By Andy Serwer
Housing, mortgages, interest rates, and the Federal Reserve are top of mind for Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea and President Donald Trump as well, with housing affordability garnering particular attention. To that end, Trump & Co. have made a number of pronouncements recently which have rattled and/or goosed markets and stocks such as UWM Holdings and Rocket Cos., now America's biggest mortgage companies -- and fierce rivals.
Housing prices do seem to be an issue. According to the National Association of Home Builders, house prices climbed 54.9% nationwide between the first quarter of 2020 and the third quarter of 2025, more than double the consumer price index, though increases were tamer last year. Mortgage rates have also more than doubled since an August 2021 low. According to a YouGov poll last month, 87% of Americans surveyed said finding affordable housing is either very difficult or somewhat difficult. Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor of New York City, to a great degree based on a campaign that promised affordable housing.
Young people especially seem hard-pressed to buy. According to the National Association of Realtors, "First-time home buyers...last year shrank to a historic low of just 21% of all buyers," versus a historical norm of 40%. Meanwhile, the median age of first-time buyers has risen to 40, the highest ever recorded. In the 1980s, the average first-time home buyer was in their late 20s.
There is expertise aplenty to address this. Trump, of course, is a real estate guy, while Bill Pulte, the firebrand director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency -- and the chair of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- is the grandson of William Pulte, founder of home builder PulteGroup. As for Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, The Wall Street Journal reports that he "has bought and sold more than $127 million worth of real estate since the 1990s."
Team Trump has no shortage of ideas. Pulte told Barron's on Monday that "we are actively evaluating 30 to 50 different ideas" for the housing market, including a so-called portable mortgage, where homeowners would be able to take their low mortgage rate with them when they move, as well as a 50-year mortgage.
Meanwhile, Sen. Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) tweeted recently that Americans should be able to dip into their 401(k)s "to help buy a home, without penalties or caps or taxes." Two bipartisan housing affordability bills are stalled in Congress over spending priorities.
But the splashier moves came from the president, who on Jan. 7 announced he would ban investment firms like Blackstone from investing in single-family homes, a move Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) seemed to applaud -- Blackstone stock dropped on the news -- and then the next day said that Fannie and Freddie would buy up to $200 billion in mortgage loans.
Mortgage rates dipped to a three-year low in response to Trump's measures, from 6.21% to 5.99% for 30-year fixed rate loans but ticked back up after we learned the Department of Justice had begun a criminal investigation of Fed Chair Jerome Powell.
So which ideas would work best?
Mat Ishbia, the blunt CEO of UWM -- which does business as United Wholesale Mortgage -- thinks some of the administration's ideas, such as the 50-year mortgage, and the $200 billion mortgage buy, could help on the margin but is mostly just happy housing is in the spotlight. "The most important thing is the leaders of the industry, Bill Pulte specifically, and the leader of our country, President Trump, are talking about housing and want to make it better," he says.
Some analysts feel that more attention should be paid to the other side of the ledger, the supply of houses, which everyone from home builder CEOs to Mayor Mamdani say could be increased by easing the permitting process. "We all know that it would be most constructive if they address the supply side," says Eric Hagen, an analyst at investment bank BTIG. "It's harder to see that done, especially at the federal level. In many cases zoning is a local issue. Maybe the administration could lean on the states to do something."
Hagen, who covers a universe of some two dozen nonbank mortgage stocks, rates both Ishbia's UWM and Rocket (which are up 19% and 7%, respectively, since Trump's announcements on Jan. 7) as Buys, though he prefers the former. "There's longer-term value in both stocks," he says. "But United Wholesale has a little bit more torque as a lower interest-rate play. And our price target for UWM represents a lot more upside."
Despite UWM and Rocket being the industry's two biggest players by mortgage origination ($152.5 billion and $110.8 billion over the past four reported quarters, respectively), neither stock has been a stellar long-term play, with UWM down some 59% over the past five years while Rocket is up 14%, versus 85% for the S&P 500. (Over the past year, United is basically flat while Rocket has, yes, rocketed up 118%.)
J.P. Morgan's Richard Shane has a Neutral rating on Rocket, writing this past week that while he is constructive on Rocket's new strategy (the company recently bought real estate website Redfin and mortgage servicing company Mr. Cooper), he believes "investors may be fully weighting lower rate scenarios and intermediate market-share gains beyond the direct impact from the acquisitions."
