With the yield on the risk-free 10-year Treasury note hitting 3 percent for the first time since 2018, you deserve some cutting-edge humor. Two hats were hanging on a hat rack in the hallway. One hat said to the other, “You stay here; I'll go on ahead.” In our lending biz, some companies are thinking it is best to “go on ahead” with someone else. Garth Graham, Senior Partner at STRATMOR, fresh off the Planet Home Lending Home Point deal, fired off this note to me. “In a market like this, we expect to see industry consolidation. Planet Home Lending is being opportunistic as being one of the first to seize scale benefits in the TPO space. Planet could double its market share in correspondent, and likely be a top 5 or top 10 player this year. Management is taking advantage of the market dynamics in a way I expect to see others follow. The M&A market is very hot, similar to the numbers from 2018. In 2018, there were 33 deals, then it started to drop as the market improved, and only 13 deals in 2020 during the Covid boom. Last year we were up to 29 deals as the market softened, and this year will likely be over 40 with a large pipeline of active buyers, and conversations with a lot of sellers given the Q1 earnings performance for mortgage bankers. Deals can be put together in less than 90 days like HP and Planet deal. The challenge is when the sellers wait too long to get started.” (Today’s podcast is available here and this week’s is sponsored by MCT’s BAM Marketplace, the world’s first truly open loan exchange, where buyers can bid regardless of approval status, and sellers receive automated live pricing from every buyer on the platform. Interview with MCT CEO, Curtis Richins, on ways BAM Marketplace continues to evolve and disrupt the secondary mortgage marketplace.)