples is because the underlying service fee could be different. Right.

So it can be standard 25 basis points for conventional and then it could be, it's obviously different for Ginnies versus arms.

And so if you're trying to compare apples to apples, you can't just compare a conventional price to an M to a Ginnie Mae price because the underlying asset is of a different size.

And so it's important to look at this asset in terms of a multiple so that you can really compare like hey, the Ginnie Mae malts are about 1 multiple lower than a conventional malt.

Jim Glennon:

Right? Yeah.

One of these podcasts, I feel like we should do a tutorial on how MSRs are calculated and how they like where an actual mortgage price comes from. Starting with a, you know, with a mortgage backed security. I think we could do a whole podcast on that a lot of people would, would be interested in.

It just was just thinking about that, you know, comment on LinkedIn or wherever you're reading this or listening to this and we'll, we'll do that if we get enough interest. But you're right, like with especially government loans, there's a wide range of servicing fees.

Therefore the multiple affects each loan a little bit differently. But in this case about an eighth of a point in price average across the whole portfolio, which is a lot. Right.

When we're all trying to compete within an eighth of each other, whether we're wholesale or retail lender. So that's, that's a pretty big move.

And it could get worse I suppose if the trend continues and we get into a further spike in delinquencies and the cost to deal with that process. Right.

To go collect from borrowers and to advance payments because borrowers aren't paying, that's just going to further decrease the amount that folks are willing to pay for servicing because there's more, there's more overhead attached to it.

Vimi Vasudeva:

Yeah, absolutely.

So exactly to your point about the, just the underlying cost to service a Ginnie Mae loan is always going to be higher than a conventional because of the credit quality of the borrowers.

And if the borrowers are more likely to go delinquent and of course the servicers have to then chase these borrowers to see what's going on, see, you know, try to make them whole if they can otherwise.

And then even just like if it goes all the way through foreclosure, there are just so many more costs from a Ginnie MAE perspective than a conventional perspective.

Jim Glennon:

Right.

Vimi Vasudeva:

Then another thing to note as I talked about how it was important for us to isolate variables and then also just consider that every portfolio makeup is different. Another element is in terms of costs. How do you know what we're quoting might not necessarily impact another servicer the same way?

Because they might have a different cost of funds. And so what it might cost them to finance advances on delinquent loans could be very different than another institution.

You have to consider, are they leveraging a fine, an advanced facility? Advanced facilities exist too. So as someone leveraging that, so the cost, the cost side of things is going to be very different for each servicer.

Jim Glennon:

Right? That's a great point. Anytime we talk about servicing, that's a huge point.

You know, after Covid especially a lot of even smaller independent mortgage banks started retaining servicing, whereas they hadn't before. So you, you have a very big difference in that cost to basically advance money between like Citibank and you know, your mom and pop.

10 million dollar a month government independent.

Alex Hebner:

Right.

Jim Glennon:

So that, that's.

There's going to be a big, very different impact in terms of delinquency costs or just cost to service in general between those two and everything in the middle.

Vimi Vasudeva:

Exactly.

Jim Glennon:

All right.

Well, the one question that popped into my head also, and it was going back to the earlier discussion with Alex and just whether it's DOGE or just the new administration. Right. They're kind of upending a lot of these government agencies. So HUD and VA are included in those, in those discussions. Do you foresee?

I know it's early to tell, but I mean, could there be an impact from the changes that the new administration is making on this now with the timing of delinquencies going up and now the new administration coming in, potentially cutting back on headcount at these agencies? Like what might that do to the situation?

Vimi Vasudeva:

Yeah, it's a good question and it actually is why when I had started chatting with you all that I had mentioned the article from Bloomberg came out in late February, because so much has changed since then. It's changing very rapidly, as we all know. Hard to keep up with.

So last week I actually came across something that was interesting, which I think will really change the landscape of Ginnie Mae servicing even more than we've seen so far.

And it was interesting because as we talked about the last time I was on the podcast, Jim, we focused a lot on forbearance and of course we were talking about the California wildfires and that impact to, forbearance and the last time we saw a really big impact from forbearance prior to a natural disaster was during the pandemic. That was. That was huge. And of course, Ginnie Mae made up a lot of the forbearance then, and, you know, it still does.

And so last spring, there was a new program that was put into place to reverse some of the damage that was done to this to the vets. And this program is referred to as vasp, the Veterans Assistance Servicing Program. Servicing purchase. Sorry.

And this tool has been really helpful to reverse a lot of, or to at least mitigate some of the damage that was done by some of the changes that were put into place last year. And it probably helped. I think what I read was that it helped about 15,000 homeowners stay in their home.

Well, right now, there apparently is some consideration about doing away with this program, which could really wreak havoc on the industry. The program would remain in place, but they would cap the number of eligible vets to about 250 loans per year. I mean, that's really nothing.

That's essentially the same thing as scrapping the program. So this could really. This could result in a lot of borrowers going into default.

And then, of course, that's just going to circulate throughout the industry, and we'd really see a lot of negative impact from this. And while. And so on top of this, the administration perhaps changing this program.

Jim, you had mentioned earlier that there has been a lot of dismantling of agencies in general and a lot of layoffs. There's still speculation for about 80,000 more layoffs just to the VA alone.

And so even if this program remains intact without people there to support it, I'm afraid that we will see quite a bit more default in the Ginnie Mae space.

Jim Glennon:

Yeah, yeah, that's. Again, with a lot of these things, we don't know exactly how they're going to pan out or if these giant numbers are actually going to happen.

But yeah, that would be very unfortunate if there are major cuts at the VA for almost any reason other than true, you know, efficiency improvement.

Vimi Vasudeva:

Yeah, it's just. It's scary to think about what this could do. And, you know, just your heart goes out to the VAs that are. Would be impacted by this.

Jim Glennon:

Absolutely. All right, what else on this? Any questions that we haven't asked or any additional pieces of this topic?

Vimi Vasudeva:

No, I think this was a good overview. I like your idea, Jim, of spending an entire podcast episode deconstructing the pricing that goes into this.

So I look forward to doing that sometime with you.

Jim Glennon:

Where does loan pricing come from? I think it's a. It's a.

It's a common question that a lot of folks are afraid to ask, but I think we could probably answer it pretty well in like a, yeah, 20 minute segment. Great. Well, thank you so much, Vimy. Great wisdom there, everybody.

Keep an eye on government delinquencies, but also what's going on with HUD and the VA under the new administration. And, and we'll probably come back to the subject at some point here in the next few months.

Vimi Vasudeva:

Yeah, thanks for having me, Jim.

Jim Glennon:

All right, let's close this thing out. Thanks so much, Alex and Vimy for the wisdom that you dropped on us today. Definitely tune in next week. We will have a guest.

We will have housing industry icon and CEO of Mortgage Champions. His name is Dale Vermillion, also a fellow podcaster. You're likely familiar with Dale.

If you're not, his organization has trained over 1 million sales and service professionals in our industry. And that's it for today.

Join us next week for another episode of Optimal Insights, where we'll continue to provide you with the latest market analysis and insights to help you stay ahead. Don't forget to follow us on LinkedIn for more updates and to access our latest video episodes.

You can also find each episode on all major podcast platforms. Thank you for tuning in to Optimal Insights.

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