Mortgage “Amusings” for long form readers
Before Elizabeth Warren sounded alarms about the dangers of consumer finance in the US which led to the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and the vast array of regulations that “protect” consumers from those evils, Ralph Nader was the most famous person shouting from the mountaintops about the need for government regulation to protect consumers from harmful products Those sold by Dan Akroyd’s Irwin Mainway in an old Saturday Night Live skit come to mind.
Nader, at a spry 92 years old, is still railing about government regulation, but he now sees absurdity in regulatory restrictions instead of the answers to public safety problems:
ok, you get the point…. Setting aside his unsubstantiated assertion that hummus is a “vegetable”,[2] the irony of a Ralph Nader tweet complaining about the enforcement of public safety regulations against him personally is quite precious. I imagine Elizabeth Warren will post similar tweets if she applies for a mortgage loan when her Senate career is over.[3]
CFPB as inspiration?
Anyway, for those of you who enjoy reading my long form written work seeking information and amusement (footnote fans, I know why you are loyal readers), my apologies for taking a few weeks longer than my usual interval between Musing editions. I tend to be much more prolific and cynically insightful when the CFPB is busy with a misguided, illiberal, and occasionally tyrannical regulatory and enforcement agenda. But CFPB isn’t doing much right now to inspire my typically overwrought and agonized Braveheart-“ish” cries for “freedom!”.
In fact, CFPB is presently doing almost nothing other than asking for comments on a bunch of deregulatory efforts (which I mostly applaud).[4] So, I haven’t had a lot to spur my writing and this odd edition leaning heavy on amusement is what you get. Even jealousy against AI for its ability to instantly synthesize massive amounts of data into seemingly confident and even eloquent written wisdom is an unsatisfying writing motivator for this mortgage industry blogger.
Frankly, I should just be grateful[5] for, at least temporarily, winning my arguments with some of CFPB’s worst policy and enforcement efforts,[6] yet here I sit, chafing at a lack of muse like an oyster pining for a grain of sand to create a pearl.
Poetic justice?
The need for an agonist to inspire writing is a common theme of my favorite poet, W.B. Yeats.[7] Yeats, too, got a little cranky[8] in his old age. In 1933, at the ripe old age of 68, Yeats wrote the poem The Spur,
“YOU think it horrible that lust and rage
Should dance attention upon my old age;
They were not such a plague when I was young;
What else have I to spur me into song?”
Amen, brother.
But enough of irony, writer’s block problems, CFPB tyranny, veiled complaints about the loss of interest in reading and written work, or any other excuse. I will not allow (out)rage against the government to be my only muse.[9] I’ll try to find other stuff to write about and not argue with success on policy, but truth be told, if you crave better Mortgage Musings, well, we might have to wait for a new CFPB Director.
Market control battles
Meanwhile, I’ve sort of been sitting back eating popcorn watching some of the big real estate companies like Compass and Zillow battle each other in “pot calling the kettle black” proxy wars over who controls the listing funnel and consumer data and the role of the Multiple Listing Services (MLS) in that debate.
Compass (and some other big real estate companies) want to “preview” listings internally for their agents and their customers while NAR, and Zillow (and others) want “clear cooperation,” meaning that listings need to be made available to anyone by putting the house on the MLS as soon as possible. Compass seeks to create a seller-choice model where homes can be quietly shopped before hitting the MLS. NAR/Zillow’s position is that any listing should be universally accessible. Each side claims their model is better for the marketplace and therefore better for consumers.
Fish don’t know they’re wet
Unfortunately, it seems these fish don’t know they are wet.[10] That is, in every iteration of this debate over market control, real estate professionals always seem to assume that only licensed real estate agents should and will control the marketplace by controlling the listing data through an MLS or privately owned structure (whether that is B2B, open or closed, consumer facing, or even, heaven forbid, a government utility). But, listing data, like credit data, doesn’t belong to real estate agents. It belongs to consumers and the market should reflect that.
