Expert analyses: Why "cheap money" policies can fuel market instability

[00:00:00] Tom Ahles: I don't ever want to see rates at 2% again. It creates instability and inflation, which then we're having to pay for at some point on the back end.  

[00:00:08] Damon Germanides: One of them was keeping rates floored at 0% when we had 9% inflation. It made no sense at all. So I think that was a big mistake by the Fed. 

[00:00:22] Matt Sexton: Hello again and welcome to the latest edition of MPA TV. I'm Matt Sexton, mortgage journalist here with Mortgage Professional America. Today we continue our broker intel series and I'm honored to be joined once again by our two guests on today's episode. They are Damon Germanides, co-founder of Insignia Mortgage, and Tom Aulis, chief growth officer at Edge Home Finance. Gentlemen, thank you both for joining us today on MPA TV. We'll start things off, we'll let Damon kick things off this time. It's already been an eventful start to 2026 in the mortgage industry. As you survey the current landscape through the first month of the year, how do you assess where the market is so far in 2026? 

[00:00:58] Damon Germanides: We're definitely busier, coming off of a good start to the year, a lot more applications. Rates have come in on the jumbo products and on the government products as well. So got a little bit of a tailwind there. And, you know, the overall, the uh, landscape is we're getting a lot of feedback from our local banks and credit unions that we do business with looking to grow again. So that's all encouraging. Our big issue is lack of supply. So we are seeing some of our brokers who focus on first-time homebuyer programs or kind of first-time buys or homes that are not in the super luxury part of the market. there's just incredible, incredible competition for those homes. So we do wind up pre-approving a lot of borrowers that ultimately, no matter what we offer in an approval or what due diligence we do up front, they just simply cannot get the home. So that's the unfortunate side. But activity is much, much improved. And we're encouraged. It's going to be a good year. 

[00:02:16] Matt Sexton: Tom, your thoughts? 

[00:02:18] Tom Ahles: For the market in general, I agree with Damon. I think a lot of it is perspective. If we go off of hard facts, you can look and see we're in the slower part of the season anytime, especially I'm based out of Minnesota, and I think it's been negative 6,000 degrees here for quite some time. So a little bit slower for the month of January, but it's very market-driven based on the area, I think, is an overall what I'm excited to see. is we keep watching people transition from the retail channels, banker channels, and entering into the broker channel. And to me, those numbers are what is the most significant for my business. And I would assume Damon's as well, even though he says banks are looking to grow too, everybody is. But what we're watching is still a large transition where there's data proving for are not only consumers but loan originators that the broker channel is really um faster, cheaper, and easier for them. And you continue to see that number grow where we're approaching market share of roughly 30%. So at that point, there's still a lot of pie out there for us to take our share and continuing to compete and dominate the market. 

[00:03:20] Damon Germanides: I'd like to add one thing. We recently quoted a deal, and these are the big banks. I could not believe how much better our quote was than one of the big. big kind of money center banks just for a regular type of purchase, not private banking and bringing over deposits and all the stuff that starts to push the rate down. It was significant. I mean, significant delta between what we could do and what they were offering. So I 100% agree with you. 

[00:04:06] Matt Sexton: Yeah, it's great to hear that the broker channel continues to grow and compete well, and in a lot of cases, beating those banks. Tom. Kind of getting to some of the headwinds where we see so far, we spoke last time about challenges facing brokers in the new year. Now that we're a month in, what do you see as the evolving opportunities and headwinds in the mortgage space? 

