BREAKING: OMBA Leaks Its Own Agenda For Explosive December Event

COLUMBUS, OH - A confidential internal agenda for the Ohio Mortgage Bankers Association's December 7-8 "Home For The Holidays" summit appeared on LinkedIn this week stamped DO NOT SHARE, in what investigators are calling the least mysterious leak in trade association history, as the document was posted by the association's own Executive Director, from his own account, with commentary.

"We take security very seriously," said Rich Swerbinsky, who leaked it. "I am devastated that this happened. I have launched a full internal investigation, and I can report the investigation is going great and the suspect is a visionary."

The leaked agenda features two days of programming with every speaker name blacked out. Multiple loan officers have reportedly been measuring the redaction bars against printouts of famous names. One got a ruler. His wife is concerned.

Asked why anyone should believe the redactions hide actual big names, Swerbinsky gestured at a whiteboard reading MOMENTUM in all caps. "When I told our board we'd take the annual conference from 78 people to 200+, they laughed. Openly. One of them patted my arm. We did 250. Now when I tell them December is going to be BIGGER than the conference, they don't laugh anymore. They just stare at me. Silently. For an uncomfortably long time. I've started scheduling the staring into our board meetings. Agenda item four: staring."

Board members, granted anonymity because they have to keep working with him, confirmed the staring. "We've learned not to bet against him," said one. "We've also learned not to make eye contact when he says the word 'Santa.'"

Swerbinsky grew most animated defending the December date, an area of the calendar the events industry treats as radioactive. "Nobody does ANYTHING between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Nothing! It's the greatest inefficiency in the entire conference market. There's a perfect little window between Thanksgiving and Christmas that no one has EVER claimed, because claiming it requires a venue with serious space that isn't already hosting 400 lame office parties. We found the unicorn. Award-winning, massive, everything under one roof, and in December it's ours. Not sharing the name yet. This week."

The event includes breakfast both days, lunch Monday, and a Monday-night Christmas party with food and open bar included, decorated at a level that has been described internally as 'Clark Griswold with a sponsorship budget.'

Organizers confirmed the light count is currently at 25,000 imported Italian twinkle lights and climbing and the auxiliary nuclear backup has been requested from the power company.

The bar opens at 6. It does not close until the industry has healed.

Registration is open. Attendance is expected to shatter every record the association has, at which point the board is expected to stare at Swerbinsky harder than ever.

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I started in mortgage lending in 1996. A tour...

1996-1999

✔️ Rate sheets arrived by fax on thermal paper that curled into a tube and faded to blank within a month.
✔️ My entire book of business lived in a Rolodex. One cup of coffee from total destruction.
✔️ The 1003 was handwritten. Bad handwriting meant processing hated you personally for the life of the loan.
✔️ Rates were 7.5% and not one human being complained. Not one.
✔️ The underwriter sat down the hall. You could walk over and argue. She could throw you out. Healthier system.
✔️ VOEs went out by mail. You put a document in a box on a corner and waited eleven days like a pioneer.
✔️ Wholesale AEs worked out of a car trunk with a cooler of Diet Coke, and it worked.
✔️ We spent all of 1999 preparing for Y2K.

2000-2009

✔️ Stated income meant you told us what you made and we wrote it down. That was the control. The whole control.
✔️ We built a loan where the balance grew while you paid it, called it an option, and were stunned by the ending.
✔️80/20s, 100% financing, zero down. We had successfully reduced the down payment to nothing.
✔️ Everyone became a loan officer. Your barber. Your cousin. A guy who sold boats until March.
✔️ Roll call: Countrywide. New Century. IndyMac. WaMu. Ameriquest. Gone. Some in the same month.
✔️ The expense account era. Vegas, steak, cigar rolling stations and golf tournaments for products that are now illegal.

2010-2019

✔️ Dodd-Frank landed at 848 pages, the CFPB was born, and within 18 months compliance outnumbered the sales floor.
✔️ In 2015 TRID arrived and grown adults who had personally survived 2008 wept openly about a three-day waiting period.
✔️ HARP refinanced everyone underwater. The polite cleanup crew for the last decade's party.
✔️ Every company started calling itself a technology company that happens to originate loans. None of them were.
✔️ Disclosures went from 30 pages to over 100, to make things easier for consumers to understand.
✔️ Encompass became the LOS everyone used and everyone complained about. Ongoing.

2020-today

✔️ March 2020: the market froze, margin calls went out, and for nine days it felt like the whole thing might stop.

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BREAKING: Retiring Broker Tries To Sell His Business, Discovers There Is No Business

PONTIAC, MI - A mortgage broker announced his retirement this week the way all brokers do: tearful LinkedIn post, sunset photo, the word "journey" used four times. The plan was simple. Sell the brokerage he built over 22 years, buy a boat, name it Clear To Close. One problem surfaced during valuation, which the expert identified as "all of it."

The findings: his "book of business" lives in a CRM owned by his lender. His past clients are already being refinanced directly by that lender, which has their numbers, their loan data, and their trigger dates. His pricing was never his. His platform was never his. His only transferable assets are a co-branded website that redirects if you type it wrong and a kitchen cabinet containing 44 branded Yeti tumblers.

"The appraiser said my enterprise value was 'the tumblers,'" said the broker, who asked not to be named because his AE reads everything. "Forty-four tumblers. None of the lids match. Twenty-two years. I missed recitals. I passed a kidney stone at my desk and kept locking loans. I built a beautiful business for a man I've met twice, at a convention where he descended from the ceiling."

A younger broker offered to buy the company, then realized he could get the identical business free by signing the UWM blood oath pledge and earning his own tumblers.

When reached for comment, UWM said its partners absolutely own their businesses, and the fact that the clients, data, pricing, platform, and exit value all live in Pontiac is a coincidence. The company added that any broker unhappy with the arrangement is free to leave, a freedom it has historically explained to departing brokers via process server.

Meanwhile, UWMC stock closed at $1.74, meaning a single share now costs less than one branded tumbler lid. Sources confirm the lids are holding their value better.

The broker's succession plan has been updated. His son inherits the tumblers. The lids remain in Pontiac, like everything else. The clients were inherited by someone else before the retirement post finished uploading.

This is satire. I think.

If your company is IN Ohio mortgage and not IN this graphic's ecosystem, I have good news about how fixable that is.

Membership: dirt cheap. Our events: national-level agendas, national-level rooms.

The ROI: so obvious your CFO approves it without a meeting. When has THAT ever happened?

Screw you, LeBron

New Orleans ranked as the best US city for bleisure (blending business and leisure)

The oldest bar in every state

How to make time to exercise even if your schedule is cray-cray

Chinese AI models gain ground in the US

Home prices just keep going up

July 28-29 - Fed Meeting/Decision

July 30 - Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and PCE inflation reading releases

AUGUST

Aug 7 - July Jobs Report

Aug 12 - Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation reading

Aug 13 - Producer Price Index (PPI) inflation reading

Aug 27-29 - Fed Jackson Hole Retreat

Aug 28 - FINAL NFL ROSTER CUTS FOR REGULAR SEASON!

Aug 29 - COLLEGE FOOTBALL RETURNS!

Aug 30 - US Open Tennis Tournament begins

"The best way to predict the future is to create it."
— Peter Drucker

Until the next one,
Swerb
[email protected]