S10:E65 | 04-11-2022 Rough Waters In The Housing Market Currently!

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In our Hot Topic this week, we have Brian Montgomery, Founding Partner at Gate House Strategies LLC, to discuss why it is taking so long to get the FHA Commissioner and other HUD nominees confirmed and why it’s been tough for first-time homebuyers for some time now.

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Rough Waters In The Housing Market Currently!

Jack Nunnery and I, my co-host, hooked up with Brian Montgomery. Normally, Jack’s out on the bay, but we hear we’re going to interview Brian. He says, “I’ll give up fishing,” to come on in and enjoy this interview, and Jack found his voice. You’ll have to read this. We’re going to have that in the second half of this show.

For those of you reading, it’s good to have you here with us. We’re going to be talking about why it is taking so to get the FHA commissioner and HUD nominees confirmed. That’s one of the things we’re talking about servicing. It’s been tough for first-time home buyers. There’s a lot of great information that Brian shared with us from his perspective.

I invited him to come onto the show because of how I heard him speak with Jack Konyk. Jack was our guest last time, so we’re bringing him back from what I heard at the Ledger One Conference in Phoenix. Anyway, good to have you here, folks. We’re proud to be a part of this Industry Syndicate. I encourage you to check out all of the shows at IndustrySyndicate.com.

Also, we want to say a special thank you to our sponsors. Starting right off with the Mortgage Bankers Association of America. The MBA does a great job at bringing us information timely and is a strong advocate for us on the hill. Get a Mortgage Action Alliance app out of your favorite online store, whether it be Apple, Google, or however you go get it, but it’s there. Download it, and have that be a part of your weekly routine. Again, be a responsible lender. Have your voice heard. They’re doing the work. All you have to do is make some clicks, and your voice goes right into the hill, right to your respective legislators.,

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Also, DW Consulting, Debbie Wemyss as well as the partners that she works with, with their help, you get your LinkedIn profile right so it tracks the right people. That’s not just for job changes. More people are going to check out LinkedIn profiles to find out if they want to work with you. Are you as experienced as you represent? It’s a great way to have your story told and get more business. A final thank you to Rob, Les, Alice, Allen, Matt, and of course, my new co-host, Jack Nunnery. It’s good to have you all with us. I appreciate it.

Welcome to the hot topic segment of the show. It is Monday, April 11th, 2022. We’re thrilled to have with us our special guest, Brian Montgomery. He is the Founding Partner and Chairman of Gate House Strategies, LLC in the DC area. He was the Former HUD Deputy Secretary. Jack and I caught up with him.

Jack normally is out fishing on a Friday afternoon, and I invited him to come in and do this. He says, “Get a chance to talk about Brian Montgomery. Are you kidding? I’ll give up fishing for an afternoon.” He came in and joined us. Jack is semi-retired. Jack, tell me what your thoughts are. Our readers are about ready to learn. I know it was a good interview.

David, I just thought that Brian touched on many topics that are germane to the environment in that we find ourselves in. Brian has been well-connected through the halls of Congress and on the hill and the policymakers, and it is insightful when you get an opportunity to spend some time with somebody that has been in policy formation himself and certainly has influenced policymakers.

He did it on a bipartisan basis, which you’re going to learn about in this interview. Let’s get into the interview that Jack and I did with Brian. Brian, anyone reading this blog knows who you are. You’re a veteran in our industry, been a leader for many years with all the positions you’ve held of significance and influence. For those that are new to our industry, we have a lot of them tuning in to this show. Would you give a little bit of a background of how you got to where you’re at now, a little bit of your journey, and your pathways?

Thank you for having me on. David and Jack. It’s a bit of a long winding road, but I will spare you the minutia of it. Now that I’m out of my government service, I’m a Cofounder and Partner at Gatehouse Strategies. We’re focused on all things mortgage-related risk, business development, compliance, and regulatory issues, you name it. We also have a focus on multifamily in subsidized housing and community development as well. A lot of folks know from my government service. I’m the immediate past Deputy Secretary of a position I held. Concurrently, by the way, was being Commissioner of the FHA and Assistant Secretary for Housing.

