6.1.26 Cutting Versus Hiking; Movement Mortgage's Lyra Waggoner on Career Building; Payrolls Expectations

Today's episode includes a discussion on if future Federal Reserve rate hikes are warranted. Plus, an interview with Rob Chrisman and Movement Mortgage's Lyra Waggoner on breaking into mortgage banking, what it actually takes to run a lender day-to-day, and thinking differently about building careers, culture, and long-term success. The episode closes with a look ahead to this week's economic calendar, including +105k expectations for May payrolls.

Thank you to Experian Verify, a comprehensive income and employment verification solution for mortgage lenders. By uniting instant payroll data, permissioned access, and research verification in one seamless experience, Experian Verify helps lenders reduce friction, accelerate decisions, and confidently verify every U.S. worker.

The Chrisman Commentary is your go-to daily mortgage news podcast, where industry insights meet expert analysis. Hosted by Robbie Chrisman, this podcast delivers the latest updates on mortgage rates, capital markets, and the forces shaping the housing finance landscape. Whether you're a seasoned professional or just looking to stay informed, you'll get clear, concise breakdowns of market trends and economic shifts that impact the mortgage world.

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:02

Welcome to the Chrisman Commentary, Daily Mortgage News Podcast. I'm your host, Robbie Chrisman. Topics on today's episode include are Fed rate hikes warranted or unwarranted, my interview with movement mortgages, Lyra Wagner, or I should say between my dad, Lyra, and me on breaking into mortgage banking, what it actually takes to run a lender day-to-day, and thinking differently about building careers, culture, and long-term success. And what to look forward to on this week's economic calendar, including expectations for payrolls this Friday. Thanks to Xperian and Xperian Verify Hub, which is the centralized platform and user interface through which clients access and manage Experian's income and employment verification services. It's designed to bring together multiple verification models, workflows, and ordering capabilities into a single experience rather than requiring users to navigate separate systems or portals. To learn more, visit Xperian.com and click products and Xperian Verify. Instant employment and income verification. Some say that talk of Fed rate hikes is uncalled for, considering home prices and rents, which make up a third of CPI, are falling. Oil prices should go down once a peace deal is signed. Wage growth continues to weaken in the face of soft labor demand, there's no fiscal stimulus on the horizon, etc., etc. However, bond traders tell a different story. Every day this trade of hormose stays closed, as another day inflation seeps deeper into the supply chain, and manufacturing survey comments from the past couple of months or Fed speeches from the last several weeks reveal confidence in the disinflation narrative has weakened. Even the more dovish Fed participants appear less certain, particularly given that progress toward the Fed's 2% inflation target had already stalled before the war. Once a credible resolution is reached and the market can price the path of policy with greater confidence, one would expect the 2's 10s curve to re-steepen toward 50 basis points. For now, the front end of the yield curve is carrying a meaningful uncertainty premium. The two-year yield remains one of the best gauges of where the market expects Fed funds to be roughly a year from now, and current pricing reflects uncertainty as much as it does the expected policy path. Recent data has given investors little reason to become complacent. Inflation has risen to its highest level in three years, fueled by tariffs and the economic fallout from the war, while escalating tensions in the Persian Gulf have reinforced expectations that the Fed is unlikely to cut rates anytime soon. Yet risk assets have remained remarkably resilient. Part of that resilience reflects a reluctance to remain defensively positioned if a ceasefire ultimately takes hold, oil prices retreat, and equity market leadership broadens beyond a narrow group of stocks. The more important question is whether investors are becoming more confident in the outlook or simply less willing to pay for protection against adverse outcomes. Despite recurring optimism surrounding a potential US-Iran agreement, tangible progress remains elusive, with both sides continuing to send conflicting signals. Markets are pricing the possibility of de-escalation more aggressively than the evidence justifies, leaving sentiment vulnerable to disappointment if negotiations, once again, fail to produce a durable breakthrough. The Fed remains in the enviable position of being able to wait. While growth is yet to deteriorate enough to force a policy response, there are signs that consumers are beginning to feel the cumulative effects of elevated prices and slowing real income growth. With spending barely advancing, income growth stalling, and jobless claims gradually moving higher. Treasury markets continue to trade largely through the lens of geopolitics and energy prices rather than domestic fundamentals alone, with hopes for lower oil prices supporting demand for duration and reinforcing expectations that the Fed will remain on hold well into 2026. As a result, front-end yields remain anchored near current policy expectations, while longer maturities absorb shifting views on inflation, growth, and term premium. The prevailing market dynamic remains one of cautious range trading rather than conviction as investors balance resilient economic data against persistent inflation pressures and unresolved geopolitical risks, leaving markets caught between stability in the present and uncertainty about what comes next. For today's interview, I wanted to welcome to the show Lyra Wagner of Movement Mortgage to speak with my dad and me about breaking into mortgage banking, what it actually takes to run a lender day-to-day, and thinking differently about building careers, culture, and long-term success. She joined Movement Mortgage in 2022 as the company's chief information officer and was promoted to chief operating officer in 2025, responsible for technology, marketing, employee engagement, and operations.

