Better Home & Finance Holding Co. has appointed board member Daniel Lewis as interim CEO effective immediately, replacing founder Vishal Garg, the company announced Monday. Garg will remain on the company’s board and work with Lewis to ensure an orderly leadership transition. As interim CEO, Lewis w

Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM) endorsements declined in July after an uptick in June, while HECM Mortgage-Backed Securities (HMBS) issuance remained near the lowest levels seen since 2009, according to data released Monday by New View Advisors. The top 15 originators endorsed 2,034 HECM loan

Builders FirstSource’s acquisition of Innovative Construction Group (ICG) from PulteGroup signals that, while homebuilders see value in off-site construction, many prefer to rely on third-party manufacturers rather than own those operations themselves, especially during down cycles.  Builders FirstS

Dream Finders Homes’ 2026 quest to acquire Beazer Homes has focused mostly on the target’s financial and operational underperformance. Dream Finders has publicly argued that Beazer shareholders deserve the certainty of a cash exit and that a new owner can produce better results from the company’s as

A sweeping Social Security reform bill reintroduced in the House of Representatives would boost benefits for millions of Americans, change how cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) are calculated and impose new taxes on high earners to shore up program finances. The Social Security 2100 Act, H.R. 9519,

Chicago-based mortgage lender OriginPoint has hired top-producing loan officers Erin Halliday and Jon Levin from New American Funding, where they operated as a high-volume production team. Halliday and Levin officially joined OriginPoint — a joint venture of Rate and Compass — on July 27 as the Erin

For years, housing affordability was a problem hiding in plain sight. Rents were climbing faster than wages. First-time buyers locked out of markets their parents once could afford. Families doubling up, moving away or simply giving up on the idea of owning a home. The numbers were damning. The caus

For years, becoming a great real estate agent followed a familiar path. You put in the hours, learned your market, built relationships and slowly developed systems that made you more efficient than the competition. Experience wasn’t just valuable. It was your competitive advantage. AI for real estat

Housing demand still showed positive year-over-year growth last week, despite the hawkish Fed, escalation of the Iran conflict, rising mortgage rates and the 10-year yield hitting yearly highs. We had year-over-year growth in our weekly pending sales, total pending sales and purchase apps. Growth ha

Artificial intelligence (AI) and broader tech investment is reshaping broad swaths of the U.S. economy, but its impact on housing is proving far from uniform. HousingWire Data updated July 25 shows a growing divide between markets where AI wealth is supporting demand and those where even strong tech

While many homebuilders battle a gross margin slippery slope from the 20s into the mid-teens, Green Brick Partners is fairly striding against the tide.  During the company’s Q2 earnings call on Thursday, executives said its gross profit margin expanded to 29.8% in Q2, down 150 basis points from a ye

Federal banking regulators released a Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) proposal Friday that narrows how banks earn credit for community development while raising asset thresholds for small and midsized institutions. The plan drew immediate criticism from consumer and housing advocates. The Federal D

Although a date has been set for a final approval hearing, the real estate brokerages and associations that settled the homebuyer commission lawsuits through the Tuccori suit’s opt-in settlement may still face some challenges.  The latest of these challenges is that earlier this week by four retired

The briefs are in. The witnesses are done. A federal judge in Chicago now holds the question the whole industry keeps asking: who controls where a listing gets seen? Here is the part no ruling will answer for you. Zillow, Compass and Midwest Real Estate Data (MRED) spent the first half of July tradi

In 2017, Kyle Talbott and his wife Karen Talbott, who make up the Corcoran-brokered Talbott Team, were considering a move to Compass, after talk about the then 5-year-old brokerage’s technology had caught their attention. “We had a preview of the system that Compass started putting together back the

Today the 10-year yield hit a yearly high of 4.74% and mortgage rates rose six basis points to 6.83% (as of this writing), as all the Federal Reserve hawks came out to play, and they were not taking a page from Fed Chair Kevin Warsh’s playbook. They want their voices heard loud and clear — and they

Intercontinental Exchange Inc., the operator of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and parent company of ICE Mortgage Technology, reported its strongest quarterly mortgage business performance in four years during the second quarter of 2026. While reporting a profitable quarter, the company also ann

A homeowner recently asked me to review a listing presentation prepared by another real estate agent. It was impressive. The pricing analysis was organized, the marketing plan included video, social media and buyer targeting, and the language was polished throughout. A few years ago, a presentation

An ongoing feud between loanDepot and NEXA Lending was brought to light again this week through a social media posst authored by NEXA CEO Mike Kortas, which urges loanDepot loan officers to join NEXA. In the post, which begins with the line “Attn: Loan Depot Loan Officers,” Kortas offered a year of

The AI boom over the last few years has created a new class of exceedingly wealthy technology innovators, investors and employees. Compounded with a bullish stock market and IPOs like SpaceX sending employees into affluence within days, it comes as no surprise there’s increasing demand for complex,