[00:04:25] Tom Ahles: You know, outside of just the same headwinds that we had last year or challenges, you know, for this year, there's a couple of changes that are happening that I think will affect brokers specifically. You know, we have the trigger lead band that goes into effect, if I'm not mistaken, tomorrow. tomorrow or the next day to where, you know, I think a lot of mortgage brokers specifically were using trigger leads, even though the whole trigger lead ban was started from the brokers. I think that there's always there's a lot of different ways to operate a business in the broker channel, whether, you know, our model is referral based and purchase focused. At the same time, you know, I have friends in the industry that own companies that were that was their bread and butter. So, you know, one of the challenges for them are trying to identify, you know. new ways to attract and get swings, right? I think for companies that that's their focus, I think it's going to be a challenge for them. And I think some of the wording around that, even for people who are not in the trigger business itself, but also have past clients from retention, understanding what the legalities are for, you know, reaching out to past clients, what those timelines are, you know It's always an evolving industry. And the biggest thing that I can say is for me, why I enjoy it so much, the learning never stops. So understanding, hey, if there's a challenge, with every challenge, I think there's somebody that comes out to where you have an opportunity to dominate that part of it, right? If we look back to even LO Comp, where people said brokers were going to go out of business because of that, we actually ended up doing better and making more money. realistically is how it changed. So, you know, the biggest challenge I think for us right now, and especially I'll speak from the larger, you know, sometimes we get categorized as the mega brokers in this industry, is really from compliance. You know, I think that's going to be the biggest, you know, challenge, especially right now CFPB has taken a little bit of a, you know, I'll say a slowdown with the current administration. But you that's going to change. I think everything that we're doing right now, when you look ahead in two and a half, three years from now, everything that we're doing today is going to come under scrutiny again. So, you know, I would say more scrutiny from a federal level where right now the states are kind of left to interpret what is their stance on it without really having, I'll say, as much federal backing on clarity from that aspect. So. To me, the biggest challenge for this year for us is we continue to grow and want to make sure that we're creating an environment that will be here for the next, you know, at least till I retire for the least the next 15, 20 years that we are just making sure from a compliance standpoint that everything is in line. 

[00:07:28] Matt Sexton: Damon, your thoughts? 

[00:07:30] Damon Germanides: It's funny on the trigger thing. I'll tell you, we're grateful that that's going away because we're obviously a boutique shop and we do a lot of warm. We deal with a lot of warm, nurturing type of leads or repeat clients or referrals. And boy, were we getting, we actually had to bring into our workflows an email to remind our clients to please opt out of the triggers because they were getting bombarded with calls and emails. And funny, they thought it was us saying, hey, you sold my data. How dare you? And I'm like, no, no, it's not us. So I think that's actually a- The good thing for the guys, the types of sales, the more organic sales oriented firms and the more focused on warm referrals versus just, you know, grabbing a bunch of trigger leads, which, I mean, it serves a purpose. But for our purposes, much, much better for our clientele. And then I apologize. What was the other part of the question? I was thinking about the trigger leads when Tom started talking about that. 

[00:08:36] Matt Sexton: So really, it's about evolving opportunities and headwinds, anything that might have changed or things that might be on the horizon after the first month of the year that may be a little different than last year? 

[00:08:45] Damon Germanides: No, I mean, our roadmap continues to be to where we saw a vulnerability in the way we do business was we were very good at finding leads and we're very good at quoting rates and we're very bad at follow up. So we're focused. really very, very heavily with our marketing partners on how to really better follow up, you'll call it the lead nurturing side of the business. And I was at a conference, I think the IMN in July or something where they talked about, I think it was Rocket or UWM, don't quote me on that, but it was definitely one of the big guys like that, that were saying that their LO teams, origination teams were touching a client like 11 times before they actually we're able to capture a client. We're touching them like once. And if they say they'll get back to us, we go on to something else. So we need to do a better job of that. And we're bringing in some technology to help us and a little bit of AI and probability theories or what you want to call that to help us. Better figure out if this is someone we need to follow up with a few more times. And candidly, just with instructing our sales team to make a couple calls and texts on clients who've gone sideways, we're already seeing a tremendous pickup. That's without any technology to help them. So that's really been what I'm focused on because we have enough leads. We're just not converting enough of them. And our marketing teams did a deep dive into all of our data and said, this is... You guys are really good if you know the client. If it's someone who's kind of one or two steps removed from like a known, known client, you guys are letting those leads die way too early. So that's our focus. That's what we want to focus on. 