In this regard, I have been reading some enjoyable long form written takes on the whole situation offered by two real estate bloggers who are independent of the lawsuit acrimony of the big companies. Rob Hahn and Nick Aufenkamp are having a highly insightful, respectful, and well-meaning (but endless) back and forth culminating (maybe) in Rob’s April 20, 2026, post Not Broken, Just Bent. The entire exchange is well worth reading if you want to understand the issues at play for most real estate agents.
But, in an earlier part of their exchange, Aufenkamp hit on the problem of market control and realtors’ key value even if his (and Hahn’s) solution(s) all assume the data stays in realtors’ hands. Specifically,
“when most people see the data they aren’t confident in knowing what to do with it. They realize they want professional help, and that’s when they call…, professionals who are genuinely worth hiring are the ones who thrive when a market is maximally transparent. Lesser professionals are those who justify their business by trying to control the keys.” [emphasis added]
Sell value not “access”
There it is; the value proposition. Good agents provide valuable information-not access to a market. In an internet, smartphone, and AI enabled age of Amazon/E-Bay, YouTube, Reddit/Craig’s List, digital and drone photography, and a myriad of other marketplace and technological advances, there is nothing so special about listing data that a consumer needs to pay a licensed real estate agent just to access “the market”.[11] In 2026, controlling listing data through the MLS or private listings is not a valuable function, but analyzing, verifying, promoting, marketing, and making sense of the data absolutely is.[12]
Don’t get me wrong, I fully appreciate the value of the essential guidance, confidence, and information synthesis homeowners and homebuyers can get from real estate professionals and believe those roles deserve to be well compensated, but a license to help consumers with professional guidance should not confer control over “the market” or consumer data. Meanwhile, many other housing professionals can be accused of misunderstanding their own value proposition as well.[13]
It’s been 2½ years since the Burnett case was decided against the real estate broker industry, so control over the housing market data can no longer be a given for real estate agents. In fact, under the law and in the minds of consumers writ large, control over the market and consumer data is going to be viewed very skeptically without a solid case for need and value provided.[14]
[1] Actually, most of the examples in Alanis Morissette’s “Ironic” song lyrics describe bad luck, not irony. However, isn’t that ironic?
[2] Or, for that matter, “popular”.
[3] Proving only that a conservative is a liberal who has just been mugged.
[4] CFPB’s November’s ECOA proposal to cabin disparate impact’s use in fair lending was just issued on April 22 as a final rule without substantive changes. I wrote about disparate impact’s demise a year ago.
[5] I don’t know why, but I sometimes hear Colonel Jessup when I remind myself to be grateful.
[6] For example, most recently, https://blevy.substack.com/p/ed-95-the-lo-comp-rule-is-brutal and https://blevy.substack.com/p/ed-92-disparate-impacts-demise and more generally, https://blevy.substack.com/p/ed-90-an-open-letter-to-cfpb-leadership?r=2jsnb. Let’s hope some of these changes prove durable.
[7] Yeats’ poem The Fascination of What’s Difficult is probably his best illustration of this theme, but my personal favorite is A Dialogue of Self and Soul: “A living man is blind and drinks his drop. What matter if the ditches are impure?”.
[8] As I noted in my last post, Claude.AI described me and this blog as “knowledgeable, a little cranky, and genuinely fun to read.”
[9] Writing about lust in these Musings is probably not a great idea.
[10] This reference was explained in a previous Musing.
[11] In this regard, Zillow’s burying of FSBO listings is particularly galling.
[12] Last May I asked Rob Hahn on his podcast (start after minute 42) why realtors need to control listing data at all. Again, my position is that the data belongs to the consumer. Real estate professionals are there to help make sense of the data.
[13] There may come a time when I write a Musing about how (with AI and some enabling legislation) the GSEs could offer loans directly to consumers. I mean there is a reason Bill Pulte coined the Great American Mortgage Company moniker, right? Well, maybe that’s for a different reason.
[14] Likewise, lawyers may need to consider the implications of calling certain functions that technology can easily handle as the “practice of law”.