Speaker 4:36

I'm going to take a little bit of a back seat.

Speaker 3 4:40

Did you know this is that I'm a I listen to podcasts prolifically and I grew up without TV but with radio? And so this is a really big moment for me, Robbie.

Speaker 4:50

It's the first time I've agreed to be on.

Speaker 1 5:07

Uh 30 seconds after my alarm went off.

Speaker 3 5:10

Is that is that when you record it? Um no, I I love it. And you you you do it so consistently that you like you can find almost everybody or every topic on it. So you do a good job. And the fact that there's a level of like vendor engagement, like it's a good way to hear and learn about without having to go to conferences and sit through people's spiels.

Speaker 5:30

What kind of you to say?

Speaker 1 5:31

I'm not a big TV person. People come over, where's your TV? And I go, I don't know. Do I need a T no, you don't need a TV.

unknown 5:38

No.

Speaker 1 5:38

I agree. Get outside and Robbie.

Speaker 2 5:41

Can Lyra come out with her family and stay at your place and look out your window?

Speaker 1 5:46

Well, just like she said about meeting vendors, why why do you have to do things in person when you can just do it electronically? Here you go. You can come look out my window.

Speaker 3 5:54

That is gorgeous.

Speaker 2 5:56

Lyra, tell us a little bit about what you're doing now. How did you first enter mortgage banking?

Speaker 3 6:04

Uh, the year was 2004 when I was lucky enough to stumble my way into mortgage banking. I think everybody has a story that started not with the intent to end up a mortgage banker. Um, I had graduated from college and actually had, of all things, an internship at the White House, but I had just gotten engaged to my husband. We will be married 20 years this month. And we we got engaged and I came back to Tucson from DC, and he had started selling real estate. And at our engagement party, I was headed down a path towards journalism, but was facing dismal uh initial paychecks and also the prospect of moving markets around to move up in that career. And I met his loan officer at our engagement party, and that launched my career in mortgage banking. And I was so fortunate in hindsight. Did you know, Rob, that the biggest privately held mortgage company in America was in the little town I was bred, born, and raised in Tucson, Arizona, company called First Magnus. We were on the Inc. 500 most profitable company that made the chart. So it was it was a big business for a town like Tucson and a huge business in mortgage banking. And so I was lucky to get a start at what was, in hindsight, just a super special team. Some of my best friends from all around the industry. There's a lot of C CEOs that came from that team at First Magnus. So it was an amazing, amazing learning ground early in my career. And that's how I stumbled into it.

Speaker 2 7:43

And how did you come to Movement Mortgage?