I used to call it three titles of one paycheck. The taxpayers were getting their money’s worth out of me. The FHA Commissioner is a job I had twice because I’m the only guy dumb enough to do the job, not just once, but twice under three different presidents, Bush, Obama, and Trump. I was home over into the Obama Administration for six months running the FHA. In ’09, there’s a lot going on, as we all know. I enjoyed the housing field, working with folks. It’s one of the issues in Washington DC I found that it’s easier to find consensus and get bipartisanship, which I like. That’s quite frankly the way you get stuff done.

It’s hard to get it done, especially when you look at where the environment is now. You’ve been there. Let’s talk about the environment in Washington, DC. It seems to be tough. Having been through the process three times, let’s start with this question. Why is it taking so long to get the FHA commissioner and HUD nominees confirmed?

In the old days, a new administration, a President would get their nominee. It didn’t matter if it was a HUD, Labor, or Commerce. Now the path for a Cabinet Secretary Nominee or Deputy Secretary might be a little more difficult. Typically, assistant secretary’s commissioners, unless they were contentious, largely got through unanimous consent.

Those days are in our rear-view mirror. Now, both parties are guilty of it. It’s a battle in the trenches even to get assistant secretaries, commissioners, and you name it, confirmed. Took me seven months to get confirmed as FHA Commissioner the second time. The first time, it took about two and a half months. The first time, I got through unanimous consent.

The second time, even though it took seven months, when I got a vote, I got 73 which means I got about half Democrats. People would say, “Why did it take so long to get confirmed if you get good bipartisan support?” This goes around. It’s gotten even more contentious, and I decided to publicly support Julia Gordon. She’s enormously qualified. To be clear, she supported me when I was up years ago.

They need someone of her experience and the Housing Policy hands-on experience. She worked at FHFA and at the Center for Responsible Lending. They need her in the seat. We had a little movement earlier and they got her vote out of committee and took the Vice President of the United States to break the tie. Unfortunately, she didn’t get at least some Republican support. She’s hopefully, on a path to get in there in the next few weeks.

We certainly do hope so. We’ve been impressed with her when I’ve heard her speak. She’s very qualified. Jack, let’s get over to you.

Thanks, David. Brian, it’s an amazing journey that you’ve been on. Speaking of tough environments, we’re getting into seemingly rougher waters in the housing market. It’s been challenging for the first-time home buyers for some time now, given unrelenting home price appreciation and an affordable housing supply shortage.

It’s getting even tougher with rates going up along with prices and supply shortage. What is FHA doing to assist first-time minority and LMI borrowers and what can they be doing? Better yet Brian, how’s the rest of Washington viewing the housing market and will there be any innovative efforts to assist younger first-time home buyers, many of them minorities?

As we know, the FHA has been the hallmark of not just first-time home buyers, but minority home buyers as well. Every year, 35%, give or take, a few of the FHA endorsements are through minorities, which by the way is almost two times what the GSEs are. The GSE is around 17% or 18. Within that construct, you’re dealing with a housing market that is very short on inventory, especially starting home inventory, and we know there’s a lot of reasons for that.

Some would say you could place some of that blame at the local level. Some of the regulatory barriers and hurdles that communities have put up particularly on each coast, particularly in California. Before you even turn a shovel of dirt, you’ve got $100,000 in fees racked up for set-asides and things of that nature. There’s not much Washington can do in that space, and California’s trying to address some of that. You have an imbalance where housing is just getting out of reach for many families.

Given the cost to manufacture a loan, given the cost to build housing with construction costs, building material, labor costs, and everything going up, people aren’t building in that entry-home level. You’re starting to see a rise in condominiums. The FHA updated their rules years ago to make that a little easier for condominiums. In terms of innovation, you’ve got innovation going on, but you also have an aggressive enforcement backdrop.

