FirstTeam has expanded its national brokerage footprint into Kansas and Missouri, partnering with broker-owner Scott Eckhoff and Rival Real Estate to open the company’s first Midwest office in Kansas City, the company announced Tuesday. The move marks the next phase of FirstTeam’s national expansion strategy, which began in April 2025 and has since grown to include offices in California, Arizona,...

Josh Miller, CEO and co-founder of Epique Realty, told attendees at Tuesday’s HousingWire AI Summit that the real estate industry’s most expensive technology investments are often the least used. He offered a three-part prescription to solve the problem. Brokerages spend thousands of dollars on tools their agents refuse to adopt, and the solution lies not in building more technology but in aligning...

Mortgage insurers will be required to keep a larger safety net for mortgages originated using VantageScore 4.0 than for comparable loans using Classic FICO, according to new guidance from the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs). In late July, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac published a new grid for their Private Mortgage Insurer Eligibility Requirements (PMIERs) that, for the first time, includes...

Only about half of U.S. private-sector workers participate in an employer-sponsored retirement plan at any given time — a gap driven almost entirely by small employers, according to new research from the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. While more than 90% of larger employers offer retirement plans, just 49% of firms with fewer than 50 employees do so. Small businesses account for the...

Mortgage lenders that adopt artificial intelligence should focus first on the business problems they’re trying to solve rather than chasing the latest technology, according to panelists who spoke Tuesday at HousingWire’s AI Summit. Amanda Tucker, chief risk and compliance officer at Atlantic Bay Mortgage Group, and Michael Crockett, chief operating officer at Xactus, said the growing number of AI...

Some luxury homes impress with their size. Others stand out for celebrity ownership. The estate at 10 Dragonwood Lane in Weston, Connecticut manages to do both while adding something far rarer: a million-dollar koi pond that literally becomes part of the architecture. Now listed for $6.5 million with Douglas Elliman’s William Martin, the 15.57-acre property is widely known as the Origami House, a...

A new infrastructure investment supercycle is taking shape in 2026, one that could prove as consequential as the industrial buildout that transformed the U.S. economy more than a century ago. Unlike the titans who built the railroads, steel mills, oil refineries, electric grids, shipping networks and automobile industries that powered America's industrial revolution in the late 19th and early 20th...

California, Texas and Florida accounted for more than one-fifth of U.S. remodeling activity in the first quarter of 2026, underscoring the outsized role of the nation's largest housing markets even as higher costs and interest rates begin to weigh on spending growth. California led the country with an estimated $22.2 billion in remodeling activity, representing 8% of the national market, according to the...

CrossCountry Intermediate Holdco (CCM) is expected to issue $500 million of senior unsecured notes, coinciding with the projected August closing of its Two Harbors Investment Corp. acquisition. Fitch Ratings said it expects to rate the issuance at ‘BB-(EXP)’, ranking pari passu with existing senior unsecured debt. Proceeds are expected to be used to repay mortgage servicing rights (MSR)-backed...

Splitero, a financial technology company that aims to help homeowners access their home equity without taking on additional debt, has expanded to Idaho, Missouri, Montana and Wyoming. “Our latest expansion allows us to help more homeowners access the equity in their homes to better their lives without the burden of additional monthly payments,” said Michael Gifford, CEO and co-founder of Splitero....