Change is constant, and so is MGIC. For nearly 70 years, MGIC has been the original choice for mortgage insurance. With tools, resources, and expertise to help you close more loans and manage risk. Market-tested, industry-trusted, authentically MGIC. Visit MGIC.com. I'm Clayton Collins, CEO at Housing Wire, and can be more thrilled to take the mic today on Housing Wire Daily. Logan Modashami, thank you for joining me as my guest on Housing Wire Daily. Pleasure to be here. You know, we'll get Sarah Wheeler back next week, but it's been a fun week with you, Brenna, and myself running the show. Let's rock it. Before we jump in, I want to thank our sponsor, Total Expert, for making this episode of Housing Wire Daily possible. Thank you, Total Expert. Now, Logan, let's jump into it. Today, we are launching The Gathering. So this is the Gathering Monday in a few hours. The Gathering officially kicks off. It's going to be a huge week. I want to talk more about that a little bit later, specifically about what you're going to bring from stage. But before getting to the Gathering, I think we have to address the massive news that dropped on Friday, the breaking news that came across the wire from Housing Wire, as well as CNBC and Bloomberg and everywhere else you get your financial news. The DOJ dropped the Powell probe. What does that mean, Logan? Well, you know, Trump always likes to play bully ball. But, you know, with Tillis and the Senate kind of holding Warsh as a confirmation hostage for this, he just finally had to pull the trigger. If he's serious about having Warsh get in there as soon as possible, he needs to drop this probe. This whole crazy episode, which really started kind of last year, shadow Fed president, we need emergency rate cuts, all this back and forth. That tenure will come to an end soon for Jerome Powell as the confirmation hearings will happen and Kevin Warsh will be approved. And then we start a whole new chapter with a new Fed chairman that is going to be very, very interesting from my perspective. What do you think the timeline looks like from here? When do you think the confirmation hearing will be scheduled? Do you think he, you know, Warsh gets through or we have a few more rounds of this intense questioning that we saw last week? So traditionally, you let your Fed chairman kind of get through and he's got the votes for it. So Powell's tenure, I believe, ends in May 15th. So look for, you know, Fed chairman Kevin Warsh starting from the second half of May. And we go on from there, right? It's going to be a whole new ballgame in the sense of having a Fed chairman kind of in line with what the president wants. But we talked about this in our last podcast, there's limits to what he can or can't do. But this is it for Jerome Powell, a crazy period post-COVID with all the crazy stuff that have happened that are not traditionally tied to economic cycles. But here we are. And I think it's better for him to just kind of retire and go watch Grateful Dead concerts and enjoy his life than to deal with all this drama that he's had to deal with. Yeah, because that's still on the table, right? He could stick around as a member of the voting committee, even though he's not chair, correct? He could. I just think Powell kind of made sure that he was going to hold that as his hostage thing that, hey, listen, I'll just be a Fed governor. President Trump wants more votes. He wants more people aligned with him because the voting structure really matters for the rate hikes and rate cuts. But in this light, I think Powell will just kind of move along. And even though the Lisa Cook thing is still up in the air and we have other Fed governors that might turn. I think this is a good ending for him just to move on to the next stage of his life, which will probably be a lot of public speaking. Yeah, I've been watching the Calci markets all morning on the wager of when will Kevin Warsh be confirmed as Fed chair? And it's pretty wild how the data shifted in the minutes preceding the news breaking. But now we're looking at odds right now as we're recording this, might may change by the time we drop. 2% chance of confirmation before May 1st, 82% chance of confirmation before May 15th, 96% chance before July 1st. So I mean, I guess it could drag out, but it's pretty interesting. Is it possible to actually confirm before May 15th or is the hearing on May 15th? I think they're going to vote next week. The confirmation is it's the tenure of Powell ends May 15th. So even if he gets confirmed, that's Powell's last day. So kind of just kind of think of it as the second half of May and that's when Kevin Warsh will get in and We'll start a whole new process with the Fed after that. Yeah, no, I mean, it's, you know, this is a new chair, but it doesn't change the construct of the voting governor. So it's not a guarantee of a policy change early in a Fed tenure, right? Yeah. You know, with Warsh, one of the things that, you know, I talked about on our last podcast is that he's going to be much more dovish than Powell, but there's limits to what he can do. I think if there was some real weakness in the labor market, taking it to the next stage, from low job growth to jobless claims rising. I think that's where Kevin Warsh will be more forceful as long as Trump is president in terms of trying to get everyone on board for more rate cuts in that. I think that's gonna be, you'll have a more dovish Fed chairman now, especially after the press meetings. You have a Fed chairman that has actually talked about the housing market needing assistance where Powell is kind of deflected from that. So things will be different but you still bounded by the laws of the Fed governor voting structure So it going to be a very very interesting rest of the year now with Kevin in there and what going on