The announcement follows a leave of absence in which Ginnie Mae President Joe Gormley helped cover the Federal Housing Admission Commissioner’s responsibilities.

The companies now anticipate generating around $14 billion in annual origination volume, making them one of the biggest lenders in the country.

A credit union service organization is buying the division, which includes mortgage services provider QRL, while the seller repositions its home loan business.

President Donald Trump said his administration is still considering a public offering of shares in mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics Friday reported that the economy added 172,000 jobs in May and revised March and April’s employment upward, making the Federal Reserve less likely to cut interest rates to support the labor market in the near term.

At Least It Didn’t Get Much Worse After The Initial Rout

If you had to find something reassuring to say about the bond market today, it would be that there wasn’t much selling after 9am ET. Unfortunately, there was a whole lot of selling in the prior 30 minutes. Try as they might, analysts couldn’t find any obvious holes in the strong picture painted by the jobs report. Stocks got completely destroyed as well–evidence of the jump in Fed rate hike expectations adding to a tech correction that was already underway. An Iran war peace deal remains the biggest market moving prospect on the horizon, but traders will be a bit more interested in labor market data going forward.

Econ Data / Events

Non Farm Payrolls (May)

172K vs 85K f’cast, 115K prev

Participation Rate (May)

61.8% vs — f’cast, 61.8% prev

Unemployment rate mm (May)

4.3% vs 4.3% f’cast, 4.3% prev

Market Movement Recap

08:38 AM Big selling after jobs report. MBS down 3/8ths and 10yr up 5.7bps at 4.533

10:46 AM MBS down 18 ticks (.56) and 10yr up 6.5bps at 4.541

04:27 PM MBS down just over half a point and 10yr up 6.2bps at 4.539

Mortgage applications eased again last week even as borrowing costs moved lower, suggesting that modest rate relief was not enough to bring borrowers back in force. The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) reported a 2.5% decrease in total application volume on a seasonally adjusted basis for the week ending May 29. The decline was led by refinance activity, which slipped 2% from the previous week. Refinance demand remained 20% higher than the same period one year ago, however, underscoring that activity is still running above 2025’s pace even as it softens week to week. Purchase demand also pulled back, though the move was more modest. The seasonally adjusted Purchase Index fell 3% week over week and was still 7% above year-ago levels. The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate decreased to 6.57% from 6.65%, but the drop was not enough to spark a meaningful pickup in demand. MBA’s Joel Kan said easing energy prices tied to developments in the Middle East helped push rates slightly lower, though “the retreat in rates… did not lead to an increase in mortgage applications.” Kan added that purchase applications were still ahead of last year’s pace, but were at their slowest weekly level since April, while refinance activity was at its weakest since last June. He also noted that the 30-year fixed rate eased to 6.57%, while the 5-year ARM rate edged higher, reflecting a flattening yield curve.

Over the past three months, mortgage rate movement has been driven primarily by developments in the Iran war. It’s not that war, itself, is a consideration, but rather the implications for fuel prices and inflation. Bonds care deeply about inflation and interest rates are based directly on bonds. When inflation isn’t raging (or at the risk of raging), rates/bonds spend most of their time thinking about the economy. Lately, the data has been even-keeled enough that it hasn’t had enough of an impact to override the war’s inflation-related volatility, but today was an exception. The jobs report not only crushed expectations, but it revised the past 2 reports sharply higher as well. The net effect is that the labor market looks more like it’s finding its footing (possibly even accelerating) and less like it is still in the downtrend that characterized the post-covid normalization.  If all that was confusing, here’s the simple version. More people got jobs than expected and the market didn’t like it because it removes any argument in favor of the Fed cutting rates. Fed rates don’t equal mortgage rates, but Fed rate expectations for the future cause mortgage rate movement in the present (and Treasury movement, and stock market movement, etc.).  On a bright note, even after today’s rout, the average lender remains under the highs seen on May 19th. The Iran war is still the most important input for rates, and a confirmed peace deal would still provide relief. 

Buzz has been growing around the labor market for the past several months, but today’s jobs report went the extra mile to make it official. The job market is officially re-accelerating. Actually, the better claim would be that the jobs market is simply attempting to level off after a very long post-covid normalization. Most of today’s charts show that quite well. 
Payrolls surged to 172k vs an 85k forecast. The previous report was revised up to 179k from 115k. The unemployment rate held steady at a historically low 4.3% and dropped modestly on an unrounded basis. Volatility in the payroll count has been higher since Fall 2025. This is also apparent in the charts and it can be partially (maybe fully?) explained by the ongoing drop in survey response rates, both for consumers businesses (note the BLS data on response rates only runs through Jan/Feb).
Meanwhile, the bond market left no doubt that it is more than willing to react to econ data if that data is important enough. 10yr yields are up 5.5bps instantly and MBS are down almost half a point.

Today we’re going to learn about the facts of life. Trivia-loving basketball facts’ fans know that this is the first time the NY Knicks have led in the finals since the night of OJ’s White Bronco car chase. Homeowner’s insurance has become the “you can’t avoid it and you can’t afford it” fact of life for some homeowners in some areas. Rate is selling yoga pants. The increase in credit union’s mortgage activities is a fact and unmistakable, and you can bet CUs will continue to press their “resi” lending advantages. Lastly, and it’s a fact that people in our biz enjoy following money around, every time someone in Europe taps a card at a cafe in Lyon or a pharmacy in Munich, the transaction data leaves the continent. The data flows through servers in the United States, is processed by Visa or Mastercard, and then goes back to Europe. The money moves but the data stays somewhere in America. We’re talking about $24 trillion in annual transaction volume through those two networks. Card payments represent 56 percent of all cashless transactions in the EU. Virtually none of it runs on European infrastructure! (Today’s podcast can be found here and this week’s ‘casts are sponsored by Experian and the Experian Verify Hub. The platform brings manual submissions in-house and consolidates post-submission activities into a single environment, aiming to provide more streamlined access, faster insights, and a more cohesive user experience. Today’s has an interview with MeridianLink’s Larry Katz on how to simplify the complexity behind lending while empowering financial institutions to focus on what matters most: the people and communities they serve.)