[00:10:42] Tom Ahles: Boy, it's probably one of the, if I just bounce off on that since, you know, it's probably one of the biggest, the weakest parts for almost all brokers is because we didn't have the infrastructure. We've seen a lot of our... Lending partners try to cover that gap with AI, but spot on. I think that's really when we look at relationship-based lending, and I'm pretty sure that Damon and I are aligned with how we operate our businesses. Everything's relationship-based. We don't pay for, you know, we're not paying for leads. We're not buying clients. It's all local relationship-based. And you're used to that wanting to be a relationship where they want it just as bad as you do at that time. But the reality is looking at that metrics of, OK, the person that was just an introduction, you sent that follow up. What happens next? You know, because some people do need four or five. And I think it was Rocket just because they're the only ones they have the, you know, they have a 98 percent retention and inside sales to where they can track that. That's why they're dominating at that. And it is a lesson for all of us to learn of, hey, internally, what are you guys doing with your data? How are you as leaders putting in place? something that's going to make sure if you can create an extra 10, 15% of business with what you already have coming, then it's on our response. 

[00:12:02] Damon Germanides: 100%. And I think this is really important. So I do want to follow up on one more thing with echoing what Tom says. It is a weak spot, the follow-up and the personalized follow-ups a weak spot. So we're bringing Slack into our, our, or to try to make that our point of, of, of like our, our, our point of contact for our LO team so they just can work, do everything inside of Slack. And I'm actually playing with the chat bot right now. And I got a lead the other day and it was a quick call and the guy had to go. And normally I'll write it down or I'll put it in the calendar. But I turned on the AI Slack bot and I said, will you please remind me to call Mr. Borrower tomorrow at this time? And sure enough, it's going to do that today around noon. And it's so much easier. What I realize, if you have to make it easy, because if you make it difficult and there's a lot of steps to do, the follow-ups, it's not simple. That's where it falls off. So voice commanding to the chatbot to tell me to call someone tomorrow. I mean, it's pretty basic in today's world, but it's easy. And that's sometimes the one degree of difference. The difference between boiling water and not. So I think because it's on top of mind and I'm like, OK, God, I got to go put in the calendar and do it like and I just just commanded it. And I can go on to something else. Why? You know, so that's, you know, as a loan officer myself, that's how I'm trying to think to help our guys and our team is how to make this easy for them, because they got so many things on there going on in the day that, you know, having a. robust technology platform that takes a lot of time to do input correctly, that doesn't work for them either. You got to deal with the customer, RLOs or a customer, how your customer thinks and operates in our org. We don't have a young, mostly we have a middle-aged workforce. So got to try to make it easy for them. But that's part of the fun, right? 

[00:14:07] Matt Sexton: That's great insight, guys. I think brokers will really appreciate that because of... I feel like that's an area that everybody can get better at as far as following up with those leads. Kind of pivoting a bit here and back to Damon for this one to start. This month, we're focusing on HELOC products here at MPA. It feels like those products gained popularity last year. Do you see equity products and second liens playing a big role in 2026? And what would you advise brokers as far as using them this year? 

[00:14:36] Damon Germanides: We do a fair amount of HELOCs. Again, we're... Tom's going to be probably better equipped to answer this on a broad scale, but we do a fair amount of HELOCs. And then we also, one of the things we do again is a boutique. This is a boutique place with seasoned brokers. We've started to dip our toe into commercial about five years ago and we've gotten pretty good at that. So we do a lot of unsecured lending now too. So we have some local banks, local to our main markets, they'll give borrowers unsecured lines. which they like. It's a tax efficient way to take a line out if you can afford to qualify or capable of qualifying. So we're doing a lot of lines of credit, both business lines of credit, personal unsecured lines of credit, and then home equity lines of credit. It's just what the CPA or the business manager is asking for. And then based on a call, again, this is why calls are so important. This is where you can really show your... worth here on the different options that the borrower may have and depending on how they want to do it, what we can offer. So yes, the short answer is yes, but a little bit more in the niche part of the market versus just a traditional home equity line. 

[00:15:55] Matt Sexton: Yeah. Tom, your thoughts? 

