Presented by

Refis are back to being almost half the mortgage market this year. Nobody feels it because the loans aren't going to your LOs, they're going to call center reps at the servicers who already have the borrower.

Rates fell for about two weeks in Q1 and we got a glimpse of what's coming.

I pulled three years of refinance volume by lender from iEmergent. Refis were 25% of all US residential originations in 2024, 33% in 2025, and roughly 43% so far in 2026. Here's who's actually capturing it.

THE 10 BIGGEST REFI LENDERS IN AMERICA, 2026 YTD

Rocket $44.1B
United Wholesale $23.0B
Freedom $15.9B
PennyMac $14.2B
JPMorgan Chase $12.8B
CrossCountry $12.0B
U.S. Bank $8.3B
loanDepot $8.1B
NewRez $7.1B
Guaranteed Rate $7.1B.

Rocket did 8.6% of every refinance dollar funded in this country. Nobody else cracked 5%.

WHO IS GROWING THE FASTEST

I measured growth as change in share of the total US refi market, in basis points, so a partial year doesn't distort it. The biggest gainers from 2025 to 2026 in refi market share nationally...

CrossCountry +53 bps
PennyMac +51
Freedom +36
Lakeview +27
Guaranteed Rate +26
CMG +24
Planet Home +19
Navy Federal +17

CrossCountry's refi share is up 49% in two years. Nobody at that size has grown faster. They've been accumulating servicing for a while now and it's paying off.

WHO LIVES AND DIES ON REFI

Highest refi share of total volume '26 YTD ...

Village Capital 95%
Lakeview 94%
Freedom 90%
Planet Home 83%
Carrington 82%
NewRez 67%
PennyMac 65%
Rocket 58%.

Every single one is a large servicer. This refi cycle is a recapture game and the shops holding the servicing are winning it. If you sell your servicing, you are renting your borrowers.

BUILDER CAPTIVES DISCOVERED REFI

The fifteen builder-owned mortgage companies in this data were 3.9% refi as a group two years ago. They're 18.3% today, and their refi volume is up 116% while the refi market grew 26%.

Read the rest of this post here …

My tech stack, honestly reviewed.

MacBook. Runs everything. 47 open tabs. Battery health 81 percent, which is roughly where mine is too.

iPhone. The actual command center. The Sunday screen time report arrives like a wellness check I did not consent to.

Cowork. Where the work happens now. It reads my email, calendar, files and CRM and then tells me things I did not want to hear. Like hiring an analyst who never sleeps, never complains, and occasionally mentions how stupid some of my ideas are. It does not care about my feelings and the balance sheet keeps siding with it.

Claude web. Where the half-formed idea goes before it becomes a strategy nobody asked for.

ChatGPT web. For a second opinion from something that will not remember the first one. And almost all my images.

Superhuman. Email in half the time. It made me fast. Nobody warned me that fast just means the reply comes back faster. Split inboxes let me ignore things in a far more organized way.

Google Workspace and Calendar. Five inboxes, three calendars, one human. Somewhere out there is a man with one email address who sleeps well.

Zoom. Six to nine a day. I've said "you're on mute" more times this month than I have said my own children's names.

Plaud. Records every meeting so I never take notes again. It also accidentally captured 16 straight hours at BWI, during which I ate crab cakes for lunch and dinner, got drunk two separate times, and took five Zoom calls. It was a Sunday.

Gamma. Amazing decks in minutes. I have not opened PowerPoint in two years. Insane time saving.

beehiiv. 25,000+ of you read Swerb's Blurbs. It quietly built the most valuable asset I own while I was busy doing other things. An incredible email newsletter platform that now can also host pods.

Zoho Campaigns. Social media scheduler for The Cardboard Jungle

Apollo and ZoomInfo. They know things about your org chart that your org chart does not know. It is either sales intelligence or light stalking depending on the quarter I am having.

Click here to read the rest of this post …

My GF and I now have a freshman, a sophomore, and a senior at Ohio State. Here's the college student text message translation guide I wish somebody had given me.

