Resources
Writing on how mortgage lending actually works.
Origination, underwriting, documents, compliance, the secondary market, and what AI can and cannot do in mortgage. Written for people who do this work. The pieces that belong to the research program are also curated under Research.
All writing
How to Evaluate a Mortgage AI Claim
Six questions that separate a checkable AI claim from an unverifiable one, with the failure modes each question is designed to surface.
7 min readMortgage intelligence and AIExplainability Is Not a Feature of AI in Mortgage. It Is the Condition of Using It.
What a reviewer must be able to reconstruct about a finding years later, and why an adverse-action notice and a QC finding are different obligations.
6 min readCompliance and regulationGovernment Lending: Where the Severity of a Defect Depends on the Quality of Your Review
FHA's defect taxonomy ties severity to what the lender knew and can show. What that means for the evidence a review has to preserve.
5 min readOrigination and underwritingEvery Handoff in a Mortgage Loses Something. The File Is What Survives.
A loan passes through six or seven teams, each working from what the last recorded. What each stage produces, and what the handoff loses.
6 min readDocuments and evidenceWhy a Mortgage File Has Fifty Documents to Establish About Twelve Facts
Dozens of documents establish a much smaller set of facts. Organising a file by fact rather than by document is what makes contradictions visible.
6 min readOrigination and underwritingWho Actually Touches a Mortgage: A Reference to the Participants
Who supplies, validates, approves and retains each record in a mortgage, and where responsibility transfers between them.
5 min readDocuments and evidenceThe Mortgage File: A Reference to the Documents and What Each One Proves
A document map: what each form proves, its key fields, the checks that apply, and the programme exceptions that change them.
5 min readCompliance and regulationMortgage Compliance and Quality Control: A Reference to the Terms
A glossary of QC and compliance terms, each tied to the framework that defines it, because the same word means different things to FHA and Fannie Mae.
7 min readCompliance and regulationThe Regulatory Framework Behind Modern Mortgage Lending, and the Part That Is a Timing Problem
Delivery versus receipt, and three different definitions of a business day. The timing requirements that a careful reader cannot verify without a system.
5 min readQuality control operationsDefect Leakage: Why the Findings That Reach an Investor Are the Ones QC Was Least Equipped to Catch
Why income and appraisal defects dominate investor findings, what that composition does and does not prove, and how to test the hypothesis.
6 min readDocuments and evidenceMortgage Quality Control Is a Validation Problem, Not an Extraction Problem
Reading a document and checking a loan file are different problems. Extraction accuracy is a prerequisite for validation, not a substitute for it.
6 min readQuality control operationsA 1.5% Defect Rate Sounds Small. The Arithmetic Says Otherwise.
A 1.50% critical defect rate against published repurchase costs, with the populations, denominators and measures kept separate.
5 min readMortgage intelligence and AIFifty Years of Mortgage Technology, and What Each Wave Left for the Reviewer
Five waves of mortgage technology since the 1970s, what each automated, and which review tasks each one left behind.
6 min readOrigination and underwritingThe Same Loan, Five Business Models: How Mortgage Institutions Actually Differ
Funding, channel, holding and servicing: four choices that make two identical loans into different businesses with different QC priorities.
5 min readSecondary market and servicingNon-QM Is Now Roughly One Loan in Ten. Nobody Agrees How Big That Is.
Bank-statement, DSCR and asset-depletion review in practice, with the market-sizing disagreement kept in a clearly qualified sidebar.
7 min readQuality control operationsThe Cost of Manual Quality Control Is Not a Line Item, Which Is Why It Never Gets Managed
A worksheet for the costs of a QC programme that never appear as a line item: rework, exception handling, coverage foregone and defects that escape.
6 min readSecondary market and servicingAfter Closing, a File Can Still Be Corrected, Within Limits
Closing does not freeze the file. What can still be corrected, reverified or appealed after delivery, and the limits on later evidence.
7 min readQuality control operationsThe Borrower Is Not in the Room When the File Is Checked
QC is described as investor protection. Several of the errors it catches are ones the borrower would otherwise carry, and never see.
5 min readCompliance and regulationFifty Sets of Rules Is the Easy Part. The Categories Themselves Are Contested.
Knowing the rule differs by state is the easy part. Recording which authority applied, from which date, and who approved that reading is the hard part.
6 min read