[00:15:56] Tom Ahles: I think the biggest thing for us is really being the one-stop shop, which, you know, Damon led into, right? I mean, he's talking about a variety of products that if you of rewound six, seven years ago, you wouldn't hear people talking about business lines or credits or even HELOCs, right? And I think it's our job to be to our referral partners and to our clients, we want to be a resource. And we want to make sure that if they call us and say, I'm looking for an SBA loan. Good. Damon, as he mentioned, same as us, we have that capability. There has been an uptick in it. And I think it's because of product availability. What I would say... For most companies, you know, a lot of times the loan officers, I don't want to say that they're driven by commission, but the reality is most of the originators in our industry are 100% commission. And so when you look at, okay, does this help a client writing a $30,000 HELOC or a HELOAN, you also have some issues there from a regulatory standpoint to our HELOANS, even though it's a small loan. still has to fall underneath your standard compensation plan because it's a first lien closed end loan. So, yes, I do think that the HELOCs, HELONs are great. However, I would encourage a lot of the brokers that are on this call to say, listen, what if there was an internal referral to where you had somebody that that was their job? And for us, we've appointed someone to where loan officers can do it themselves if they want. However, most purchase-focused originators, the same with follow-up that they may not be the best on. They also, if somebody calls about a $30,000 HELOC, they have to look at opportunity costs for themselves and realize if I'm taking time out of green zone that I'm going to do a task that's going to make me $10,000 or a task that's going to make me $300, what do you do? For us, we've created what we call our client care team that allows an internal company referral to There's one gentleman on my team that writes 30 to 40 HELOCs a month. So, you know, a lot of a little adds up to be a good paycheck for him. However, you know, it's twofold because now the client's still within your ecosystem from a retention standpoint. And more importantly, you know, I know this has happened for me many times, and I'm sure Damon can attest to this. I do business without necessarily thinking about the revenue aspect of it or what I'm making. And a lot of times those lead to bigger deals, right? You know, service first and making sure if I'm taking care of a client, even if it's a $30,000 HELOC, they might refer that brother-in-law that's buying the $2 million house or the $800,000 house. So for us, we just want to try to look at areas where what is the problem with we've got a lot of product availability now with HELOCs and HELONs, obviously. UWM rolled it out. New Res has it. Kind has it. There's a lot of the lending partners that have given us the ability to sell the product. So now it's more, where are we missing this from a company perspective to make sure that we're servicing those clients? Where seven, eight years ago, it was, hey, let me refer you over to the gal at the local credit union. Or because we cared about making sure that we were doing the best for our clients. We're now, we're competitive in that space. So. A lot of it is retraining the team or loan officers looking and saying, OK, well, why am I not doing this? And if they say it's because of, well, I don't want to write a $50,000 loan. Okay. What if we put something in place for you internally? I can refer this and you designate a team member that that's what they do. And that's been substantial for us. I think last year we grew in the second HELOC, HELO department. We quadrupled what we did the year before on that product by making sure that loan officers have an option to where we still can service them within the company. Um, however, you're going to go to our HELOC, HELOC loan specialist, and it's worked really well to kind of take the excuses off the plate for the sales team. 

[00:20:11] Damon Germanides: That's a great idea, by the way. I'm going to implement that because we have a couple of guys who. Yeah. Cause I guarantee you got guys that are making, you know, seven, 800,000 a year and have built a very good self-sustaining business. They'd like to do it, but they have to look at it from an opportunity cost, right? Am I going to stop? Cause it's the same amount of work, whether you're writing an $800,000 loan or you're writing a $30,000 HELOC. 

[00:20:31] Tom Ahles: Yeah. And that's the tough part to where some companies will put an internal minimum loan amounts, right? Just because you'll be failing, even on first loans, you'll be failing QM or high cost because there's so little that you actually end up can lose money as a company. So for us, I would say the biggest thing is to, you know, hey, how can we create a solution for this within our own channel to make sure that we're taking every opportunity that we have? 

[00:20:57] Matt Sexton: That's a fantastic idea. I have a feeling a lot of people want to take that for their own, because that is a great way to solve that problem. Moving back to Tom, kind of looking at some big picture stuff. The Federal Reserve, of course, met last week. They voted to hold rates. I don't think anybody was surprised by that. Many economists believe that that trend could continue until Jerome Powell's term ends in May. Is that a big deal in your mind? And do you see additional steps being taken to drive rates down, as we saw with the GSE purchase and mortgage bonds in January. 