"hey" = $40. I need money.

"u up?" = $400. I need money and it's urgent.

"quick question" = $200 to $2,000. Wide range. Depends entirely on the next sentence.

"so hypothetically" = TBD expense. It already happened. Brace and wait for next text and pray if you're religious.

"everyone else's parents are ok with it" = $0, hold firm. I have surveyed no one.

"nvm figured it out" = Unknown until October. I made it worse.

"i'll pay you back" = $0.00, and it is the single funniest sentence in the English language.

"what's our insurance card number" = Sit down.

"love you!!" = See everything above.

"miss you guys" = A setup for future financial asks.

HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS: VENUE REVEAL

We didn't book a ballroom. We booked a resort.

193 guest rooms. 42,000 square feet of event space. Fifteen acres. Three patios. Two grand ballrooms (we'll be using them both), and then nineteen more meeting rooms named after trees. Two restaurants and a pub.
Two pools. Indoor and outdoor.

It is called The Ohioan, and it looks like the place a family drives to at Christmas in the kind of movie where everything works out by the end. Newly renovated top to bottom.

There is a hill on the property. There is no sledding. I checked. Twice.

Polaris is minutes from the front door. Easton is twenty. Both decorated to the nines, so you can finish your Christmas shopping between sessions and drop a toy at the Toys for Tots drive on the way in. Both two of the most elite outdoor shopping complexes in the midwest.

The Big Ten Championship is that Saturday. The playoff bracket comes out Sunday, which is the day everybody arrives, into a compound that contains a pub.

And on Monday night, in 6,000 square feet of ballroom, we are throwing the biggest Christmas party this industry has ever seen. There is a decoration plan. It is stunning and it is arguably too much. There are bands. Plural.

Home for the Holidays. December 7 and 8. The Ohioan, Columbus.

There are 193 rooms on site and there are going to be A LOT more than 193 people. Book it when you register, not after you think about it over the weekend.

TMC Austin. Four weeks from today.

Looking forward to seeing a lot of good friends, in a great city, at a beautiful property, at the best possible time of year to be there.

And at a moment where what a TMC conference actually brings to the table has maybe never mattered more. The winds of change are not exactly a gentle breeze right now, and the cost of getting a big call wrong is as high as I have seen it. A room full of people running the same kind of shop you run, who will tell you what really happened when they tried it, is worth a lot more than it used to be.

Also, I have five comp registrations to give away to lenders who want to come check out TMC.

And 6th Street. In Austin. In late September. During college football season. At the Fairmont.

Let me know if you want one.

I'm hiring. Here's what's on the table.

A sixty-year-old state trade association being rebuilt in public and growing fast. A national lender cooperative that is genuinely enriching to be around. Events people want to attend instead of tolerate. A newsletter that reaches 30,000+ people in this industry. And more interesting work in six months than most people touch in five years, with a lot more fun stuff coming.

And real opportunity. We've grown through the worst five-year stretch this business has had. If we can do that in this market, you can do the math on the next one.

Here's what I'm looking for ...

💖 A motor. Your last boss still tells a story about it.

💗 Someone just as comfortable on the phone with a bank CEO as they are stuffing 300 name badges at 7 AM, who doesn't think either one is above or beneath them.

😍 Someone who can be told they got it wrong without forty seconds of soft delivery first, and whose next message is the fixed version instead of an explanation.

❤️‍🔥 Someone who notices the thing I forgot, handles it, and then tells me it's handled.

💘 Someone who gets that two hours a day of outreach isn't busywork, it's the engine. It's how every deal here gets found, and the people who do it consistently make real money doing it.

🎅 Someone who thinks it's funny that we named a Christmas party the Mother of All Christmas Parties, and wants to help it live up to the name.

❤️ And above all, a genuinely good human. Everything I've built runs on relationships, and one careless person can cost me something I can't buy back.

