Fairview's Glen Weinberg on 'unprecedented' market speed: 'take advantage' or 'get hit by the bus'
While the midterm elections aren’t quite over yet, as ballots continue to be counted in a few remaining undecided races, the overall outcome was evident pretty early on election night.
Democrats not only swept both houses of Congress, but also many statewide races in previous Republican strongholds.
While the legislative impact of the political swing will be unclear for a while, markets rarely wait long to start showing signs of potential impacts.
The early impacts on mortgage rates have been positive, as Treasury yields have fallen in the first two days after the election. Many investors believe an AI and data center backlash is causing a tech stock selloff, with the bond market providing a cushy landing spot.
However, one executive believes the overall trend will mirror what has held most of 2026, with volatility leading the way.
Glen Weinberg (pictured top), chief operating officer and partner at Fairview Commercial Lending, has been in the business for almost 30 years. He believes the seas will continue to be choppy as the currents remain rapid.
"I've never seen the markets moving the way they are," Weinberg told Mortgage Professional America. "This is unprecedented, the speed of the markets and just how fast stuff's moving."
Watch out for the bus
Weinberg didn’t expect to see Treasury yields falling. He believes that both parties like to spend beyond the country’s means, and he thought that would be reflected in higher yields.
"I was actually really surprised because this morning I thought that I'd see a spike in Treasury yields," Weinberg said. "Both parties are the spending parties.”
Freddie Mac released its latest mortgage rates on Thursday afternoon, and the recent rate slide continued. The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 7.18%, down from 7.24% last week, and the third straight week of a rate decline.
One of the first challenges for the new Congress will be working through a potential increase in the debt ceiling. He believes this will lead to more government spending once the ceiling is inevitably raised.
"The only way it's going to get done is they're going to compromise and they're going to spend more," Weinberg said. “We're going to see more deficit spending, which will in turn lead to higher interest rates. So, yeah, I don't know how it all works out. But what we're doing now, the bond market at some point is going to tell us how it's going to work out."
Higher rates and deficit spending will eventually weigh on growth, he said. That growth, he added, is about the only thing keeping the economy afloat. He expects equities to hold up for a while. How long is the open question.
"If you look historically, we should have another, let's say, three to six months of pretty good stock market returns," Weinberg said. "The million-dollar question is, does this change our endpoint and the timing of that endpoint? Based on the midterms, I don't know."
His message to brokers and originators is to be ready for small windows of opportunity in a volatile market.
"Every cycle creates huge opportunities," Weinberg said. "How are you going to take advantage of it? Or are you going to get hit by the bus? You basically have two scenarios."
Windows of opportunity
Fairview is still closing loans through the volatility, Weinberg said, and calls and loan submissions jumped the day after the election with no change in advertising.
"As soon as the midterms were over, my call volume today is probably 30% higher than normal," he said.
Windows of lower rates will come, Weinberg said, but nobody can say how long they will last.
"They could be minutes, they could be hours, they could be days, they could be weeks," Weinberg said. “Overall, I think the trend is going to be to higher rates. But with that said, there are going to be windows of lower rates and volatility is going to lead this."
Fairview isn't leveraged right now and funds loans with cash, so it doesn't have to hedge, Weinberg said. For lenders that do, he said, the market is a problem.
"The mortgage market is going to be super challenging because I don't know how you hedge," Weinberg said. "If you're closing a loan, that loan that you close, if you haven't already pre-sold it, if you're taking any interest rate risk, you're done."
Waiting out a move no longer works, he said. Locking the wrong way can turn a profitable loan into a big loss.
"In past cycles, you could stand to see, ‘Okay, hey, let's take a minute, let's take a breather, let's see what happens,’" Weinberg said. "You can't do it."
Consolidation will follow the volatility, he expects. Banks signaled it with a run of rapid mergers, and Rate and Compass announced a merger Wednesday.
"One thing that's going to happen because of this volatility, the bigger are going to get bigger because they have to," Weinberg said.
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