You’ve got a CFPB Director that’s focused on turning up the heat on the servicers. Many of whom have done a tremendous job trying to help their borrowers. Hundreds of thousands of them are still in COVID-19 forbearance. Many of them have rolled off, but none of our folks who work in industries that were greatly impacted by the pandemic and still haven’t fully recovered.

You’ve got to back up the rising interest rates. You got a tough starter home inventory, both new and existing. You’ve got a higher interest rate environment, a shortage of inventory. It’s a delicate balance. I would hope as FHA, the GSEs, and the housing policymakers in town understand that there are some parts of the backdrop that need to change to break the calculus a little bit.

Housing Market: As FHA and the GSC, and housing policymakers in this town understand that there are some parts of the backdrop that need to change to break the calculus.

You brought up the headwinds that the start-up home marketer or anyone building is. I came back from the TMC Conference in Miami. The President and CEO of the Home Builders Association said that in California, that 50% of the price of loans is made up of regulation to build a new home. That’s just astounding. Any comments to that? Do you see anything easing on that?

It manifests itself in deleterious ways. Part of that is you’ve seen a rise in homelessness. By the way, it’s not chronically homeless. A lot of folks don’t have anywhere to live. We all know for years. We’ve all been to the Los Angeles area many times, too. People kept moving further out. Even being way out in Inland Empire, Rancho Cucamonga, and San Bernardino, you’re two hours from downtown. The housing there is still way out of reach for most families. Where does it stop?

That is a great question. I’d love to find someone if could give us an answer in that. Let’s turn to the servicing side of the business, Brian. CFPB led by Director Chopra has been vocal in doing so on social media on a number of lending issues, but he seems to have the mortgage servicers in his sites. It would appear servicers have done a lot to help people get through this crisis thus far.

They’re keeping people in their homes, consistent with the government forbearance and foreclosure policies. Nevertheless, some would say they have done a good job. That seems fair, but now the environment seems fraught with risk for servicers. What is going on here? What do servicers need to be thinking about and doing about all this to stay out of the line of fire?

There’s one big difference between the environment and servicers now versus what they were in ‘08, ‘09, ‘10, and ’11. A pandemic is no one’s fault. It’s not the borrower’s fault nor the lender’s fault. It’s not the servicer’s fault. It impacted all of us in ways we’re extremely familiar with. I was running the FHA at the time, and we’re talking to the CFPB and the FHFA almost every day.

Housing Market: There’s one big difference between the environment services are in today versus what they were in ‘08, a pandemic. That’s no one’s fault. And it impacted all of us in ways we’re extremely familiar with.

We’re talking to the lending community, the servicing community, the long-income housing advocates, the community developments, and mayors. We’re talking to them daily, weekly, working with them. We’re collaborating. There was a sense that we were all in this together, and we’re all trying to help the citizens of this country. We’re all trying to help homeowners or those less fortunate who live in subsidized housing. The only way we did that was by working together.

I don’t know what it is in this administration and I try to be open-minded about it. It’s almost like what they can do to be contentious about many things. Even before they got into office, some of their designees, when they weren’t even nominated yet, were already threatening servicers. I’m going, “What have they done this go around?”

There’s plenty of blame to go around several years ago. They morphed himself overnight in totally remote operations like everybody else. Quite frankly, most of them did a pretty darn good job, and they have no interest in seeing a borrower fail. That’s costly for the borrower. Certainly, it’s costly for them. I don’t understand the backdrop and the need to be contentious.

I haven’t put more demands on an industry and I’m just talking about servicing. They can throw rocks at whoever else they want that’s doing a lot they can to help borrowers who are in difficult circumstances. Continue to reach out to borrowers. Knock on their doors, and then they’re all doing this. Maybe some of these regulators need to go spend a little time. Some of these servicers and companies that are going out, knocking on doors, saying, ” I’m not here to take your home. I’m here to help you.” The family’s already out there.

