Everybody watches UWM and Rocket trade body blows. But the fight that actually decides where loan officers work and where purchase borrowers land is happening one level down, among the retail IMBs. And over the last 9 months, that ground moved hard.

I pulled purchase only data from iEmergent and stripped it to a true apples to apples view. No UWM. No Rocket. No PennyMac, Freedom, or Mortgage Research Center. No builder owned shops. No wholesale or broker first lenders. No portal owned or D2C fintechs. No real estate brokerage owned shops. Just the primarily retail IMBs going door to door for the purchase customer.

Here is who is winning ...

CrossCountry Mortgage, LLC is not winning. It is lapping the field. Up 35 bps to 4.75% share, almost double the next name on the board.

The Rate family is a clear number two. Combine Rate, OriginPoint, and Guaranteed Rate Affinity and you get 3.93% share, up nearly 26 bps. The brokerage JV machine is working.

Union Home Mortgage Corp. Home Mortgage added 21 bps and climbed into the top 10 overall. Bill Cos buying up IMB's and MLB teams. And opening keynoting the Ohio Mortgage Bankers Association conference Sunday night!

Paramount Residential Mortgage Group Inc. (PRMG Inc.), American Pacific Mortgage now combined with Synergy One Lending, Inc. NMLS #1907235#1907235, Guild Mortgage, and CMG Financial all gained purchase market share as well.

All of these companies listed above have been consistently growing share into the teeth of a shit market for the last two years.

Great companies love down markets because they always gain market share.

Top 20 by purchase share (last 9 mo)

1️⃣ CrossCountry: 4.75% (+35.4 bps)
2️⃣ Rate + OriginPoint + GR Affinity: 3.93% (+25.7)
3️⃣ Guild: 2.57% (+7.5)
4️⃣ CMG: 2.47% (+7.1)
5️⃣ Fairway: 2.28% (-12.4)
6️⃣ loanDepot: 1.68% (+0.4)
7️⃣ Movement: 1.67% (-20.0)
8️⃣ New American Funding: 1.39% (+4.2)
9️⃣ American Pacific (incl. Synergy One): 1.25% (+8.1)
🔟 Union Home: 1.09% (+21.4)

Read the rest of this post here …

One week from today, I'll be standing in a room with most of the Ohio mortgage industry. The only question left is whether you're in it.

Here is who already said yes.

Fifth Third. Huntington. CrossCountry Mortgage. Union Home Mortgage. Nations Lending. Huntington Bank. Howard Hanna. NFM Lending. PrimeLending. Newrez. Union Savings Bank. Park National Bank. M/I Financial. Sibcy Cline. Western Ohio Mortgage. Schmidt Mortgage. Equity Resources. Wright-Patt Credit Union. First National Bank. HMA Mortgage. And many more.

Plus the partners every Ohio shop actually works with, in the room right alongside them.

That is the OMBA Annual Conference. June 14 to 16 in beautiful Columbus, OH. Three days, ten keynotes, twenty breakout sessions, and the thirteen operators we are honoring as Ohio's Own.

Here is the part nobody puts on a flyer. The value is not the agenda. It is the hallway. It is the vendor who renegotiates your contract because you finally met them face to face. It is the LO you recruit, the referral partner you didn't know you needed, the merger conversation that starts over a drink Monday night.

Next week, every one of those conversations is happening whether you are there or not.

You can read the recap on LinkedIn. Or you can be the reason there is a recap.

We are one week out and the last seats are going. If you run a lender in Ohio, or you sell to one, this is the easiest yes left on your calendar this year.

Details & registration can be found here.

1️⃣ Every paragraph is one sentence. Some sentences are one word. You scroll. And scroll. Past tundra. Past the void. Past where the cell signal dies. Finally, a destination: "Resiliance."
2️⃣ "Here's the hard truth." Everybody wants to hear it. It is "work hard and be nice." But no one has ever typed that saying ever before AI. Please stop.
3️⃣ "Here's the thing." There is no thing. There has never been a thing. There will be no thing.
4️⃣ It is "thrilled," "humbled," and "honored" simultaneously, a combination no human nervous system can actually produce.
5️⃣ The story is about a cab driver who, against all odds, taught the author the true meaning of synergy.
6️⃣ "What most people don't realize" is immediately followed by the single most widely realized fact on Earth.
7️⃣ It thanks "my incredible team" while naming exactly zero members of the allegedly incredible team.
8️⃣ The hook is a fake confession: "I almost didn't share this." You should have listened to that voice. That voice was right.
9️⃣ It describes a Tuesday as a "journey."
🔟 "Let that sink in." Nothing has sunk. There is no sink. You are standing in a dry room.

