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Gate House Vice Chairman Hunter Kurtz joined @ConsultQuadel President and @Forbes_Books contributor Katie Goar for her podcast series “Change Makers with Katie Goar, Finding the right solutions for the affordable housing community” to share his insights on affordable housing through the lens of his experience in public housing and community development. Based on his experience as former HUD Public & Indian Housing Assistant Secretary, his career serving in other significant roles at HUD and Michigan state government in Detroit, and his current work with Gate House Strategies, in Part 1 of the series, Hunter discusses his career path in affordable housing, specific challenges and solutions to solving current supply constraints in affordable housing including through programs like “Faircloth to RAD” (the Rental Assistance Demonstration program), the importance of graduating renters on public assistance into market rate units, combatting veteran homelessness through programs like the HUD-VASH program, and what it will take generally to improve the shortage of affordable housing in America.
In Part 2 of the series, Hunter discusses the work of Gate House’s new subsidiary, Gate House Digital, including our colleague Dain Ehring’s perspective on the emergence of Artificial Intelligence in mortgage lending, the receipt of the “Sammies Award” by his former HUD colleague’s for their mutual work preventing homelessness of foster youth aging out of the program, his work with public housing authorities and the success of PHAs during the height of the Covid pandemic, and being part of “the rebirth of a great American city,” Detroit, where he resides today.
In a recent piece published by DS News, Gate House Digital CEO/President Dain Ehring discusses the role of Artificail Intelligence (AI) in mortgage lending decisions.
Amidst significant momentum for the technology, Dain shares his insights on its increased usage within the mortgage market and opines that the “genie is out of the bottle.” Rather than looking backward, he argues it is time to push forward, albeit deliberately, in the name of expanding credit to qualified unbanked applicants, fair lending, and common sense.
While acknowledging a need for sound guardrails, Ehring strikes a cautious note against government’s preference for ambiguity in the guidance, a trend that stifles innovation and product development in the private sector, and often leads to capitulation to the legal risks of their ingenuity, and ultimately, producing “increased fees, fewer services, and diminished access to affordable credit for aspiring homeowners.”
“Without a thorough and prudent understanding of their appropriate role for the agencies, they could produce harmful unintended consequences,” Dain writes. “…Washington, D.C., must be careful not to wield a rusty axe, when a surgeon’s knife is more warranted.”
Dain warns that our oversight agencies need “not become a drag on the very thing most of our policymakers and government leaders want: mortgage financing available to families in need of affordable, quality housing, thereby creating more equitable homeownership.”
In a note of optimism for AI’s future in mortgage lending, Dain explains that “artificial neural networks” are helping to overcome the objections of its skeptics and critics. Can AI be “be free of bias” as the top regulator suggests, Dain asks: “Compared to what?”
Washington, DC: Gate House Strategies, LLC is pleased to celebrate one year as a firm. Launched May 5, 2021, the Gate House partners had high expectations there was a need for the experience and expertise the Gate House team could provide both as a trusted advisor in the housing market and as a driver of change in the industry to which our professionals have dedicated their careers. We saw an opportunity and opening to provide guidance as well as services that would add tremendous value to our clients’ businesses.
“We are tremendously proud of the work we are doing with our clients and business partners, and we are extremely excited about the future and the many possibilities for us to grow together,” said Brian Montgomery, Chairman of the firm. “For every new door that we walked through, three more have opened. We are seizing upon every opportunity to leverage our knowledge and experience to help others and to develop into one of the leading advisors and service providers in the industry,” Montgomery added.
“Gate House Strategies continues to grow, we continue to unlock opportunities that we could not have imagined just one year ago,” added Hunter Kurtz, Vice Chairman of the firm. “We are looking forward to driving our clients and Gate House to new levels in the coming year.”
