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MortgagePoint ยป Your Trusted Source for Mortgage Banking and Servicing News 36 March 2025 S I D E B A R W I T H S T A N This month, MortgagePoint is excited to launch a new quarterly feature titled Sidebar With Stan, where we ask Freedom Mortgage CEO Stanley C. Middleman five topical questions on a subject of interest. S tanley C. Middleman serves as the President and CEO of Free- dom Mortgage, one of the largest and fastest-growing, independent mortgage companies in the country. He is a nationally recognized business strategist, investor, and philanthropist with over 30 years of experience in the mortgage banking industry. Since founding Freedom Mortgage in 1990, Middleman has grown it into one of the nation's largest nonbank mortgage lend- ers and servicers and a top VA and FHA lender. Middleman is an active member of the MBA, where he serves on the Board of Directors and previously on the Residential Board of Governors. He has also served on numerous advisory boards within the mortgage industry, including the boards of Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, and Ellie Mae. He is currently a member of the Housing Policy Executive Council. This quarter, we're asking Mr. Middleman questions about how U.S. economy trends will impact the mortgage sector in the weeks ahead. Q: What effects will President Trump's tariff initiatives have on the housing and mortgage markets? Well, I think it's too soon to tell, because we don't even know what those initiatives are going to be yet. From what I've seen, if some of the things proposed were to take place, there would be fun- damentally no change. The base case is, if you had tariffs and some of these other things, it would only have a nom- inal change in inflation, and it wouldn't have a monstrous change in GDP. I think other things that may happen will potentially be more important. I think the wild card is how many people get laid off in government, since government has become such a large sector, and if unemployment were to rise as a result of layoffs in government, combined with other GDP-slowing initiatives, that could potentially result in lower interest rates. I'm not antic- ipating much change in 2025. I think that there'll be a lot of noise, but not a lot of substantial outcome variance. I think the impact in '26 could be a little bit greater, but I'm not anticipating big changes resulting from those activities. Certainly not this year, and not in the first half of next year. Q: What is the Fed policy leaning toward in terms of interest rates, and where do you anticipate mortgage rates heading in the coming months? I think the Fed has indicated that they're in no rush to do anything, so I don't see any interest rate changes in the next quarter, and probably not in the next six months. Anything else that happens is going to take some time to have an impact. There's going to be some volatility, but if we see changes in unemployment, that could lead to lower interest rates. I don't think we're going to see enough change in inflation to drive interest rates much higher. It could happen, but I just don't anticipate that being the case. Stanley C. Middleman CEO, Freedom Mortgage