with the conflict in Iran and inflation and the labor data So we have a lot going on So it going to be a fun filled exciting headline day in and day out for the rest of the year We know the bond markets are very forward looking. So what do you think we're going to see in the spreads and mortgage rates coming out of, you know, immediately following this dropped DOJ probe or no impact at all? You know, kind of, we didn't see too much impact. I think there's a lot of other things that are running the 10-year yield currently, of course. I mean, I can make a case that if there was no Iranian conflict at all, the 10-year yield being between 425 to 431 looks perfectly acceptable if the jobs data isn't getting worse with inflation above target. So if you didn't have Kevin Warsh, if you didn't have the Iranian war, where the 10-year yield is at right now, you know, with inflation where it's at, it looks perfectly acceptable. So I think the question going out in the future is, hypothetically speaking, let's just say there was an end to the conflict and everyone believed it and ships were flowing. Does the 10-year yield go too much lower right now if the labor data is stabilizing? We always get to about 424 around there when we get ceasefire news. But the question is, if the jobs data is producing 30 to 60,000 jobs, is that good enough to keep the 10-year yield above 4%? But now with Kevin Warsh, when he comes in, how is he going to look at that once the conflict is over? So you're going to get a lot of interesting infighting with the Federal Reserve now, which really isn't traditionally the case. But I think you'll have more open-ended fighting between the Kevin Warsh's of the world and Austin Goolsbee or Lori Logan or Beth Hammock, which will be the first time we might see open conflict with Federal Reserve members in a bigger fashion than we're accustomed to. Yeah, and it'll be interesting to see if the communication channels look any different or the timing of meetings and guidance change it all under a new chair. I think Kevin wants to change a few things, so it'll be interesting to see what happens. It'll be interesting to see the Fed's speeches after he comes into power in that sense. But there's clearly a divide with the Fed. There's the Michelle Bowens, the Christopher Wallers, the Stephen Myron, and then Kevin Warsh versus the rest because there's more hawks than doves right now. But the hawks are kind of staying flattish in terms of not asking for higher rates at this point. We don't want to cut until we get some clarity on the war, stuff like that, which once the war is over, things will start clearing up, the clouds will kind of move away. We can get a little bit better vision on the labor market inflation and how the Fed wants to address that. But clearly, you're going to have a very pro-Trump Fed chairman who wants more rate cuts, who wants to help the housing market, but you're probably going to get someone more aggressive if the labor data gets weaker from this stage. And I think that'll be interesting to see how he's able to work with other Fed members, if that is the case. Because right now, the labor data is stabilizing, not getting worse, the things that the pet has already talked about. So it'll be interesting. If dirty data is hiding in your recruiting pipelines, databases, or partner strategies, it's quietly costing you growth. At The Gathering 2026, InGenius shows mortgage leaders how clean, masterfully aggregated data at scale supercharges recruiting and results for managers, recruiters, and loan officers. See the difference accurate data makes? Learn more at ingenius-data.com. Piggybacking on the Fed conversation, give me a glimpse into what you've seen in some of the mortgage data this week. What have we seen in purchase apps? Let's go to inventory from there. Well, purchase application data, positive 10% week to week, 12% year over year. That was kind of the trend this year. If you take away the snow data and you take away the initial war data when rates were elevating towards 6.64%, we were getting positive week to week and positive year over year, positive year over year double digits as well. We had much harder comps to show double digit growth this year than last year. So that surprised me a little bit. But if you take away the holidays, snow and the war out of the equation, this is what purchase application data kind of was going at positive week to week data, but positive year over year. We didn't actually have one negative year over year print until the war started, even with the snow data, because the snow data only impacted a few states. But we'll see. To me, it's like the sweet spot for mortgage rates over the last few years when rates get near 6%, just stay there. We've never been able to have that up until late last year and going into this year. Actually, going into this year, volatility was compressed, mortgage spreads were compressed. It was a really good, healthy backdrop on the rate side. And then the conflict happened. And then a lot of things got more wild then. But purchase application data kind of looked like what it was before the conflict. And we'll see if that continues itself going out in the future. Yeah. The stability in rates data seems to be incredibly important for consumer confidence. It seems like the consumers, the home buyer and the sellers get skittish whenever rates start changing quickly. So this trend we've seen, it's a vote of confidence for the consumer mindset. You know we were so spoiled in the last decade because we didn really have much volatility outside of 2013 when rates went from like half to 4 in a very short amount of time So people are just used to rates being more stable And then chaos happened after 2022. But what I've seen in the data, I think what most people see in the data, whenever