I am about to lay out a sequence of events. I want you to read it slowly. Do not jump ahead.

A bad jobs report comes out. Early August 2025. Trump fires the person who reported it within hours. No investigation. No process. Gone. He says the numbers were rigged. Offers no evidence.

Trump's people take over the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The agency responsible for telling America how many jobs exist. The most watched economic data point on the planet. The single number the Federal Reserve uses as much as any to decide whether to cut interest rates.

Here is what the jobs numbers have looked like since his people took over the scoreboard.

August: -26,000
September: +108,000
October: -173,000
November: +56,000
December: quietly revised from +48,000 to -17,000 after nobody was looking
January: +126,000
February: economists projected +60,000. We got -92,000.

Net jobs created in the seven months since the firing: -18,000.

The numbers were so bad he fired someone over them. Then they got worse. Under his watch. With his people running the agency.

And now every economist on television is saying the weak labor market gives the Federal Reserve the cover it needs to cut interest rates.

Which is the one thing Trump has been publicly demanding since day one.

Not alleging anything.

But if this IS what they are doing, I want to be clear: as a mortgage professional who has watched rates suffocate this industry for two years, I think it is absolutely brilliant and I have zero further questions.

Read the rest of this post here …

Wednesday we take 40+ mortgage professionals from across the state of Ohio to the Statehouse for 20+ meetings with legislators across both chambers.

It's the conclusion of the 2026 Ohio Mortgage Bankers Association Future Leaders Program, which wraps up its virtual curriculum today.

Most programs hand you a certificate. We hand you a meeting with your state senator.

Here is what we're walking in there to talk about ...

✔️ Property tax reform. Ohio passed a significant package of bills that cap increases and give homeowners real relief. 🍾 Now we need to make sure implementation actually delivers what was promised and does not get quietly watered down in the fine print while nobody is paying attention.

✔️ Zoning. You cannot solve a housing affordability crisis without building more housing. We are pushing for reform that clears the local obstacles that slow or kill residential development. The NIMBYs will not be happy. That is fine.

✔️ OHFA funding. The Ohio Housing Finance Agency runs the programs that help working Ohioans actually get to a closing table. First-time buyers. Moderate-income families. People who need a hand. The demand exists. The funding needs to catch up.

✔️ The post-CFPB regulatory landscape. Federal enforcement has gone quiet. That is not necessarily good news. It creates real questions about what state-level oversight looks like for Ohio lenders going forward. Banks, credit unions, and independent mortgage bankers all compete in this market and the rules need to apply the same way to all of them. We are asking for clarity before somebody decides the absence of federal cops means the speed limit does not exist.

Read the rest of this post here …

Once a year the best people in Ohio mortgage end up in the same room. This June that room is going to be especially good.

Maurice Clarett is going to stand in front of a room full of Ohio mortgage professionals and talk about redemption, resilience, and second chances. And there will not be a dry eye in the house.

Robert Broeksmit, the President and CEO of the Mortgage Bankers Association, is going to give the industry's most important people in Ohio a straight read on where this business is headed.

More big name keynotes are coming. Some fun ones.

And surrounding all of that will be 21 breakout sessions and 5 general sessions built and led by the practitioners in this industry on the issues that matter most right now. Post-CFPB. Credit reform. AI. Talent. Secondary market. Affordable housing. Construction lending. The Ohio political landscape. Servicing retention.

Add a Sunday night opening reception, a full day and three meals on Monday, and a gorgeous brand new property just north of downtown Columbus and you have the most compelling three days Ohio mortgage has put together in a long time.

June 14-16. Renaissance Columbus Westerville-Polaris. Mark the damn calendar.

This is the who's who of Ohio mortgage lending. If you are in this industry in this state you should be in this room.

REGISTER HERE

Most mortgage industry speakers are speakers. I am a practitioner who happens to get on stage.

Everything I talk about I am doing right now. Today. Not theory from a book I read. Not a recycled deck from last year. I am in the trenches on LinkedIn, AI, content, and business development every single day and the presentation I give this month is different from the one I gave last month because the algorithms, the AI tools, and consumer behavior are evolving that fast. I talk about what is working right now with zero filter.

And every single thing I talk about on stage can be implemented by anyone in the audience that night without spending one penny. Not next quarter. Not after a budget approval. That night.

Here is what I tell every room I walk into. The mortgage industry is sitting on the biggest opportunity in a generation. The tools to get better at AI, digital, and LinkedIn than 95% of your competition are free. Right now. The playing field has never been more level for someone willing to put in the work. Ever!

If you are not adopting this stuff, someone like me is slowly or quickly bleeding away your referral partners, your prospects, and your relevance. Not because I am smarter. Because I showed up and you did not. That is the brutal truth and I do not sugarcoat it from the stage.

What I have found is that combination opens peoples eyes. It terrifies some into action. It inspires others who have been on the cusp. And it leads to immediate changes in behavior that lead to changes in results. Not in six months. That week.

Because if your team leaves an event and nothing changes on Monday morning, you did not have a speaker. You had entertainment.

If you are planning a sales kickoff, a conference, a leadership retreat, or any event where your audience needs someone who has actually done the thing and will tell them the truth about where this business is headed, I would love to talk. I have availability in Q2 and Q3.

BREAKING: VantageScore Drops To 99 Cents, Mortgage Industry Says It Would Need To Come Down Another 99 Cents Before The Conversation Gets Interesting

TransUnion announced Tuesday that VantageScore 4.0 is now available for 99 cents per mortgage origination pull.

The mortgage industry described it as a step in the right direction and then asked which direction that was and whether it was significantly further down.

"We appreciate the gesture," said one chief credit officer at a top-20 lender, who asked not to be named because his compliance team was still reviewing whether he was allowed to have opinions. "Come back at zero and we will have a very different conversation. Probably still pull FICO but a much better conversation."

On Wall Street, investors described their appetite for VantageScore-scored loans as "limited at this time," with one source clarifying that "this time" referred to now and also the foreseeable future.

"Our pricing models were built on thirty years of FICO default correlation data," said one MBS investor. "We are not rebuilding them for a product whose primary performance data comes from a whitepaper written by the product."

Borrowers were surveyed. 96 percent had never heard of VantageScore 4.0. The remaining 4 percent heard about it on a podcast and were not sure if it was a credit score or a supplement.

FICO did not respond to a request for comment. This is the seventh consecutive year FICO has not responded to a request for comment on VantageScore pricing.

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Live tracking NFL free agency

Mar 4-17 - World Baseball Classic (Miami & Houston)

Mar 6 - Jobs Report (February data)

Mar 8-11 - MBA Mid-Winter Housing Finance Conference (Avon, CO)

Mar 10 - Existing Home Sales (February data)

Mar 11 - NFL Free Agency Opens (new league year begins 4 PM ET)

Mar 11 - CPI Release (February data)

Mar 15 - Selection Sunday (March Madness brackets announced)

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

"You can't have a million-dollar dream with a minimum-wage work ethic." – Stephen C. Hogan

Until the next one,
Swerb
[email protected]