[00:21:28] Tom Ahles: Yeah, I mean, is it a big deal? It 100% is a big deal, more importantly for the knowledge aspect, because consumers, what do they know? They know what is spread on mainstream media. And that made mainstream media news the same way that when you hear, hey, the Fed cut interest rates for the people that are in the industry, that means rates are going up that day, right? When that happens, there hasn't been a single time that we've had a Fed rate cut that rates didn't get worse when it happens. You know, so knowledge is power. And especially when you run a business similar to Damon and I, that it's relationship based. People are relying on our sales team, on our loan officers to educate them on what the difference is. Right. Like, is this going to happen? What is going to be the effect if, you know, Jerome Powell doesn't raise interest rates or lower interest rates? One, I don't think he is. Right. I think it's pretty. He's holding his ground from that aspect until he leaves. And I think depending on who the current president elects as the new Fed chair, I think that he's going to elect somebody that's going to probably do what he wants. And he's been very clear what he wants, and he wants lower interest rates. So, you know, hopefully that to me, I'm a little, I'll say, torn on this. Because one, would I love to see lower interest rates? I would because we're going to get more business. However, you know, there's cause and effect with everything, right? If we look at what happened COVID years where we were selling money at 2%, that was really great. Everybody made a lot of money. But at the same time, what did it do in other aspects? It caused rapid inflation. 

[00:23:11] Tom Ahles: For me personally, I like a balanced market. And I think right now with where rates sit to where I think the average 30-year fixed is right around 6% today, that's a good rate. It's still cheaper to own than what it is to buy. And a lot of the people that have been stuck at those 2% rates now for five or six years that have had appreciation, they're still going to have life issues that are going to come up to, you know, whether it's a growing family, whether it's a raise, whether it is. And personally, I don't ever want to see rates at 2% again. It's just you get a tidal wave of business, which is great. But at the same time. It creates instability and inflation, which then we're having to pay for at some point on the back end. So I'd say the biggest piece is, yes, very important that you're knowledgeable about it. It's not that you need to be. I always joke with my clients, if I really knew the answer, I would be flying around in my gold-plated jet and telling everybody what to do. That's not reality. The reality is, what if the facts that, what if? you know if the fed does cut rates what's going to happen the market's going to know a good month to two beforehand and you're going to watch the the 10-year treasury sink right now it's probably right around 4.25 um maybe 4.27 You know, you're going to watch what happens to that 10-year treasury when that time comes based on people that are a heck of a lot smarter than I am, right? They're going to be able to say, okay, here is what is a pretty strong prediction of what's going to happen. Our job as a sales force to the largest economical resource in our country, which is real estate, is to know how to have that conversation based on historical data and saying, listen, you know, yes, if it does, what does it do to prices? OK, if rates go down to 2% today, yes, we'll be very busy. Your prices are going to jump 10 to 15%. So, you know, actually using technology to say, what is the cost of waiting? Right. Barry Embiid was always great at this on some of his presentations on the cost of waiting. Right. Rates drop, prices go up. Which one's better? The same has been true since as long as I've been in the industry, besides maybe 2007. The time to buy is now. Right. The time to it's better to be in the market than trying to time the market. And I don't think that's going to change. But I do think with the new Fed chair, we're going to see some we're going to see some action. Right. We're going to see things move in a way that may be very quick and maybe the times of being able to predict what's going to happen becomes unknown. Kind of like it did during covid where you had no idea like that. we were going to see the, you know... 10-year treasury as low as what it was and rates that they were giving away money. 

[00:26:08] Matt Sexton: Damon, your thoughts? 

