"Date the rate, marry the house."

It was clever, it was everywhere for two years, and almost nobody in this business argued with it.

Truework's 2026 Recent Homebuyer Report just put a number on where that line landed. 73% of people who bought in the last 24 months planned to refinance eventually when they signed. 50% now say their mortgage becomes financially unsustainable without a lower rate.

Half. Of recent buyers. Are dependent on a rate cut that nobody in this business can promise and nobody in this business controls.

Rates were widely expected to come down. The advice was defensible at the time. Plenty of those buyers are going to be fine.

But look at why the line worked so well. It did not resolve the buyer's math. It resolved the buyer's hesitation. It took a permanent decision and made it feel temporary, and that is an enormously powerful thing to hand someone who is scared and sitting at a closing table. The industry reached for it constantly because it worked, and it did not ask often enough what happens if the second half of the sentence never arrives.

For a lot of households, it has not. 40% of these buyers say they would need a second job if they cannot refinance within three years. 21% say they would pull from retirement savings.

When 85% of recent buyers say refinancing in the next three years is important to their financial health, up from 56% a year ago, that is not a market getting more optimistic. That is a market getting more dependent.

For anyone with a book of business … you have a list of every borrower you closed in the last 24 months. A meaningful share of them are in these numbers. The call you make to them this quarter, before they need it, is worth more than any lead you buy this year. Not a refi pitch. A check-in.

We are very good at helping people buy. We are not yet good at helping them stay.

Truework’s full report can be found here. And is worth reading.

I'm hiring, and I'm not going to describe a role. I'm going to describe a person, and you'll know within about six sentences whether it's you.

💖 This person has a motor. Their last boss has a story about it.

💗 They are just as comfortable on the phone with a bank CEO as they are stuffing 300 name badges at 7 AM, and they don't think one of those is above or beneath them.

😍 They can be told they got something wrong without 40 seconds of soft delivering it and their next message is the fixed version instead of an explanation.

❤️‍🔥 They notice the thing I forgot and handle it before I ask, then tell me it's handled.

💘 They understand that two hours a day of outreach is not 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.

🎅 They think it's funny that we named a Christmas party the Mother of All Christmas Parties, and they want to help make it live up to it.

❤️ And they are, above all else, a genuinely good human, because every single thing I've built runs on relationships and one careless person can cost me something I can't buy back.

What I'm offering is not a polished package. Contract to start, because that's honest about where we are and because it's the fastest way for both of us to find out. The money starts modest and the fall is going to be heavy. December will run you over.

The opportunity ... for someone willing to dig deep to be part of something fun cool and growing ... is incredible. I could care less about past title. I care only about the attributes above.

What I'm actually offering is this. A sixty-year-old state trade association we are rebuilding in public and growing in a hurry. A national lender cooperative that is amazing and enriching and uplifting in so many ways. Events people genuinely want to go to. A newsletter that reaches 25,000+ people in this industry. And more interesting work in six months than most people touch in five years. While meeting a lot of cool new people.

And with A LOT more fun stuff coming. We have fun plans and ideas.

Willing to grind, with a smile, and not afraid of the unglamorous part. Ohio is a plus. Send me an email if that's you.

Somewhere today, a company is wiring $80,000 to a branding agency to get renamed something like Lumina or Vantia.

Meanwhile, Lava has been selling soap made of actual volcanic rock, under the name Lava, for 130 years, and has never once had a meeting about it.

These are some of my favorite products that have withstood the test of time. Every one of them would get killed in the first meeting of a modern rebrand. Every one of them has outlived the people who would have killed it.

Listerine. Originally marketed as a floor cleaner and a gonorrhea treatment. Then it invented the word halitosis to convince America that bad breath was a medical condition. Created the problem, sold the cure, still on your shelf.

Pepto-Bismol. A shade of pink that does not occur in nature and would not survive one focus group. Americans have been drinking it straight from the bottle like a shot for over a century.

Vicks VapoRub. Cures nothing. Beloved by everyone. Every grandmother on earth believes it can set a broken femur.

Tabasco. One product. One ingredient list. Three ingredients. They have had 150 years to launch a mango habanero and they have not, because they are not cowards.

A.1. Every steakhouse in America pretends to be offended when you ask for it, and every one of them has a bottle in the back.

Log Cabin Syrup. Contains roughly as much real maple as an actual log cabin. Nobody cares. Pancakes do not ask questions.

Jiffy corn muffin mix. Advertising budget of approximately zero dollars since the Hoover administration. In every pantry in America anyway.

Juicy Fruit. The flavor has never been identified. Not by scientists. Not by Wrigley. You have chewed an unknown substance your entire life and you would do it again today.

Ray-Ban. Built so Army pilots could see. Adopted by every state trooper, every dad at a cookout, and Tom Cruise twice, thirty years apart.

Lava. The rock is the feature. There is pumice in it. On purpose. The product's whole promise is that it will hurt a little.

Monopoly. Invented to prove landlords were the villain, then bought by a company that deleted that part. Has ended more Thanksgivings than politics. No family has ever finished a game.

The Magic 8 Ball. Twenty possible answers, ten of them positive, five noncommittal, five negative. That is a better disclosed methodology than most rate forecasts I read.

Read the rest of this post here …

Half the people who saw my posts in the last two weeks don't follow me. 197,154 impressions. 52% of them out-of-network. It shows it to you now! New development.

Meaning LinkedIn served my stuff to people who have never clicked follow, don't know who I am, and didn't ask. That number used to be a rounding error. Now it's the majority.

I have coaching clients with under 1,000 followers pulling 2,500 impressions avg per post. They're reaching 3x their entire follower count on a single post. On average.

Follower count stopped being the asset a while ago. It's a lagging indicator now, not a leading one. What the algorithm is actually rewarding is whether a specific post earns attention from people who have no relationship with you, and that's a content question, not an audience-size question.

Which is good news if you've been sitting on the sidelines waiting to "build an audience first." You don't need one. You need three or four posts a week that are actually worth reading.

The people telling you to grow your following before you start are giving you 2019 advice. 💡

Divided Fed holds interest rates steady

Two key takeaways from the Fed's unusually unpredictable meeting

World Cup 2030 Way Too Early Power Rankings

The Algorithmic Servicer

FICO 10T Gaining Momentum

George Bush, Mike Eruzione, and Jerry Seinfeld (Freedom Mortgage bringing him in) will be at MBA Annual in Chicago in October

Looks like Tarik Skubal’s gonna be traded, probably to the Dodgers

Bessent says US could sanction China over AI model theft

AUGUST

Aug 4 - Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) for June
Aug 6 - NFL HALL OF FAME GAME IN CANTON, Panthers vs Cardinals
Aug 6 - Productivity and Costs, Q2 preliminary
Aug 7 - July Jobs Report
Aug 12 - Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation reading
Aug 13 - Producer Price Index (PPI) inflation reading
Aug 13 - Originator Connect, Las Vegas
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 15-16 - 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

"Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups." — George Carlin

Until the next one,
Swerb
[email protected]