we get now to near 6%, data get improved. And then we just have a violent reversal in rates to above 7%. And that was common all the time. And part of that was mortgage spreads. Mortgage spreads were not close to normal again, so you can have those kind of moves. But now, not the case. And I think one of the things I've made a big emphasis in trying to teach people about the spread is that when the spreads get closer to normal, we always talk about the slow dance, right, between the 10-year yield and 30-year mortgage rate. But when the spreads are normal, it's more intimate slow dancing. That means it's less volatility to the upside. So even with the war conflict, the 10-year yield got as high as 4.48, but mortgage rates never got above 6.64. The peak of my forecast this year was 6.75% just because of the spreads, and that's not war related. So I think you saw the volatility compress even with rising inflation, even with the war aspect. A lot of that has to do with the spread. So lowest mortgage rate curve going into the first half of the year, but also kind of less volatility. because in 2023, 2024, and 2025, we'd be over 7%, in some cases above 7.5%, or even in the low sevens or high sixes. We quite never got there. And now we're kind of, spreads are getting better now. So less volatility. I think a lot of people see that in the last few days, positive for everyone, right? Housing could operate better, mortgage people or real estate people can operate better when there's less volatility. And then people feel a little bit more comfortable about putting their homes on the market, you know, because they see that's where rates are at. they're comfortable with selling that house and buying it with another mortgage with rates there positive. Those are all healthy, positive outcomes for the housing market in 2026. We talk a lot about data as the anecdote to fear. If I'm an originator or an agent right now, and I'm trying to help a client be comfortable with the market, we're nervous that now's a good time to buy or list a home. What are you advising originators or agents to focus in on? What's the data that they need to be most attuned to, to help bring confidence to the transaction? Well, number one, the tracker data is designed to give the whole enchilada of what's really going on in the housing markets, but that's on the national side. Always kind of look into your own area, because of course, New Jersey is different than Louisiana. Orange County is going to be different than Minnesota. So local area is going to have different taken. That's why housing wire intelligence was created for everyone to let me teach you how housing economics work, but also get the data for your own area so you can provide that for your real estate agent or as a realtor provided for your seller, for your loan officer, provided for your buyer. Be that source. Don't let AI take this away from you. You have the ability because you will have data to your fingertips 24 seven out there. So I think that's the job is let me do the nerdy economic teaching, but the data is there, HousingWire Intelligence. Get it, you have access to stuff that people just don't have access in previous years. Yeah, I wasn't planning on doing this, but the team at HousingWire has had a little bit of an advantage. We've been in our beta instance of HousingWire Intelligence for a few months and only our team members, the exec team, I think, have seen the mobile app that we're launching this week. So if you're a HousingWire Daily listener, you're actually hearing this before anybody else. Don't tell my product team. But on video, you can see we have this brand new mobile app experience that brings news as well as HousingWire intelligence, all the data right to your phone. As an executive, I'm probably on my phone 80% of the time and desktop 20%. So mobile is critical for me. And after years of being so reliant on the Wall Street Journal app and Bloomberg app, pretty pumped to be able to bring Housing Wire to my home screen and have all the data that Logan's been referencing for years at our fingertips, not just nationally, but down in my zip code. And as a homeowner and someone who self-proclaimed spends way more time scrolling listings than I do scrolling sports scores, it's pretty exciting to have a housing wire at my fingertips right now, understand what's happening in my zip as well as nationally. Access to data and then also being able to explain it and give it some context is always the key. That's kind of been my thing for the last 15 years is try to bring context to the history. Now, not a lot of people like history. I love history, of course. And the history of housing economics for the last 84, 85 years does tell you a story. Each cycle is unique. Of course, the whole housing dynamic shifted after qualified mortgage went into play. But show the data, explain the data, give everyone confidence on what's going on. Millions and millions of people buy homes every single year. We have near 5 million home sales in 2023, 2024, 2021. We could maybe have a little bit more than that this year. There's always going to be demand there. but your access to demand and teaching people this gives you a light that, you know, you know, imagine this 20 years ago, we didn't have access like this available for the public, but use it, learn from it, be the detective, not the troll. All right, Logan, when are you taking the stage of the gathering? When's your session? I'm going to actually be on, I think Monday and Wednesday. Sarah and I are going to be doing a night podcast and then Wednesday morning I be giving my presentation Morning keynote Yeah The keynote will be a Wednesday morning My job is to explain everything that just happened because none of us had a war economic theory into 2026 And we get to test what this does to