MY RED FLAGS, STATED UP FRONT

Contract to start, because that's honest about where we are and it's the fastest way for both of us to find out. The money starts modest. The fall is heavy and December will run you over. There's no polished package here and no job description, because I don't have one.

WHAT I'M NOT LOOKING FOR

A title. I couldn't care less what yours was.

SWIPE RIGHT IF

You're willing to grind with a smile, you're not scared of the unglamorous part, and Ohio is a plus.

Email me and let's find out if this is anything.

Stock up on syrup, what the Canada trade war will make more pricey

Bessent: economic d-day coming for Iran

Manufactured housing’s affordability problem

NEXA acquires UMortgage

Pulte says LLPA tweaks “coming soon”

Deshaun Watson loudly booed by Cleveland fans after 5-12, INT performance against Bills 4th stringers in second half

AUGUST

Aug 26 - NATIONAL DOG DAY
Aug 27-29 - Fed Jackson Hole Retreat (Warsh's first as Chair, and the one to watch after three dissents in July)
Aug 28 - FINAL NFL ROSTER CUTS FOR REGULAR SEASON!
Aug 29 - COLLEGE FOOTBALL RETURNS!
Aug 30 - US Open Tennis Tournament begins

SEPTEMBER

Sept 1 - JOLTS for July
Sept 4 - August Jobs Report
Sept 7 - Labor Day
Sept 9 - NFL SEASON KICKOFF, Seahawks host Patriots in the Super Bowl LX rematch (a Wednesday, not the usual Thursday)
Sept 10 - Producer Price Index (PPI) inflation reading
Sept 11 - Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation reading
Sept 13 - US OPEN TENNIS FINAL
Sept 14 - 78TH PRIMETIME EMMY AWARDS on NBC, going up against Chiefs vs Broncos on Monday Night Football
Sept 15 - OMBA NIGHT AT THE BALLPARK! Columbus Clippers party deck outing! Tickets here!
Sept 15-16 - FOMC MEETING, rate decision Wednesday the 16th
Sept 19 - INTERNATIONAL TALK LIKE A PIRATE DAY
Sept 19 - Oktoberfest begins in Munich
Sept 20-22 - Uniquely TMC, Austin TX
Sept 21 - OMBA GOLF OUTING, The Golf Club of Dublin, 9:00 AM shotgun start
Sept 24-27 - PRESIDENTS CUP at Medinah Country Club, Snedeker vs Ogilvy
Sept 27 - MLB REGULAR SEASON ENDS
Sept 27-29 - MBA Compliance and Risk Management Conference, Washington DC
Sept 29 - MLB POSTSEASON BEGINS
Sept 29 - NHL SEASON OPENS, first year of the 84-game schedule
Sept 29 - JOLTS for August
Sept 29 - NATIONAL COFFEE DAY

OCTOBER

Oct 2 - September Jobs Report
Oct 7 - September FOMC minutes released
Oct 10 - mPowering You: MBA's Summit for Women in Real Estate Finance, Chicago
Oct 11-14 - MBA ANNUAL CONVENTION AND EXPO, Hyatt Regency Chicago
Oct 12 - Columbus Day / Indigenous Peoples Day
Oct 14 - Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation reading
Oct 14 - Fed Beige Book
Oct 14 - MBA Tech Exchange, Chicago
Oct 15 - Producer Price Index (PPI) inflation reading
Oct 16 - Import and Export Price Indexes
Oct 16 - NATIONAL BOSS'S DAY (your move, direct reports)
Oct 17 - SWEETEST DAY (invented in Cleveland in 1922, so Ohio gets the credit and the blame)
Oct 20 - NBA SEASON OPENS, Knicks raise the first banner in more than 50 years
Oct 23 - WORLD SERIES GAME 1
Oct 27-28 - FOMC MEETING, rate decision Wednesday the 28th
Oct 30 - Employment Cost Index, Q3
Oct 31 - HALLOWEEN, on a Saturday, and the night a World Series Game 7 would be played

“It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it.”
Tom Hanks, A League of Their Own

Until the next one,
Swerb
[email protected]