Broker and Corresp. Products; Verification, POS, Flood Cert. Tools; AI Governance; Vacancy Stats

I was speaking with a friend recently, and I asked her what she does for lunch. She replied, “Zentangle.” Yup, it’s a thing, something that wasn’t around when I was a kid. When I was a kid, people living on the street were known as homeless. Now the term is the “unhoused.” When I was a kid, any vacant house was usually creepy and rumored to have someone living there eating cat food. Now… of the nearly 150 million housing units in the United States, over 10 percent are vacant. Approximately 89.7 percent of the housing units in the United States in the first quarter 2026 were occupied, per the Census Bureau, and 10.3 percent were vacant. (Owner-occupied housing units made up 59 percent of total housing units, while renter-occupied units made up 31 percent of the inventory.) Granted, there are various reasons a unit is vacant, but my guess is that some of them could be sold to someone who really wanted them. (Today’s podcast can be found here. This week’s ‘casts are sponsored by Zillow Home Loans, Zillow’s in-house mortgage lender. By integrating Zillow’s real estate platform with financing, Zillow Home Loans helps buyers move from dreaming about a home to holding the keys, and loan officers focus on guiding buyers with care and confidence. Today’s has an interview with Bank of Oklahoma’s Chris Maloney on Agency MBS performance, and what investors are watching regarding how normalization in mortgage rates and housing conditions will influence speeds, supply, and valuations going forward.)