Speaker 3 7:46

So after First Magnus, I ended up that company went bankrupt at the downturn. That'd be about the time that I would say the commentary started. And then the founders of First Magnus started a new company that ultimately became Caliber Home Loans. So I spent most of my career at what became Caliber Home Loans and had an amazing, an amazing time there building out technology, learning a ton, operating different areas of the business. And in between Caliber and my way to Movement Mortgage, I landed at a small construction lender and had an opportunity to build from scratch a loan origination system and servicing platform for construction lending. And as part of the pitch for that product, we had an opportunity to travel to Charlotte and meet the team at Movement Mortgage. And I would say at that time I was not looking to get back to a big mortgage company leading technology projects at scale. And I certainly wasn't looking for, you know, a company where I would find my softer side and a lot of kind of the heart of the people and community side of our business. But I ended up walking through the doors here at our corporate office and just immediately fell in love with the company and the team and the mission and found myself super intrigued. And so after a lot of thought and and several months of thinking through it, I ultimately made the move in 2022 and joined the movement team.

Speaker 2 9:23

Nice. That's a very nice story. So congratulations on that. So when people ask you what you do for a living, what do you tell them as a COO?

Speaker 3 9:35

Well, I tell people, depends on who it is in the context, but I always tell people that I work for the best mortgage company in America and that I'm super grateful to get to work with and lead some exceptional people. But depending on depending on who they are, I either then pivot that to do they have any lending needs, or I get a chance to kind of explain that in this seat, I think we wear a lot of hats, but I look across the people side, the platform side, and the process side of a large and awesome retail mortgage company.

Speaker 2 10:10

So when people enter mortgage banking, they they enter as loan officers, maybe they go into ops, maybe they become underwriters, maybe they become capital markets folks, whatever it is. What do non, what should non-COO people know about the role of a chief operating officer?

Speaker 3 10:31

I think if you're if you're not in that role yet, the thing that's interesting, I think this is true of all of senior leadership, is that ultimately you have a career path that gives you really direct experience and expertise in certain areas. But as you elevate in leadership, you ultimately end up leading areas and teams and people where you are no longer the direct subject matter expert and know 100% of that domain. And so I think the interesting part of the elevated leadership roles, including this one that sits across so many areas of the business, is you really have to learn to rely on your ability to build a team of great people with expertise, lead them, keep them unblocked. We focus a ton here on making sure we are not bureaucratic and we don't get in our own way. This is an industry where you win by innovating and being capable of change and moving fast and delivering loans as quickly and with the best excellence as you can. And so it becomes a leadership challenge more than a deep understanding of every area of the business.

Speaker 2 11:42

So different lenders, in fact, it doesn't even have to be lenders. Different companies have different reputations for different things. United Airlines versus Spirit Airlines, you know, Arco versus Exxon, whatever it might be. What reputation do you think Movement and Casey have in the industry?

Speaker 3 12:04

So Movement's reputation, Movement was founded in 2008, and the company came out of nowhere in Charlotte, North Carolina, and kind of a part of the world that was dominated by banking. And so the differentiator and the reputation was to close loans faster than anybody else with the best service in the industry. So the brand reputation and growth cycle was based on that. And then very quickly, you know, the company was founded on a mission to love and value people. And Casey had a vision that the profits from this company, instead of a more traditional ownership structure, he wanted to pour those profits back into communities. So I think our reputation has been that we are leaders in service and distributed retail and giving loan officers and local markets all the ways to win with realtors. But then our profits go back into communities, and more than $400 million has flowed out through our foundation to charitable missions. And I think that has become our a big part of our reputation as an impact lender, is that we are good guys, we do what we say we're going to do, and we want our work and our legacy to be the people that we brought along with us, the way we've made their lives better, our employees' lives better, their families' lives better, and communities better.

Speaker 2 13:24

That's an amazing story. But also on a more granular level, I think movement has a reputation in terms of relationships with loan officers and trying to promote their success. What opportunities does movement give to a loan officer, either existing loan officers or people thinking about coming on board? And I know this isn't necessarily a recruiting pitch, but what are some of the programs that you offer to originators?

