While we await FEMA to declare the Yellowstone area a disaster (page down and spend 40 seconds watching the video) is “niches to riches” the new informal slogan of loan officers? LOs are certainly watching how higher interest rates have already impacted American homeownership as rising mortgage rates and house prices reduce buyer affordability. At the other ends of the loan process, making the rounds, which capital markets staff say is causing confusion, via ZeroHedge is a blog post from Louis Barnes at Cherry Creek Mortgage declaring MBS going “no-bid”. While many of us can agree liquidity isn’t what it once was, there are still massive volumes of MBS being transacted upon daily. Bid/ask spreads are certainly not as tight as they once were but we are a far cry from the early days of COVID 19 where some dealers outright refused to trade TBA. In other words, liquidity isn’t what it is in a normal market, and bid/ask spreads are wider, but no one I’ve spoken to is having issues trading current coupon MBS. Capital markets folks are talking about interest rates (going to do what they’re going to do), offering new products to their originators, Ginnie Mae's Digital Collateral Program, MBA's SPCP Toolkit, and the FHFA's Equitable Housing Finance Plans & Transparency Framework. (Today’s podcast is available here and this week’s is sponsored by SimpleNexus, an nCino company and award-winning developer of mobile-first technology for the modern mortgage lender. Nexus Closing gives borrowers flexibility and convenience during closing. Today’s has an interview with Pam Faulkner, Simple Nexus’ VP of Customer Journey on eClose and helping lenders implement technology.)