That would be so good when we’re advising companies to say, “When was the last time the executive leadership team went out to sit and do the jobs?” That’s one of the things I love about Southwest Airlines. They make the executives go out and get down inside the bill of the airplanes and load the luggage. We could carry that to DC. What can they do or should they do right now in light of the assaults?

The best thing that they can do if they want to help their clients and customers and the loan to succeed, they follow the guidelines for the GSEs from FHA. The best thing they do is have their teams keep focused, keep their head down on helping customers, let other people fight the battle, whether it’s a trade group or whatever. You look at some of the surveys out there. There are always mistakes. There are all these things that follow through the cracks.

As we know, there’s a lot of friction in this industry. There’s a lot of moving parts around. By and large, I’ve worked very closely with many services, some of the biggest ones out there for years. They’re executives, even mid-level management and people down in the trenches. They want to get it right, and there’s a part of DC up here that assumes the worst of intentions.

Brian, let’s stay on the theme of enforcement. HUD and the Justice Department worked hard to bring some sanity to the use of the False Claims Act to pursue lenders via a memorandum of understanding signed in 2019. I understand you were very involved in that agreement. Can you explain how that came about? Is the memorandum of understanding enforced and working? Can you talk a little bit about that process and if we might see the return of the False Claim Act?

It’s never gone away in the pure sense of the word. I remind people that False Claim Act has been around since the Civil War which, as we all know, was used to go after rather less than honorable people selling diseased meat or sick horses to the Union Army. Context of FHA, yes. We worked very hard to bring a little sanity to the process. Certainly, the Justice Department and US attorneys have a big say in this thing, we were involved in some of those cases early on, and people know my view on this.

It’s one thing to have pride of misrepresentation. It’s another thing to have clerical administrative errors. The sad ripple effect of all this was that the largest depositories walked away from the FHA Program. That’s why we worked hard to bring a little sanity to the process. That’s why we updated the loan level search and the annual search. The icing on the cake was the MOU of the Justice Department. By the way, it’s not easy to get the Justice Department to reorient their thinking on things.

It's one thing to have fraud and misrepresentation. It's another thing to have clerical and administrative errors. Click To Tweet

Certainly, something as big as the False Claims Act, but our General Counsel at the time, Paul Compton, and Secretary Carson, was working hard with Attorney General Barr. I believe it was October or November 2019. We were able to finalize the MOU, which is put into the US Attorney’s manual, which they called the Justice Manual.

Last time I looked, it’s still there, and essentially saying, “Justice Department, either a US attorney or main justice civil, if you’re going to pursue a False Claims Act, you need to do so in consort with working with the FHA.” The beauty of this is having a body like a Mortgagee Review Board, which is made up of the Senate confirmed leadership of HUD.

Therefore, you’re not putting that decision burden on one individual, either the FHA Commissioner or the Secretary. You now have a governing body that can determine, “Does this rise to the level of the false claim, or is this something else that FHA can pursue on its own to take action?” They don’t want to tolerate people that don’t follow their rules or worse yet, claim to have gotten religion around some enforcement action and turn around and do the same thing all over again. That’s a big jump to go from that to the False Claims Act. I hope that cooler heads prevail and we were able to get the support of some of the consumer groups to get that MOU done, so hopefully, it endures.

While you’re hopeful uncertain, based on the climate we’re in, any predictions on that at this point? What would you say the lenders looking at?

It would be hard to unwind a common-sense policy that says, “We are going to bring this being potential False Claims Act to the HUD Mortgagee Review Board.” Note I said HUD, not FHA because it’s made up of HUD leadership. It’d be hard to say that’s not a fair process. You’d have to take some convincing to tell people, “That doesn’t work.” Of course, it works, and I hope that part of it endures.