UWM and Rocket have distinct business models. UWM, founded by Ishbia's father Jeff in 1986 -- Mat became CEO in 2013 and expanded the company nationally -- is, as its name suggests, a wholesaler, meaning it offers mortgages through independent mortgage brokers and not directly to consumers.
Rocket -- founded by Warren Buffett's pal Dan Gilbert as Rock Financial in 1985 -- was bought by Intuit in 1999 and renamed Quicken Loans, then bought back by Gilbert in 2002 and renamed Rocket, has been the leader in digital mortgage lending direct to consumers. (It also has a wholesale business like UWM's.)
UWM and Rocket, which sell a majority of their loans to government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Ginnie Mae, have gobbled up a huge share of the mortgage market at the expense of money-center banks like JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo. In 2016, banks had some 60% of the mortgage market, with Wells being the nation's leader. Today the banks' share has dropped to 25%, while UWM and Rocket have about as much share as all the banks combined. (Wells isn't even in the top 10.)
Banks have retreated because of increased capital requirements and low margins in the business, while upstarts like UWM and Rocket, many of them digitally native, process loans faster and can be more responsive to customers and market trends.
Both UWM and Rocket are based in metropolitan Detroit. Motor City, it seems, is becoming Mortgage City, though the companies' disdain for each other makes Ford Motor's and General Motors' rivalry pale in comparison. UWM and Rocket are much more than just competitors. Think Hatfields and McCoys.
Maybe their similarities fan the flames. Both Ishbia and Gilbert, who's the chairman of Rocket these days, are billionaires who own controlling stakes in their companies. Both went to Michigan State University (Ishbia was a walk-on for coach Tom Izzo on the Spartans' 2000 national championship basketball team) and both own NBA teams -- Ishbia the Phoenix Suns and Gilbert the Cleveland Cavaliers.
In 2021 Ishbia issued what is known as the "All In" initiative, which effectively banned any broker that it does business with from working with Rocket, a move which has been the subject of litigation. Ishbia recently extended the ban to mortgage service company Mr. Cooper after Rocket bought that company last year. Rocket responded with its "Bully Shield" program, which pays penalties and court fees for any brokers who want to extricate themselves from UWM's contract.
After news broke that Ishbia had agreed to buy the Phoenix Suns and the WNBA's Phoenix Mercury for $4 billion in December 2022, the NBA scheduled a vote to approve Ishbia as an owner, which was held the following February. The tally was 29-0 for approval, with Gilbert's Cavaliers abstaining.
"Like an episode of Billions or something, right?" says Hagen.
One curious point when it comes to these two companies is that though UWM is 38% bigger than Rocket in terms of loan volume, Rocket's market cap is 7.3 times bigger than UWM's ($8.7 billion to $64.1 billion.) Why is that? "We think investors want to pay for the creation of the mortgage and all that goes with it, especially that direct connectivity with the borrower, which is where the rubber meets the road," Hagen says.
Why does Ishbia think Rocket's market cap is so much bigger?
"Smoke and mirrors, house of cards, silly investors -- what do you want me to tell you?" asks Ishbia. "You can quote me on those. I don't give a shit. They have very good PR [but] they're not as good of a mortgage company. They don't pay a dividend. They don't give consumers good-enough rates. They don't close loans as fast. They use AI as a buzzword; they don't actually utilize it. But God bless them, they have a good market cap. That's why a lot of people I'm hearing from nowadays are looking to go long on us and short on them, because it doesn't make sense." Gilbert and Rocket didn't return requests for comment.
Who knew you could get that riled up over a mortgage business?
And it's not like any of this is going away. Trump says he will flesh out his housing affordability plan this coming week in a speech at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, which strikes some as a curious choice of venue. WEF primarily has a global focus and U.S. housing is, well, all about the U.S. (I'll be there and plan to attend his speech.) Hagen of BTIG wonders if Trump will somehow link part of an affordable housing program, such as his plan to buy $200 billion in mortgages, to the creation of a sovereign-wealth fund, which he has previously expressed interest in creating.
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January 16, 2026 01:00 ET (06:00 GMT)
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