Andy Harris calls out fake competition, failed regulation, and why borrowers are paying the price
For Andy Harris, president of Vantage Mortgage Brokers, the issue with mortgage lending isn't just inefficiency—it's misdirection. While originators debate retail versus wholesale, Harris argued that the real decision-makers operate in the background.
“When originators are looking at any channel that they're employed by, the biggest disconnect that people don't really pay attention to… is the agencies behind the scenes that control everybody,” Harris said. “Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Ginnie Mae, investors and other aggregators—those are the actual lenders. Everyone else? They're logos.”
He doesn’t just mean branding. Harris believes most lenders are little more than sales outfits that markup rate sheets and hide profit margins from consumers. “They produce rate sheets that add whatever margin they can in there,” he said. “Whether the originator works for them or independently shops them, it’s kind of silly to look beyond Fannie, Freddie, and Ginnie as like they don’t exist.”
According to Harris, this blind spot has real consequences. Originators may believe they’re serving clients, but most are unknowingly working for the lender’s margin, not the borrower’s interest. “If you’re influenced by a lender, there's always going to be conflicts where you can't really represent the consumer,” he said. “And the consumer is your ultimate employer.”
Competition is missing, and consumers are paying for it
Harris argued that the mortgage industry has insulated itself from the one force that would improve it: competition. “If you look at the history of time, any product or service with zero exceptions, competition has lowered the cost and improved the performance,” he said.
He described the industry as a commodity market pretending to be bespoke. With conforming loans all sold, backed, guaranteed, or insured to the same government-controlled agencies, the differentiation comes down to margins, as every lender is required to perform and execute—which is not a value. Yet most originators—and consumers—don’t realize this.
“Mortgages are no exceptions,” Harris said. “You need to embrace competition more than ever when you're securing a new mortgage.”
He also made it clear that the problem isn’t a lack of lenders but a systemic failure to let them compete transparently. “If you take competition away, you're always going to have inferior costs and service,” he said.
Brokers acting like lenders—and regulators looking away
Harris didn’t just critique the market structure—he took aim at what he sees as an unchecked rise in regulatory evasion. He pointed to the lack of federal enforcement around Dodd-Frank as a major factor in declining industry standards.
“Dodd-Frank has not been enforced at all,” he said. “And now that we have deregulation and the dismantling of the CFPB, the problem is—the industry, not just on the ethical side, is at the lowest level I’ve seen in 23 years.”
According to Harris, self-described independent brokers are steering clients to predetermined lenders under the guise of comparison shopping. “They’re now coming over to a channel claiming to the public that they're independent or claiming that they’re shopping lenders,” he said. “And you look at their data and they’re doing the exact opposite.”
He alleged that these brokers are receiving incentives—leads, recruiting help, or other perks—from lenders, creating conflicts of interest that aren’t being disclosed. “They're steering lenders, those of which you can document have higher rates and fees,” he said.
And the impact is not theoretical. “The consumer is more confused,” Harris said. “You have originators claiming to be brokers that are not, you have retail originators being recruited thinking they're becoming brokers, which they are not... It’s very concerning.”
Non-producing managers are driving up rates
Beyond regulatory gaps and structural flaws, Harris sees a third threat to consumer value: the burden of unnecessary management roles baked into rate sheets.
“You have non-producers that are not filling an operational role that are required,” he said. “They're taking margin in the rate sheet, working off the backs of originators at non-essential roles, which greatly impact the rates that originator is offering the consumer.”
For Harris, these roles—from branch managers to executive layers—don’t contribute to actual loan processing or client service, yet are funded through added cost to borrowers. “If these people aren’t producing, how else are they paid?” he said. “Especially if they’re an executive or management level? And that’s off the backs of actual producers.”
He emphasized that originators need to recognize their leverage in the ecosystem. “The originator exclusively employs everyone in the mortgage space,” he said. “If you don’t have originators, you don’t derive revenue.”
The logic is simple: if consumers hire or choose the originator, and the originator generates all revenue for the lender, then the originator has the responsibility—and the power—to control costs. “The consumer employs the originator. And the originator, in turn, employs everyone else,” Harris said.
