The growth in 2025 was in products, not in rates

The MBA's HMDA analysis landed yesterday and it is the most useful marketing document of the week, though nobody will read it that way. Proprietary reverse mortgages jumped 118% in 2025 and took the proprietary share to 22%, while HECM volume stayed roughly flat. Redfin separately found second-home mortgages rose 4% year over year, the first annual increase in four years. And HousingWire's piece on accidental landlords cites FHFA estimates that lock-in prevented 1.33 million sales between the second quarter of 2022 and the fourth quarter of 2023 — a million-plus households who wanted to move, could not, and are now solving it some other way. Put those three together and the pattern is hard to miss: the growth in 2025 did not come from rates falling. It came from borrowers ending up in products they were not originally shopping for. Meanwhile the entire industry's content calendar is still built around a rate drop that has not arrived.

Look at the number before you write anything this week. The 30-year printed 6.82% this morning, the top of its 90-day range of 6.30% to 6.82%, up three basis points on the week and nine on the month. Rates are higher than they were a month ago, not lower, and any post that implies otherwise will be checked and disbelieved within about ninety seconds. That kills the refinance angle for anyone between 6.75% and 7.25%, which is most of your database — the math does not clear costs. It leaves you exactly two honest rate stories. Borrowers at 7.5% and above still save roughly $184 a month on a $400,000 loan, which is real money and worth a direct call rather than a post. And the government-loan gap has opened to about 45 basis points, with VA at 6.37% and FHA at 6.36% against conventional's 6.82% — roughly $119 a month on that same $400,000 loan, for borrowers who simply qualified for something better and were never shown it.

So run a product-fit audit instead of a rate campaign. Pull your closed purchase files from the last one to three years and sort them by what the borrower could have qualified for, not by what rate they got: service history that was never asked about, credit profiles that would clear FHA more cheaply than the conventional loan they took, equity-rich older borrowers who have never had anyone explain a proprietary reverse product to them, and the 2024-2025 buyers whose incomes have moved enough to make a second home realistic. This is unglamorous list work and it is why almost nobody does it, which is precisely the argument for doing it. It also survives Wednesday: whatever the Fed statement says at 2:00 p.m., a borrower in the wrong product is still in the wrong product on Thursday. One calendar note while you are in there — the House Financial Services Committee is taking written feedback on its CFPB reform discussion draft through August 21, which is worth an informed sentence if a client asks, and nothing more than that.