Speaker 3 13:56

So movement's brand is incredibly strong and differentiated, but a lot of the power of our brand is that we have been able to let our loan officers take the best of our brand and we give them a ton of autonomy. So you'll see loan officers that get to be themselves. Markets are wildly different across the country, coast to coast, different markets. And so we have loan officers that have leveraged, you know, the best of our brand, our storytelling, who we are as an impact lender, their ability to leverage that in their communities and create their own mission inside of what we do and lead from the front. That's big for us is that autonomy and letting our loan officers feel a sense of independence to take from our brand and be themselves. On the more traditional side, we offer the same wide depth of products that the rest of the industry does. We think we have some areas of excellence, especially around our non-agency and jumbo. We have done incredibly well to lead in that category. So we certainly have our niches, but I think loan officers find a heart for our mission. They are, you know, they want to be part of a company that is so for people, and they really lean into how they take that brand and leverage it to their advantage.

Speaker 2 15:16

You, within the last year or two, have moved your family with your family. You've moved your family or moved with your family from Arizona to the East Coast to the Charlotte area. How's the market there? What's what's going on real estate-wise in that neck of the woods?

Speaker 3 15:34

The market here is incredibly strong. So the Carolinas are some of the fastest growing states in the country. So it has been an amazing experience. My family has absolutely loved our relocation 2,000 miles from home, not just us, but also we brought three horses in tow with us. And so we have absolutely loved it. I have the opportunity now to be a brand newbie in a new market and need to find a real estate agent and have been working with an agent that has been helping us find a home. And I can say it has been such a reminder for me of the heart of what our business is. You know, homeownership is so special and it's easy to take it for granted when we already have it or when, you know, we can become numb to the fact that that's our work and we constantly see people realize that dream. But to realize and acknowledge just how attached I've become to my realtor, she's so important to me. I'm talking to her every day. She knows, you know, my hopes and dreams, my family's hopes and dreams. And she has been just such a partner to me. It's it's a reminder of how special it is and how unique it is that real estate and purchase deals are still done locally in communities between loan officers that trust realtor partners and home buyers that that rely on that expertise on both the lending and real estate side. And so it's been it's been really kind of an amazing experience to be back in that chair with new eyes because I'm in I'm in a new place relying on that expertise more than ever. And it's been awesome.

Speaker 2 17:12

Nice. Well, you mentioned family. You mentioned family a couple of times during our session. And so obviously, family is important. If if your girls came to you and they were getting ready to graduate from high school and said, we don't want to go to college, we want to go to work for movement mortgage. What would you tell them?

Speaker 17:30

I don't need a college degree to work at movement mortgage. That's pretty cool.

Speaker 3 17:36

I would, Rob, I have told you this. You are living what would be a dream come true for me, and that you have both of your kids engaged with you in your business. I would absolutely love the chance for my girls to work here at movement, they're at the office all the time. I have my 15-year-old is actually going to summer intern here. We have kids, friends, family, kids from the community that get their very first professional internships here every single summer. I would love that. I think this business is a land of opportunity. And as a parent who loves nothing more than hanging with my kids, I think you have mastered uh what would be, you know, the lifelong dream for me. And that's to have them close and have them around. I'm sure it's not perfect, um, but I I promise you that that uh I look at that and I'm I'm so I'm so envious of what you and Robbie have that you're together and obviously your daughter Marie as well.

Speaker 2 18:34

Well, thank you. I'm very proud of both of them. And Robbie is really busting his butt in terms of uh the mortgage world. So thank you for that. Robbie, did you have any additional questions for Lira?

Speaker 1 18:48

I know movement is also known for kind of this wealth creation for some of their sales staff, or that there's unique opportunities for LOs to succeed financially over the long run. Are you at liberty to discuss those?

