Time flies, and we’re more than halfway through the 3rd quarter. Few lenders and vendors look forward to heading into the autumn or winter of any year, and with the U.S. 10-year up to 4.30 percent, millions of borrowers content with low rates thanks to us, and with four consecutive negative prints in MBA mortgage applications, the demand for mortgages is now roughly 9 percent lower compared to the last positive print on July 14th. With mortgage rates hovering around 7.5 percent, we can all expect rate sensitive borrowers to continue to sit out. Lenders everywhere are grinding away at lowering their cost per loan. Of course, part of that is beating up on vendors when ordering, putting together bundling packages, looking at employee cost (more on that below) and manufacturing cost. Pricing exceptions are looked at dollar by dollar, which is often why Lender A doesn’t care much when a branch goes to Lender B when examining Lender A’s book of business showed unprofitability. Lenders are cutting expenses on technology and services, corporate overhead, and spending money on vendors. There is little reason to believe that this will stop. (Today’s podcast can be found here and this week’s is sponsored by Richey May, a recognized leader in providing specialized advisory, audit, tax, technology and other services to the mortgage industry for almost four decades. Hear an interview with Kristin Messerli on the next generation of home ownership.) Lender and Broker Software and Services