The performance was achieved despite significant market pressures against a backdrop of inflation that has hit the mortgage industry hard. Alex Elezaj, chief strategy officer, discussed the results amid such challenges in a telephone interview with Mortgage Professional America.
“The whole sentiment over here at UWM is we’re very excited and proud of it, but the reality is it’s playing out the way we’ve been talking about quarter after quarter for the last several quarters,” Elezaj said. “We can’t necessarily control what happens in the macro environment, but we’re also prepared for it. This is not the first time rates have gone up or the mortgage market has been cyclical in nature. This happens often, and we’re prepared for it.”
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The secret sauce is in the purchase market to which many mortgage firms have pivoted with the refi boom now in the past. Unlike some competitors, Elezaj suggested, the Pontiac, Mich.-based lender was prepared in advance for the purchase market focus rather than having to do a hard pivot to retrain its focus.
“On one hand, we get excited about it because in a refi market like we experienced in ‘20 and ‘21, a lot of mortgage companies were successful – tremendous amount of volume. But the reality is what happened in 2018, 2019 as rates went up a little bit is when brokers win and wholesalers win,” Elezaj said.
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