[00:26:09] Damon Germanides: Well, I think it remains to be seen. But, you know, echoing what Tom was saying, I believe that Tom, I mean, President Trump nominated Warsh as his choice for the Fed chair. But he still needs to get, I think, Congress needs to affirm that. But Warsh is a hawk. you wants lower rates and wants to kind of mix up the Fed, which candidly, I think is probably a good thing. There's some things that the Fed has done in the past several years that I'm not a huge fan of. One of them was keeping rates floored at 0% when we had 9% inflation. And yes, it felt good writing 2% mortgages at that time. But I was very worried about the imbalance of uh, of what I was seeing in everyday life with inflation and where rates were. It made no sense at all. So I think that was a big mistake by the Fed. And I think we're paying the price still today for that. So I totally agree with Tom that a 2% rate might feel good, but it locks people into their homes in a way that it doesn't allow for mobility. And here we are with a supply constrained market in many bigger cities that don't have space to build new homes. In terms of rates, I think my sense is, well, I look at it and I divide it, jumbo and conforming. I see that 30-year money is probably not going to go down much more than where it is, is my hunch. I think we're at four, four and a quarter on the 10-year, probably stay around there, maybe go up a little bit. I think the spreads are coming in, continue to come in. So I see a path to maybe. mid fives on a 30 year type of rate for conforming. Jumbo, which are more adjustable rate mortgages. I see a path to mid fours to upper fours. We're already starting to see some banks crack 5%. Why? Those loans are tied to the two year or the five year treasury, depending on the duration. So I look at the two year and the 10 year and try to make directional kind of hunches based on that. I think inflation is still a problem. It's trending around 3% and it has been high for a long time. I see it with our kind of everyday middle and upper middle class clients that they're struggling or working very hard and saving less and not feeling great about the economy. So I think we have to be careful about lowering rates too much because if we have, if we. If inflation moves higher from where it is today, I think it really can create problems. So inflation has got to be respected. And it's still not come down. It's remained over the Fed's target now for five years. So I think that puts a floor on rates. But I do see rate cuts, as Tom said, potentially with the new Fed. Whoever Trump nominated must have promised something with the cuts. Just you know, I mean, you're not getting the job if you don't. So I do see some rates, rate cuts on the horizon. We'll just see how they, how they thread the needle on that. So it'll be very, very interesting come May. But yeah, the rate cuts, I think, are off till May, absent something dramatic. So that's how we look at it. 

[00:29:47] Matt Sexton: Yeah, I think it's going to be a big story in the second half of the year is what happens with the Fed and what the new chair has in store. Our final question for today is an open-ended one. We'll start with Damon on this one. What's one story in the mortgage space, either local to your market or to your company, or or maybe a nationwide story that maybe... We're not talking about enough yet, but we probably should keep an eye on as we move forward. 

[00:30:10] Damon Germanides: Well, I was thinking about this last night when I was reading your questions. I don't know if it's a topic that's front and center, but we have a bridge lending business separate from Insignia Mortgage, our traditional broker business. And we provide financing to a lot of developers and real estate investors for ground up construction and on homes or home builders or what have you. And we get a fair amount of calls from borrowers looking to buy or redo a home and needing the financing to do it. I'm just shocked that there are not more banks that are in the construction or heavy rehab business, primarily for consumers, meaning I want to buy an older home. There's lots of them around here and fix it up, but I need the financing. Can't get it. Very hard, very few banks, and you better be really gold-plated to get that type of loan. I'm just surprised that for as much as we talk about the need to increase housing supply, upgrade homes, do all that, that the banks are nowhere to be found on this. I mean, and then on the developer side, they're very, very hard to get a loan unless you're very, very big, big, big kind of private equity type of... of a real estate developer, but specific to just consumers. There's no place for most people to go if they want to buy an old home and fix it up other than private money, expensive, hard to find. Maybe you can get a... I'm seeing some ads on some home equity lines to help you fix up a house now, but still not from the very sharp penciled, bigger financial institutions that can actually give you something really attractive. So I'm surprised that hasn't come back more. That's a great point. So I'd like that to be a talking point, actually. We'd love to see. Anytime we can get more funding for client needs, that's always a good thing. 

