HousingWireHousingWire
United Wholesale Mortgage (UWM) CEO Mat Ishbia said on the company’s fourth-quarter 2024 earnings call that President Donald Trump would be a huge boost to the mortgage industry.
While that may turn out to be true over the long term, Trump’s trade war hasn’t done shareholders any favors in the near term.
Since Trump unveiled his aggressive global tariff regime on April 2 — which he dubbed “Liberation Day” — UWM’s stock has fallen 15%, more than any other publicly traded mortgage lender.
But it’s not just UWM that’s hurting. Of the nine mortgage lenders analyzed by HousingWire, everyone’s stock has fallen since April 2. The crash also reversed major gains that some lenders accumulated since Trump was inaugurated.
The most dramatic is Rocket Mortgage, whose stock has been bolstered by its recent acquisitions of Redfin and Mr. Cooper. In the days after announcing the Redfin deal on March 10, Rocket’s gains since Trump took office reached 31.2%.
While Rocket’s stock sank after that peak, it experienced a similar jump after the Mr. Cooper deal on March 31, reaching a gain of 28.7% since the inauguration. But the tariff announcement quickly popped that bubble, as it now sits up only 2.3%.
Mr. Cooper’s cumulative stock gain after being acquired by Rocket peaked at 30.5%, but it had fallen to 9.6% as of market close on Wednesday. Redfin’s stock gains peaked at 46% following the Rocket deal and now sit at 9.9%.
Of the nine stocks analyzed, six posted positive gains between Jan. 20 and April 2. But three of those — Guild Mortgage, First American and Rithm Capital — are now in the red relative to the beginning of Trump’s term.
The mortgage industry’s turn of fortunes has also experienced by other major players in the housing space.
Homebuilders have taken the hardest hit, as the 25% tariff on steel and aluminum and the 145% tariff on China impact construction directly. As of market close on Monday, all nine of the publicly traded builder stocks are down by more than 13% since Jan. 20.
Real estate brokerages are doing marginally better. Redfin remains in positive territory, and The Real Brokerage’s solid fourth-quarter earnings have its equity above zero, but only slightly. Compass also got a bump from positive Q4 earnings and has sustained that gain since April 2, although it’s dropped substantially.