the housing market with the rates going up in a quick fashion, but not as high as it used to be. So what does the data look like now when we had a initial test to higher rates, which is, to me right now looks a lot different than what it used to be just because rates never got above 7%. And we're going to go into the whole structural dynamics of Kevin Walsh, what realistically can or can't happen. We're going to go over mortgage spreads. The confusing thing is inventory this year. Places like Florida is down year over year noticeably. Dallas and Austin are not growing inventory. So my job and what I'm going to do on Wednesday is to really talk about the housing dynamics now at what stage we are in the cycle because it's much different when inventory isn't working from savagely unhealthy low levels in 2022 to where we are now. It's kind of a normal housing market. So the structure dynamics around the economic cycle is going to be a little bit different. We're very excited because we talked about last year in mid-June that the housing market is shifting. It'll probably take six to nine months for people to get it. We're here past that nine months and now we get to visually show everyone and explain to everyone what is going on at this very second after the war conflict and what to look about in the future with a new Fed chairman. So we talked about Cal sheet markets earlier on the Fed chair. I got an idea, Logan, inspired by a poll I saw on social. There's some people out there talking about the probability of what color shirt you wear on stage. Do we need a polymarket prediction here on which color you're going to? Yeah, people throw up ideas for me. So I let the marketplace decide. I said, okay, you guys decide what color shirt it is. And, uh, I've got a lot of different answers. So I guess I got to pick one unless one really sticks out. So, I mean, I have not set up a prediction yet on poly market or Cal sheet. I've been playing around with a few, uh, as a, as a participant, but not as a, uh, as the person running one, but I might need to see if I can figure this out. We could have some, um, yeah, some interesting wagers or predictions going for next week. Just keep it out of certain traders' hands before it comes out. You know, There's always someone out there that knows ahead of time. Yeah, someone might try to work the market. Yeah, your bag's gonna get stolen out of a baggage claim to influence the outcome there. So Logan, outside of your session, what else should we be looking forward to next week? Are there any other speakers or sessions that have you excited that you're gonna be tuning in for? Well, I think having Scott Turner there and how I always talk about the gathering is that it's the one event where you get top mortgage people and top real estate people and top government officials all into one place, right? So you don't really usually have that at event. And I think it is good for the head of the HUD to basically talk to the two constituents of who he kind of served. 100%. And I think in that light, it'll be very interesting to hear what he says. You always want to hear what the new AI technology or what's going to go on with listings and see different perspective of how executives are moving in this market, both in real estate and mortgage. So that's always, all the sessions are very unique and that is very informative. And then the chart daddy is going to come in and bring some economics into the mix. So it's good. That's why I think the gatherings is always sold out. I think it's always had a good reputation that, you know, you get the best of the best and they're willing to talk. So that's a good thing. It's a funny event. I mean, my strategy for this one is to build the Davos of housing. I think Davos is such an aspirational gathering of world business leaders. And it's not just it's talk. It results in action and outcomes. And that's the vision for the gathering. When you bring together operators, capital, and policy into the same room, you actually have an opportunity to not only understand, but drive action for yourself and for the industry coming out of the event. So when you put it through the Davos housing frame, I'm ready to put on the gray suit, throw on the tie, and be as buttoned up as possible, which we do to an extent. But our audience, our community is a fun-loving group, so we have some great afternoon activities. Yeah, I don't think I could get away with a silk shirt in Davos. It's too cold up there. That's fair. Well, you know, it's CNBC commentators throw on a fur coat on top of the silk shirt. It seems to work. Maybe that's the approach. All right. HousingWire Daily listeners, thanks for tuning in. Thanks for letting me hijack the mic from Sarah Wheeler while she's got a few days off. Logan, thank you for being my guest. For those of you that are here this week at the gathering, please come say hi. One of the other reasons we love our events is we get the chance to take these digital relationships and, you know, make it a two-way conversation and meet people and shake hands in person. So I hope to see you this week at The Gathering. Logan, I'll see you soon. Yes. See you all in Austin. Can't wait. Thanks for listening to Housing Wire Daily. If you haven't already, we'd love for you to take a minute to rate the show and leave a comment. And make sure to tune in tomorrow for more news and insight. Housing Wire just launched Housing Wire Mortgage Rankings, a new performance intelligence product for the mortgage originator performance. Built on recorded transaction data and powered by a data partnership with Ingenius, it delivers a clear, standardized view of who is putting up big production across the country. This isn't based on submissions, it's real market activity. 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