[00:32:19] Tom Ahles: You know, same, you know, Matt, I looked at, hey, what are some of the things that I would think are not being talked about enough? To me, the thing that came to mind was margin compression, right? And it really comes down to looking at... You know, Damon talked about just a simple AI tool for himself that's going to increase production. The time to originate a loan, I've been doing this for 25 years now to where, you know, 20 years ago, I was having to wait for the fax. I was having to drive to the client's house. I was having to, you know, kind of review everything, fax it all over to the lender. And the time to originate probably is down to, I would say, and this is just my own made up stats. Probably less than two hours. And I think that that number used to be between 20 to 25 hours for a loan from start to finish for a loan officer standpoint. The margin compression aspect comes into play two different ways, in my opinion. One, the time to originate a loan has vastly increased to where it's faster. And you look at the Amazon effect on things. If things become faster, they become cheaper. And so... You're getting to a point in this industry where FHA streamlines, for example. There used to be a quarter percent difference in rate would be an extra 200 basis points in yield. You could cover cost. You're not seeing any of those higher rates anymore to be able to even absorb cost to where a lot of those products have, in my opinion, an FHA streamline is very hard to do unless somebody's at a really high interest rate, where before... Somebody could take advantage of dropping a half a percent and it made sense because there was enough yield to cover that cost. But now that, you know, you have the margin compression issue where there is no the ceiling doesn't really it doesn't go up like it used to. Right. There's not a marketplace when banks are realizing with the runoff that they're going to have if they put out a rate sheet that's going to be higher. The other part of that. in my opinion, is understanding what I would consider the walking dinosaurs of our industry. And that is your retail area managers, branch managers, district managers. When you're looking at how much... Meat is on the bone on a loan nowadays. That is a lot less. And yet, you know, for us and for, you know, I don't want to speak on Damon's part, but our job is to try to make sure I want to pay my loan officers the most that they can possibly make for the job that they're doing. Right. But as that starts to shrink and you're looking at it, and this is why I believe we're watching the broker channel continue to grow and why I say they're kind of the walking dinosaurs of our age. With that margin compression, you know, we just brought on a branch from Cleveland, Ohio. And, you know, I looked through that P&L and they're at 500, 600 basis points on their government loans and 350 on conventional to where, like, they're wondering why they're not able to be competitive or even compete with anyone, right? And the reason for that is margin compression. Because before... a 500 basis point margin was just a quarter percent difference in rates. Nowadays, it's a point and a half, right? I mean, to the point to where it's almost embarrassing for them to, the one guy was like, I will not even try to talk to a relative or a friend. And I'm like, well, how do you operate this way? He's like, well, that's why we're coming to join the broker channel. So, you know, to me, I think it's one of those that a lot of us know and see it when we're working on it frontline day to day, but something to where... I think it's important for our competitors in the retail space to look and see, okay, once you get past the signing bonuses or retention bonuses where they're trying to lock them into paying a higher rate, at some point you have to be willing to bet on yourself. And I'm a firm believer that if you're willing to make that bet, there's no better place in the broker channel and good brokers like Damon or myself or others that are in the industry, we're open to conversations to show what that would look like. So To me, I think it's only going to get cheaper. And looking at even from an AI perspective, I think our two-hour average LO time is probably going to go down half this year. Outside of the person that just likes to have conversations, and that's how they build relationships. But outside of that, the actual job, taking the application, submitting the documents, clearing the conditions, All of this is being automated at a pace to where... you know, you're going to watch things transform to where before a good originator was somebody that knew the guidelines, they had creative solutions. I think it's going to turn a little bit here in the next year. I think still this year, we're going to start to see the people that are influencers, people that are leading with the education of, you know, the more people that I can touch and educate, then I can offer a cheaper product faster, easier. We're going to start to see our industry transition a little too. More of people that have a wider reach from an influence standpoint compared to, you know, this is my buddy at the country club, the old way of doing business, which is great. So I've kind of grew up doing it, but it's going to be you're going to have to do twice as much to make the same amount of money. And it hasn't hit even brokers yet, but it's going to. Right. We're going to see like for us, we have a 275 basis point comp plan. OK, that's great. Today, I think you have to be prepared. of what's going to change coming up with the speed of origination, just rapidly lowering with the use of technology. 

[00:38:06] Matt Sexton: Yeah, it's an ever-changing world for sure in the broker channel. And that's why these MPA TVs are so important, so everybody can stay on top of what the latest trends are. That's going to wrap things up for today's edition of MPA TV. Gentlemen, I really appreciate your insights as always. I wish you the best of luck and look forward to chatting with you a little bit later in the year. Thanks again to our guests and thank you for watching this edition of MPA TV. For my guests, I'm Matt Saxon saying so long and we'll see you again next time.