I come back to the bipartisanship. You are able to amazingly do through your leadership there, and that’s so significant. We talked about forbearance and many have come off and have been able to resume payments either they have the income or even receive modification including the use of the partial claim. Looking at the challenges around those impacted by COVID and still struggling from the loss of income, how will servicers be able to assist these borrowers going forward, recognizing many are still in industries that are recovering from the pandemic, including hospitality, travel, and lodging?

I’m going back to March and February of 2020. We put a lot of policies into place recognizing that people didn’t want complete strangers in their house anymore. It was a learning process through it. Luckily, we had a lot of experience dealing with natural disasters, and hurricanes. Those are localized or regionalized. You may get 3 or 4 states, never 50. Including territories or and others, it gets you up to 57 or so. You make improvements to the loss mitigation, the things such as a partial claim and all that.

Early on, this administration is tough. You still don’t have people in the seats that you need filled. To their credit, they jumped on this pretty quickly and rolled out some improvements and some changes like we had done years before. They knew that this was an issue because by large disproportion, a number of the folks in forbearance then, and even still now, not surprisingly, our FHA borrowers, as you mentioned, are in industries that are still impacted by COVID-19.

They’re continuing to manage that fairly well. The big issue will be how this homeowner’s assistance fund plays out. Treasury created the program and left it to the state HFA. By the way, that’s a big job to do for an agency, whether it’s Texas, California, Arizona, or New Mexico, that already has a day job. While you’re at it, go stand up a de novo program. Here’s $900 million to go help homeowners. A lot of states brought in contractors. It’s a naturally slow process to stand up. I’m not faulting the states by any stretch, but that program’s just getting up and running now in most states.

Hopefully, that $10 billion pot of money will go to help those low modern-income borrowers, especially those that have been impacted by job laws, either unemployment or underemployment. It’ll help stave off till they can get back on their feed and COVID will get a little larger in our rear-view mirror, and we’ll get to a better place here sooner rather than later.

COVID will get a little larger in our rearview mirror, and we'll hopefully get to a better place here sooner rather than later. Click To Tweet

Are we seeing any success from that program? I’m speaking about the Homeowner’s Assistance Fund.

It is still so young. The NCSHA posts data on their website, talking about the states and where they stand. It’s doing what it’s intended to do, but it’s going to take a few more weeks, even months before we see the impact on it.

Brian, going back to FHA, the pandemic highlighted the importance of modernization, digital solutions, and the integration of technology that works well with one another. Where does FHA’s IT modernization stand?

I had this job twice. Back when I had it in ’05 to ’09, I use to tell folks that we need to modernize FHA’s technology and bring it into the late ’90s. I still said that years later when I said, ” I’d settled for the late ’90s, even though it was now 2018 instead of 2008.” Certainly, it wasn’t my good luck, coming out of the government shutdown in February of 2019, the Congress said, “We heard you. We’re going to give you $20 million as a down payment on this modernization.” We had a great team, largely run by career staff, and a great contractor, a woman-owned business.

They worked real hard through 2019 and early 2020. As the pandemic was taking hold, FHA rolled out the electronic submission of planes, which prior to that had been a paper-intensive process. Can you imagine with COVID and all that and having to get those claims in via paper? There’s been other improvements to the program, not just in single-family and multifamily and also in the office of Native American programs. They’re all buying programs. There are other modules rolling online and the solution is called Catalyst. The new administration can go whatever direction they want. They do understand that there’s certainly a need for modernization. They continue to roll up things relative to improving FHA systems.

The big part of it was digitizing everything and even still, a lot of the systems run on mainframes. They are reliable, don’t get me wrong, but they’re costly to maintain. They’re hard-coded. We took a page from what Fannie Mae has done and went to a heavy data-centric architecture, moving away from paper, for example, which is big. FHA simply generates a lot of paper. Anyway, this administration can go in whatever direction they want, but the industry creates groups and get behind the modernization effort. Given the great work Fannie and Freddie done in that area, they don’t want FHA to be the weakest link in that chain.

How is the FHA fund overall doing? How is that looking at this point?

It looks tremendous. To be clear, the value is placed in home price appreciation which we’ve been very much the benefactor of. We left the administration with a positive economic value of about $75 billion. That number is now up to about $100 billion. Who would’ve ever thought the FHA would have an economic value 2X the GSEs? I won’t go down the path of what the GSEs had to do with that respect, but their situations dramatically improved as well. The fund’s doing well. The capital ratio is way above its statutory minimum. It’s up over 8% now.

Housing Market: The value is placed in home price appreciation.

We had put some improvements in going back years ago to get the reverse mortgage program sounder footing between Dana Wade and me and Lynn Wolff, including the better use of appraisals. We thought FHA had been subject to some appraisal misrepresentation years ago. Say that subject for another day. That program went from a minus $19 billion economic value to a minus $9 billion economic to minus $700 million now to a positive number in the course of a few years. That program, too, is starting to see more uptake. Certainly, it has over the last few years since COVID.

The President’s Appraisal Task Force came out with a report. What are some of your thoughts on the Pave recommendations released?

I’m sure they had the best intentions when they put this task force together. We’d all agree, it’s a part of our industry that needs some help and work. I was concerned that there would seem to be very little representation of people on the task force that worked in this industry day-to-day, and not just the industry itself, which did have representation from the subcommittee. How much did lender services title companies have input on this?

I don’t know that they have that much. Again, taking them at good intentions. They put out some things that people are still looking at, letting it soak in, and we’ll see where it goes. The industry out there and trade groups thank the task force for their efforts, the devil’s going to be in the details. Now, what do we do? Is this going to be through rule-making? Do you want legislation? I would be a little leery of a Washington DC-driven appraisal policy.

I would be leery of it too.

That concerns me a lot. That doesn’t mean there is room for improvement. As you could tell, I like the word collaborative. I hope this is a collaborative process going forward.

You brought that about. When you look back, why do you think you were so successful at bringing both bipartisanships to the table and getting things done that others seem to struggle with before that? Is it a collaboration? How did you pull that off and what advice would you have to the new group coming in?

I’m an old guy now. Even when I was Commissioner the first time, the housing market was doing good until it wasn’t. FHA had fallen down. Our market share in ’05 was at 2.5%. FHA was getting marginalized. I came with the idea we needed to get FHA back in the game, not compete. We will with the private MIs, but certainly get our market share above 2.5%, which most economists would say, “It seems a little low.” Regardless, I talked to the White House and to the Republicans up on the hill, and they said, “If you want to get some time, you got to go get Barney Frank and Maxine Waters.” I said, “I can go do that.”

I went and met with them. The House side, certainly on the Senate side, met with Senator Patty Murray was on senate banking, and said, “This is the FHA Modernization Bill we want to get done.” They were probably a little suspicious at first. I remember when I talked to Maxine Waters, I told her, “In the year 2000, we did $5,000 or so FHA loans in your district.” These numbers may be a little off, because it’s been a while.

This is 2006 when I’m talking to her. I said, “What do you think we did last year?” She looked at me and went, “I don’t know.” I said, “34.” She goes, “3,400?” I go, “No, 34.” She said, “We got to do something about that.” I said, “We need help on the loan limits.” I said, “We barely did six out of the loans in the State of California in 2006.” She goes, “That doesn’t seem fair.” I said, “You’re our most populous state.” Your darn right isn’t fair.

I know some folks take a stronger view. They want to either be way to the left or way to the right. You don’t get anything done and if I can get half of what I want, you’ll never get all of it. To me, that’s how you get stuff done in Washington DC. I also learned to never be surprised by what you can get just by asking, “Do you want to do this?” “What do you think?” ” This is what I think.” “That’s a little different than what I think.” “Let’s figure out how we can work together.”

