Hi, I’m Adam DeSanctis with the Mortgage Minute, the latest news from the Mortgage Bankers Association last Thursday, Owen Lee MBA’s 2026 Chair Elect and CEO of Success Mortgage Partners testified before the House Veterans Affairs Economic Opportunity Subcommittee at a hearing focused on lowering costs for veteran families through the VA home loan program, drawing on decades of mortgage lending experience. Owen highlighted MBA’s strong support for last year’s VA home loan program Reform Act, which created a permanent partial claim option, an important tool to help struggling borrowers stay in their homes. He also praised the VA’s Collaborative approach to implementation while emphasizing key improvements still needed. These include prioritizing solutions that keep payments stable, allowing flexibility before requiring repayment decisions and modernizing elements of the program from property standards to refinancing and documentation requirements to better fund today’s market. Owen also reinforced MBA’s position that VA funding fees should be reinvested into the program to strengthen it for veteran borrowers. The bottom line, MBA and its members will continue leading advocacy efforts to reduce costs, improve efficiency, and ensure veterans have access to the same strong loss mitigation options as other homeowners. Looking ahead, MBA will stay engaged as the VA finalizes its guidance next month and as additional legislative proposals take shape. And finally, you don’t wanna miss our upcoming national advocacy conference in DC April 14th and 15th, you’ll have the opportunity to hear from lawmakers and regulators potentially meet with your representative and senators and much more. Register today at mba.org/nac26. I hope to see you there.
Adam DeSanctis, VP, Communications at Mortgage Bankers Association
As a strategic public affairs and communications executive with nearly two decades of experience, Adam has deep expertise in strategy, management, and media relations. He is widely regarded as an expert in a variety of communications, including advocacy, brand, executive, crisis, grassroots, and social media. In his career, he has been the MBA spokesperson on a wide variety of real estate research and advocacy-related issues, promoted MBA research and advocacy efforts to financial, political, and trade industry media and on MBA’s social media channels, and secured media opportunities for MBA leadership on key real estate trends and issues, generated media coverage for MBA’s research and data on mortgage applications, credit availability, homebuilder applications, mortgage forbearance/delinquencies, commercial real estate originations, and forecasts, and other industry analysis, developed key strategic initiatives for MBA’s organizational public affairs plan, media relations and member communications support for mPower, MBA’s Opens Doors Foundation and MBA’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs.