Is the wholesale space set for a boom in the coming years?
Mortgage lenders across the US are mapping out their strategies for the years ahead and contending with a prolonged national housing market lull, a slowdown that’s seeing many cast a wider net for ways to bring in business.
And that’s good news for the mortgage broker space, whose value to lenders is coming into sharp focus as an essential way to reach borrowers and help Americans realize their homebuying goals.
It remains to be seen whether more lenders increase their presence in the wholesale space, but Michael Hudson (pictured top), founder of the Social Mortgage brokerage, said he’s witnessed a steady change in the way lenders are approaching the broker channel in recent years.
“I would say that all lenders right now are really focusing in on brokers,” he told Mortgage Professional America. “One of the biggest things I noticed was that if you go back five years, a lot of lenders had their own retail operations. Their retail operations were bringing in huge profits. They had giant teams. They were originating massive volumes.
“But over the last five years, that slowed down. And so now, they’re doing a lot of broker outreach and we’re seeing a lot of companies that maybe previously focused on retail are now really calling and reaching out to brokers, trying to earn our business. And it’s competition at its finest.”
What brokers want from lenders
Mordor Intelligence expects the broker space across North America to continue expanding between now and 2030, seeing moderate growth as brokers capture more market share.
And with plenty of lenders expanding their product suites to include non-QM and alternative options, brokers could prove essential in connecting borrowers with those institutions in the years ahead.
United States mortgage applications edged down for the fourth straight week, even as falling rates spurred a notable jump in refinancing, according to the latest data from the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA).https://t.co/kie6gaJVoF
— Mortgage Professional America Magazine (@MPAMagazineUS) October 22, 2025
But lenders will also have to focus on their own outreach to brokers, Hudson said, with plenty of green and red flags brokers are keeping their eyes out for.
“I’d like to see more transparency and communication with operations and underwriting,” he said of common broker bugbears with lenders. “Buying a home is scary. Buying a home is more than a loan number. You want to close on time. And when folks buy a home with a lender, they might treat you like you’re on an assembly line.
“There’s a lack of personability: ‘Our process is this. Our standard operating procedure is that.’ And flexibility is really the biggest thing that I’m curious about: which lenders are flexible? Which ones have a process but are willing to break it for my clients to be able to get in their home today?”
Further mortgage market growth could be ahead in 2026
Plenty of factors have weighed against the national housing market’s performance in recent years, from economic uncertainty to climbing interest rates, a cost-of-living crisis, and other affordability hurdles.
But the housing and mortgage outlooks are still positive in general, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA), which believes single-family mortgage originations will continue climbing in 2026 – inching up to $2.2 trillion compared with an expected $2.0 trillion this year.
That expected growth will be due in no small part to heightened expectations of more Federal Reserve cuts in the months ahead, according to MBA chief economist Mike Fratantoni.
“The FOMC [Federal Open Market Committee] cut rates in September, and we expect additional cuts at the end of October and in December,” he said at the association’s annual convention over the weekend.
“While inflation is still above the Fed’s target, the job market has weakened and we expect that the FOMC will continue to focus more on its full employment goal.”
And Hudson said the growing array of products and tools being rolled out by lenders for brokers can only be good news for the broker space as it bids to cut even further into that market share.
“The biggest thing I’ve noticed is that there’s a lot of new technology coming up,” he said. “There’s a lot of new processes that are coming out, new products even in this industry. It’s just getting faster and faster. I think it’s going to help us keep up as a small business without a thousand-person marketing team.”
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