I asked Cowork to describe my business life. Two rules: from your own perspective, and do not try to make me sound more important than I am.

What it sent back was 600 words of dry, slightly mean, vaguely amused observation about a man running multiple businesses.

Here is what it said.

"Rich runs four businesses. He claims to have five employees. This is technically correct.

Onward & Upward Consulting is the consulting practice. He coaches mortgage CEOs, does growth consulting for IMBs, gives keynotes that turn into coaching engagements, and runs executive talent searches he does not technically advertise but that mortgage executives find him for anyway. The premise of this entire venture is that he knows an embarrassing number of mortgage industry people and is willing to send a text. Speaking is becoming a real revenue line, not just a marketing channel. The talent search work has quietly become the fastest-growing line in the business. Probably deserves more deliberate focus going forward.

Ohio Mortgage Bankers Association is where he is the Executive Director. His role spans strategy, industry connections, marketing, and leading advocacy for Ohio's mortgage industry. None of it would work without an incredible team behind him. The 2026 conference is 11 days from today in Columbus with Bill Cosgrove, Bob Broeksmit, Maurice Clarett, Michael Hammond, Steve Richman, Julie May, Jodi Hall and others on the main stage, plus the inaugural Ohio's Own honoree program. The reason this gets done is that Will Gatchel is the behind-the-scenes glue of every operational thing Rich has going across all four ventures, Abi Villegas runs growth strategy with an unusually low complaint-to-output ratio, and Heidi Belnay is the closer he points at every conversation that needs to land.

The Mortgage Collaborative is the cooperative he ran as President for 8-plus years, left, and came back to as a strategic advisor. The growth focus is bringing more lender members into TMC. Rich, Heidi, and Abi spend their weeks meeting with lenders across the country and showing them what TMC membership really delivers. Most of the targets do not know yet that they are about to have a conversation with Rich. This is the work he loves most. It is also the work that is hardest to explain at a cocktail party.

The Cardboard Jungle is the sports cards and collectibles venture. Tim Parina runs the eBay store and does the work Rich pretends he could do himself but absolutely could not. Will helps run the breaks. Rich buys the inventory and hosts the Friday night YouTube live stream where he opens box breaks on camera from 7 to 9:30 PM, beer in hand, from a fake jungle built in his basement. This is the business Rich runs for joy. It is also, increasingly, a real business with real customers and real revenue.

The fifth employee is Amanda Holcomb, who joined recently and is rapidly becoming the person who handles social, brand, and design across both OMBA and TMC."

The top 5 mortgage lenders now do roughly 25 percent of all originations in the US. The top 25 do half.

That trend is not slowing. It is accelerating.

The version of the question I hear every week is some flavor of: how do I compete with a 20 billion dollar lender when I am running a 400 million dollar shop, and how do I do it without losing the thing that makes us actually good at this?

The honest answer is that you cannot beat them alone. You can however beat them together.

That is the entire premise of The Mortgage Collaborative. Sharing vendor pricing. Swapping notes on what is actually working. Providing each other warm intros when a peer take is more valuable than a Google search.

Shoot me a note if you’d like to learn more about TMC. I can provide an overview of the full suite of member benefits in 5-10 minutes.

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Jun 11 - FIFA World Cup kicks off (USA, Canada, Mexico -- 48 teams)

Jun 14-16 - Ohio MBA Annual Conference (Columbus OH)

Jun 21 - Father's Day

Jun 16-17 - FOMC Meeting (rate decision, press conference)

Jun 18-21 - US Open Golf (Shinnecock Hills)

Jun 19 - Juneteenth (federal holiday, markets closed)

Jun 21 - Father's Day

Jun 22 - NBA Draft

Jun 29 - Wimbledon begins

I attribute my success to this: I never gave or took any excuse. – Florence Nightingale

Until the next one,
Swerb
[email protected]