Friday was a good day for housing policy. Trump signed two executive orders that go directly at two problems the industry has been screaming about for years.

Order 1 cuts the regulatory cost of building homes. Biden-era mandates alone were adding $9,000 per house before construction began. Wetlands, green codes, stormwater, historic sign-offs. A decade of requirements that made supply a structural impossibility. This order starts clearing them out. Builders across America are reading it right now and cautiously smiling for the first time in a while.

Order 2 brings community banks back into the mortgage market. Compliance overhead priced them out. Big lenders filled the vacuum. Local banks with real relationships and real market knowledge became spectators. This order tells the CFPB to lower the drawbridge. More lenders competing means lower costs and better options for borrowers. White House says months. I say that sounds aggressive. But we'll take it.

Both are the right call. Both should have happened last summer. I'm choosing to focus on the first part.

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Trump signed an executive order last week targeting community bank mortgage lending. While its wise to take anything Trump says with a grain of salt, this is long overdue and makes sense.

I spent almost 20 years leading lending divisions for community banks and have continued to work closely with banks at The Mortgage Collaborative and Onward & Upward Consulting.

Here's the relief I'd personally most like to see.

1. Actually use the FHLBs.

The Federal Home Loan Banks were literally built for this moment. Over a trillion dollars in assets. Community banks are already members. The MPF program exists specifically so smaller institutions can sell loans without going hat in hand to Fannie and Freddie. The problem is that half the community banks in this country either do not know MPF exists or cannot get through the onboarding process without a sherpa. Fix the awareness, fix the friction, fix the onboarding. You just activated a trillion dollar system that is already funded, already chartered, and already sitting there waiting for someone to use it correctly.

2. Fix the Basel III capital treatment on portfolio mortgage products.

A community bank holding a loan it originated, in a town it has banked for forty years, for a borrower whose parents had an account there, should not be penalized with capital treatment designed for Wall Street trading desks. Wrong framework. Wrong institution. Everyone who has looked at it knows it.

3. Fix construction loan risk weighting.

Community bank construction loans perform exceptionally well. The risk weighting assigned to them does not come close to reflecting reality. All it does is discourage the exact lending that would actually help close a seven million unit housing shortage. Do the math.

4. Stop examining well-run banks like they are problem banks.

If a community bank is well-capitalized, has a clean record, and has never given an examiner a reason to sweat, examining them at the same frequency as institutions on the watch list is a waste of everyone's time and a direct tax on good behavior. Reward the good actors.

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BREAKING: VantageScore Announces It Will Pay Lenders $50 Per Pull To Use Its Product, Mortgage Industry Says It Will Need To Think About It

TransUnion confirmed Friday that VantageScore 4.0 will now pay participating mortgage lenders $50 for every origination pull, effective immediately, with no strings attached.

The mortgage industry said it appreciated the offer and would need to loop in a few people before responding.

"We have a call Thursday," said one operations executive at a mid-size IMB. "There are six people on the call. Four of them will ask what VantageScore is. One will ask if it affects their pipeline. One will say we should probably get FICO on the line before we go any further with this."

"We appreciate the economics," said one chief credit officer at a top-20 lender. "We are just trying to understand the full picture before we make any changes to a process that currently works and that our investors currently accept and that our systems are currently built around."

A large regional bank's technology team confirmed they could integrate VantageScore into their LOS in approximately 18 to 24 months pending vendor approval, a security review, a budget cycle, signoff from the chief risk officer, and one more conversation with their Fannie Mae rep that has been on the calendar since October.

VantageScore confirmed it would raise the payment to $75 if lenders committed by end of quarter.

On Wall Street, MBS investors described their appetite for VantageScore-scored loans as "unchanged by the financial incentives being offered to people who are not us."

"Our models were built on thirty years of FICO default correlation data," said one MBS investor. "We are not rebuilding them because the originator got fifty dollars. We are also not rebuilding them for seventy-five."

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Ohio mortgage has no shortage of extraordinary female leaders. We're about to make sure everyone knows their names.

This June at the OMBA Annual Conference, we are bringing one of the most meaningful sessions we have ever put on our main stage in the 59-year history of our org. At our Monday morning opening general session, we'll be celebrating 15 to 20 of the most accomplished female mortgage lending leaders in the state of Ohio in a way that is worthy of what they have built and what they represent for this industry.

This is not a panel. This is a recognition. Main stage. Full room. The spotlight these women deserve.

Our board of directors will be selecting the honorees. But we need your help finding them first.

If you know an Ohio-based woman in mortgage lending who has led with excellence, built something meaningful, mentored others, and made this industry better ... we want her name. Drop it in the comments. Send me a direct message. Tell me her story. No nomination is too small and no career is too quiet to be considered. The people doing the most important work are not always the loudest voices in the room. That is exactly why this session exists.
Nominations are open now.

And while we have your attention ... this session is just the opening act of what is going to be an incredible event. The 2026 OMBA Annual Conference runs June 14-16 at the Renaissance Columbus Westerville-Polaris.

Maurice Clarett. Bob Broeksmit. Steve Richman. A fourth keynote coming soon. 21 breakout sessions across three tracks. A live Tech Demo Showcase. Two nights of events at a gorgeous venue in amazing Columbus, OH that has no business being included at this price point.

$495. Registration is open. Details here.

Be in the room.

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9-foot fighting robots are real and drawing live audiences in Detroit

Protein is in everything now

Scientists studying 1,300 golden retrievers find genetic clues to anxiety and aggression

Mar 16-18 - ICE Experience (Las Vegas, NV)

Mar 17-18 - FOMC Meeting (rate decision Mar 18)

Mar 19-22 - NCAA Tournament First/Second Rounds

Mar 26 - Traditional Opening Day (earliest in MLB history)

Apr 4 & 6 - Final Four & Championship (Indianapolis)

Apr 9-12 - The Masters (Augusta National, Rory McIlroy defending)

April 13-14 - MBA State & Local Conference

April 14-15 - MBA National Advocacy Conference

Apr 23-25 - NFL Draft (Pittsburgh, first time since 1948)

Apr 26-28 - Texas MBA Annual Conference

Apr 27-30 - HousingWire’s “The Gathering” Conference

“The best revenge is massive success” – Frank Ocean

Until the next one,
Swerb
[email protected]