Never be surprised by what you can get just by asking. Click To Tweet

I’ll never forget the time I had just finished a Fox interview in New York. My cell phone rang. It was one of Barney Frank’s staff calling and he says, “Representative Frank would like to meet with you. Can you come down to DC? You’re in New York?” I said, “Sure.” I called one of the Washington DC bureau correspondents of Fox. I said, “Is this a good idea?” He says, “Dave, I recommend it because when the lights go off, cameras go away.”

“He’s a very reasonable man and you can sit down and talk with these guys. Don’t be moved by the rhetoric you see on TV,” which goes to what’s going on by the MBA. We have the upcoming initiative where everyone’s coming into town for the advocacy and we meet with everyone. I can’t stress how important that is. No one knows that better than you.

I’d be happy to help if asked. I let Barney Frank put his politics into society well. He cared deeply about the issue. If you’re emotionally invested in something, like I was and we were, then you can work with people. My first FHA Modernization Bill sadly died in the Senate, but we got through the house by a vote of 415. That’s almost like renaming a post office. You don’t get margins that big. I’m writing several books, and one of them is how to get stuff done in Washington, DC. I hope to get it out here.

That is such an amazing amount of wisdom that could be shared. We had gridlock. We could use that wisdom in there. Brian, one of the books I hope you’re writing is your experience under George W’s administration when you rode around an Air Force One after 9/11. It’s one of the most compelling and touching stories I’ve ever heard anyone tell. One of my favorite parts was you said, “I still have the shoes when I walked around the World Trade Center that has the dust on it. It was like sacred. I took those shoes off and put them in a bag and I’ve saved those because it still has the dust on that.” Do I recall that correctly?

100% correctly. Also, my FEMA jacket and I didn’t work for FEMA but someone says, “It’s raining. Here’s an extra FEMA jacket.” We had to wear hard ass. I don’t know what happened to my hard hat. For several days, I tried to clean my shoes that I wore. The day that we went up there was September 14th, 2011. Bush went to ground zero and I was with them. I couldn’t make myself to clean my shoes. About a week later, I’m talking to a couple of colleagues on the White House. We were at the White House that were also with me that day, and they were talking about not being able to clean the shoes.

It’s like there was just something sacred about them. I stopped at a Container Store on the way home. I went home and wrapped the shoes in a plastic bag. I put them in a container from the Container Store, wrapping in duct tape and haven’t touched them since. I still have them. There was a range of emotions that day, but the one that stuck with me the most, and I’m sure for both of you, was the amazement that you have people that are first responders.

They run into danger while the rest of us are running out. It was a long week. I was with President Bush on 9/11. I was at the Pentagon twice the next day, including early in the morning to go survey it before President Bush went over there. I was at the National Cathedral that Friday and then 10 feet away from him at ground zero. I got maybe ten hours of sleep that whole week. I was a lucky one. Many people who sadly had no idea that morning when they woke up the horror they’d be facing. I’m sure we all have a connection with someone that was impacted. Hopefully, we won’t ever see something like that again.

I certainly do hope not. Thank you so much for your years of service to our industry. Jack, I’ll let you wrap up the interview.

Brian, David mentioned in the introduction that you’re the Chairman of Gatehouse Strategies. What have you been doing since you left HUD? What is Gate Housing doing in this market and how does that fit into all of this, whether it’s affordable housing challenges, origination, servicing, and technology?

I walked out of the HUD building and said, “I’m going to take a little time off,” which I did. My dad, may he rest in peace, was 83. I don’t know if I’m going to go that long. I don’t know that I’ll ever retire. I did take a little time off, and then we launched Gatehouse Strategies with some colleagues who all of you know that worked at Fannie, Freddie, HUD, and FHA. We had this idea that servicers and lenders would need help getting through everything facing them with COVID-19 forbearance, and we could help them and property disposition companies. Within that company, we also do affordable housing, working with communities, and public housing authorities.

