SimplyPMG's Ospina explains why today's rates may be closer to normal than anyone admits
While almost nobody in the mortgage industry expects interest rates to plummet to lows seen during the pandemic, most forecasts coming into 2026 were offering some optimism about declining mortgage rates.
Of course, rates have risen instead, and even with Freddie Mac’s 30-year mortgage rate dropping for the second straight week, rates remain closer to 7% than 6%.
Fannie Mae poured more cold water on rate drop expectations this week with its latest forecast, with rates expected to stay in between 6.7% and 6.8% through the end of 2027.
With no rate drop on the horizon, brokers and lenders are doing their best to reframe the conversation around rates to make sure consumers understand that the current rate environment is actually normal, not high.
One company has largely stopped waiting, choosing to build its business around the borrowers who show up regardless of where rates sit.
Fernando Ospina (pictured top), chief production officer at SimplyPMG, formerly known as Panorama Mortgage Group, isn’t waiting for some magic rate number to drive business.
"I think mortgage money hangs out at about that 6% to 6.5% rate, historically a little north of that," Ospina told Mortgage Professional America. "I don't think getting the rate to 5.5% is going to open up these floodgates in terms of volume. Kind of where we're hanging out right now is where we need to be."
Reframing the rate conversation
Ospina said he bought his first home in 2004 or 2005 at 6.5% to 6.75% and was happy with it. What he sees in today's market is an industry still calibrated to the COVID-era rates that were the anomaly, not the baseline.
"I don't think anybody believes that the 2% to 3% rate is coming back anytime soon or ever," he said. "I think there is hope that the low 5s might come back, but the further we get away from that COVID rate and the more comfortable we get with a pretty resilient economy, if we're lucky, low-6, mid-5 is going to be where we build our business around for the foreseeable future."
He said the affordability problems borrowers are facing are real, but they are not primarily a mortgage rate problem. Insurance costs and rising taxes are the forces squeezing household budgets in ways that a half-point rate move would not fix. He tells borrowers that waiting for a rate drop might make their future home more unaffordable.
"Sitting around waiting for that big rate drop is just a missed opportunity," he said. "At some point this thing will take off again, and houses will continue to appreciate. If that rate doesn't drop and the house just appreciates, the affordability becomes an even bigger hurdle."
A market at any rate
Ospina said the internal message he sends to his sales force draws on a simple historical observation.
"Rates were at 16% once, and mortgages were getting done," he said. "And the counterpoint is, well, houses were a lot more affordable back then. But mortgages were also being done. They were being done in 2008 and 2009. Someone was still finding a way to originate a mortgage. So if they were getting done in those environments, this is a walk in the park."
Despite the market headwinds, originations per loan officer at SimplyPMG are up according to Ospina. The other side of making deals happen is finding ways to make loan production less expensive.
"The cheaper we can manufacture a loan, the quicker we can pass that savings on to a consumer, tackling that affordability issue for them," he said. "Top of mind is always efficiencies. We focus on things like tech tools and process changes, turn time improvements, to make the process a little quicker and then pass that saving on to the consumer."
He said the message he would send to originators focused on rate-driven volume is to redirect that energy toward customer service and process quality, because those are what survive any rate environment.
"Yesterday I got a phone call from one of the clients I was working with — now they’re going to buy their second home," he said. "It was that approach that I took with that consumer that our originators now take with them. That creates that long-term client.
"If the focus continues to be customer service, creating that long-term client, the business is still there, and there's a ton of potential out there.”
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