Speaker 3 19:02

Absolutely. So in our industry, we are dealing with loan officers that can be high-income earners and the business can be really cyclical. And a huge focus for movement is that we lead the way as the IMB that has created the most wealth for our loan officers. We think that is how we create legacy for our company and our loan officers and their families. So we're doing that a couple of ways. Starting in 2020, we began retaining our servicing, and that created an opportunity where we built a partnership with our loan officers. It was actually the idea of one of our regional managers said, Hey, can I get in on what we're doing with servicing? Because that was a great financial play. And so we created a partnership that allows our loan officers to invest in to our servicing book. So we have never paid returns under 10% since the inception of that fund. And then we allow them to do that through deferred compensation. So they get that benefit of being able to have the, you know, the upfront tax advantage. And then they're able to, you know, grow wealth with us in partnership with this opportunity around our servicing book. And then we do other things that that other lenders just don't do, where we try to create opportunities for our loan officers to see a really long view of how they build a book of business and generate income off of that. So we actually pay our loan officers every year, December 31st. We look at the size of the retained servicing that is in our book for that loan officer, and we pay them a basis point override on that. And if we happen to sell a portion of servicing for a reason, we pay them two on that. And that allows them to, again, have a long view of growing a book at movement. And then in this last year, um, our favorite latest offering, we call all of this income for life, but we actually have an insurance company that we've had for a decade here at Movement. It's called Movement Insurance of all things. And uh we started a program where we're actually paying our loan officers on those insurance renewals. So we have loan officers that have been loyal to our insurance company for years, and they have hundreds of policies that renew every year. That average policy is renewing seven times. And so we have now started paying our loan officers $50 for every home or auto policy that renews, and that's substantial. So they can put that income into deferred compensation. I don't have to explain the rest of it to you. You know, if they are overtime investing that, especially on the deferred comp side, that grows. And this has become really, really meaningful returns for our loan officers because we want them to think about their business as you know, much more holistic wealth-creating opportunity. We want to take them out of the roller coaster that income can be in this business for loan officers because it is so cyclical. And we want a legacy that that we helped them learn how to build wealth inside, you know, what is an amazing opportunity in our industry.

Speaker 1 22:07

Cool. I will probably edit that back into a little preview I I've started to do of episodes. So good stuff.

Speaker 2 22:14

We should stop recording, Robbie.

Speaker 22:17

I mean, I don't I don't know.

Speaker 3 22:18

Well, what if Robbie has more he needs to work in?

Speaker 1 22:21

Am I gonna work in? I had a Galpal visit my house out here the other week, and my my dad was here and she reminds me very much of you. You two speak it with a very similar cadence and sound. My dad was raving about how much he liked her, and I said, Wow. Sorry.

Speaker 22:42

You did?

Speaker 2 22:43

I think we're good.

Speaker 22:46

We're out of time anyway.

Speaker 2 22:48

Yeah, I mean we're uh we're up against holy smokes, we've used up a half an hour of uh COO time of the largest mortgage companies in the nation.

Speaker 22:59

Let me have you back on in you know in the fall at some point. Maybe you're on MBA annual. We'll talk more. Sure. Thank you.

Speaker 3 23:07

Yeah, this is fun. See you guys.

Speaker 23:09

Bye-bye.

Speaker 1 23:13

Looking to the week ahead, the main focus will be on Friday's employment report, which is expected to show a labor market mired in a low fire, low hire state. Payrolls are forecast to rise 105,000 in May, with slow hiring and cyclical businesses, as well as the bankruptcy of speared airlines influencing the numbers. Unemployment is forecast to inch up to 4.4% due to weak demand for new workers. The labor participation rate has fallen each month this year, which has helped keep the unemployment rate essentially flat, reflecting a market that is relatively stable. U.S. statistical agencies have seen declining survey response rates, shrinking budgets, and during the Trump presidency, high rates of staff attrition. Economists worry that over time those issues could erode the reliability of government statistics. This week's economic calendar kicks off later this morning with final May SP Global US Manufacturing PMI, and will be followed by April construction spending and May's ISM Manufacturing Index. We begin the week with agency MDS prices slightly worse from Friday's close, the two-year yielding 4.04%, and the ten-year yielding 4.47%. After closing last week at 4.45%, down 11 basis points over the course of the week, but up six basis points in aggregate in May. Let's wrap up with a joke and some housekeeping. An older gentleman was on the operating table awaiting surgery, and he insisted that his son, a renowned surgeon, perform the operation. As he was about to receive the anesthesia, he asked to speak to his son. Yes, Dad, what is it? Don't be nervous, son. Do your best, and just remember, if it doesn't go well, if something happens to me, your mother's going to come home and live with you and your wife forever. Thanks again to Xperian and the Xperian Verify Hub, the platform that 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.