We have the Former Assistant Secretary at HUD as one of the partners. We’ve been busy. A lot of people have reached out to us. A lot of technology companies, too. That space is moving fast. We hosted a dinner here in DC. We’re getting a little back to normal. Let’s get some of the trade groups. Let’s get some of the leaders in housing, and let’s go have a nice dinner somewhere. It was good to get everybody together and do networking and discussing of housing issues. We’re going to do more of those going forward.

We’re so grateful for your years of service and what you’re still doing inside of this very complex industry of ours. You touched on technology. Are we going to continue to see new levels of innovation? I’d like to get your insights and share that with our readers. Where do you think technology is going?

There’s a lot of things that technology can continue to do in this industry. You hear about blockchain, AI, machine learning, and robotics processing automation, which we deployed at HUD. There’s a role for AI in this industry. I understand, you want to avoid some algorithms that might disproportionately impact vulnerable groups. To the point, let’s assume the best of intentions.

Let’s don’t stifle innovation. Let’s see what is developed. This industry needs to make changes, and I have every bit of confidence so they can make those changes. We don’t want to create an environment where people are afraid to innovate for fear of some heavy-handed enforcement on something they haven’t even created. Let’s work collaboratively to build the technology. Let’s see how the technology works, and we can’t make changes if we need to.

Housing Market: Let’s not stifle innovation. Let’s see what is developed. To this degree, this industry needs to make changes, and we can make those changes.

I encourage anyone reading this message to reach out to Brian and Gatehouse Strategies to get guidance on this. There’s certainly no one that has a better perspective on how to develop technology that threads that needle, providing valuable services while still being within the guidelines of being compliant.

Brian, thanks so much for taking on. Jack, thank you so much for joining me in this interview. It’s been delightful. I appreciate you so much, Brian, and I’m glad you’re planning to stick around for a long time. I’m still going strong. I have no plans. My oldest client is Jack Guttentag. He’s 98 years old, still going strong, a former Professor at Wharton on Economics. If he’s still going, we got some runway ahead of us. We can keep going for a while, sir.

We do. Thank you again, David, Jack. I enjoyed it and I hope to see you soon down the road at a conference.

I look forward to it. Thank you so much.

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Jack, that was a special interview. I enjoyed that. You did a great job adding in and joining me on that interview. Folks, that wrap up this week’s interview. You can go check out Brian’s website and his background. I encourage you to do it. The part about 9/11 touched my heart. When he talks about it, there’s so much passion in what he experienced that day. I can’t wait for his memoirs to come out.

To be at ground zero three days after the tragic event must have been very emotionally moving.

It’s got to be. It was a good interview. I appreciate you participating in it. Folks, we thank you so much for sharing this interview with your colleagues. This is one of those important ones that everyone read, both this one and the one we did last. I would like to think every one of our episodes is important and should be shared. At least we believe it is, and it is.

We have a growing reader base, and we’re so grateful because you, our readers, have shared this with many of your colleagues. I encourage you to continue to do so. Next time, we’ve got Troy Anderson with Finastra coming on. I’m getting to know Troy real well. This guy has got some depth of lending experience along with technology. You’re going to enjoy this interview as we talk more about where technology is heading. It is appropriate, seeing as the MBA Tech Conference is going on.

I want to say a special thank you to our sponsors again, Finastra, Lenders One, Mobility MMI, Modex, the MBA, Knowledge Coop, The Mortgage Collaborative, Snapdocs, SuccessKit, Lenders Toolkit, Total Expert, FormFree, and SimpleNexus. I appreciate you all for being here. Share this show. We appreciate you. Have a great week, everyone. I look forward to having you back here next time.

S10:E65 | 04-11-2022 Rough Waters In The Housing Market Currently!

Rough Waters In The Housing Market Currently!

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