In one year, Gate House has been deeply involved in solving for many of the most complex challenges facing the mortgage market today and at all levels and in all segments of the loan lifecycle. Working with mortgage originators, servicers, developers, specialized default managers, field services companies, and many of the most innovative technology companies in this industry, Gate House is headlong into helping to transform the marketplace and advise firms who continue to assist struggling borrowers in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Gate House is heavily engaged in the end-to-end digital transformation within the mortgage industry, on both the transactional side of the single and multifamily sectors as well as many related ancillary services and aspects of the market. We are pleased to announce the formation of Gate House Digital as we enter our second year. A subsidiary of Gate House Strategies LLC, Gate House Digital will provide tremendous focus to prop-tech and fin-tech, a growing and sought-after area of Gate House’s business expertise. Gate House Digital will be led by our colleague Dain Ehring, a veteran of Silicon Valley and pioneer in the digital mortgage space.
“I am honored and excited to lead Gate House’s effort to impact the digital revolution taking place within today’s housing and mortgage market,” Ehring said. “There is tremendous value that our team can bring to the process and to the innovators who will take the industry to a new level from end-to-end, and in many aspects of the market that support real estate finance.” et
“Gate House Strategies continues to grow, we continue to unlock opportunities that we could not have imagined just one year ago,” added Hunter Kurtz, Vice Chairman of the firm. “We are looking forward to driving our clients and Gate House to new levels in the coming year.”
In one year, Gate House has been deeply involved in solving for many of the most complex challenges facing the mortgage market today and at all levels and in all segments of the loan lifecycle. Working with mortgage originators, servicers, developers, specialized default managers, field services companies, and many of the most innovative technology companies in this industry, Gate House is headlong into helping to transform the marketplace and advise firms who continue to assist struggling borrowers in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Gate House is heavily engaged in the end-to-end digital transformation within the mortgage industry, on both the transactional side of the single and multifamily sectors as well as many related ancillary services and aspects of the market. We are pleased to announce the formation of Gate House Digital as we enter our second year. A subsidiary of Gate House Strategies LLC, Gate House Digital will provide tremendous focus to prop-tech and fin-tech, a growing and sought-after area of Gate House’s business expertise. Gate House Digital will be led by our colleague Dain Ehring, a veteran of Silicon Valley and pioneer in the digital mortgage space.
Gate House Vice Chairman Hunter Kurtz, when he served as Assistant Secretary for Public and Indian Housing (PIH) at HUD, had led a team of staff who were determined to address a critical challenge for a vulnerable population in America, our nation’s youth who age out of foster care and are at risk of homelessness.
The HUD PIH team designed a new program, the Foster Youth to Independence Initiative (“FYI Initiative”) which now provides rental assistance and other supportive services to these individuals.
In his recent article for HousingWire, Kurtz congratulates his former colleagues for receiving the prestigious “Sammies” Award in recognition of their innovative approach and execution of the FYI Initiative.
Kurtz applauds the work of his former colleagues as well as the many families of the Foster Youth program who volunteer to make a tremendous difference in the lives of at-risk youth. They are “un-sung heroes” in our national life, Kurtz says.
The FYI Initiative has now issued over 1,000 housing choice vouchers for former foster youth. Without support, an estimated 25% of youth aging out of foster care experience homelessness within four years.
In their recent article for Reverse Mortgage Daily, Gate House Founding Partners Brian Montgomery, Keith Becker and Dror Oppenheimer discuss the implications of the first positive capital ratio for the HECM program in six years.
The Gate House team, who worked together at the Federal Housing Administration managing the HECM program, provided their unique perspective and explained that important policy changes, and most certainly strong home price appreciation, have contributed to the substantial improvement in the HECM capital ratio.
Nevertheless, they argued, the results do not “provide a reason for complacency or assurance of future (positive) results” and therefore continued vigilance to ensure the program “is not continuously subsidized by the premiums … in the forward book, will be vital for the HECM program to continue to serve its mission.”
Montgomery is the only person to have served as FHA Commissioner twice under three presidents. Becker served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary and Chief Risk Officer for FHA. Oppenheimer served as a Senior Advisor to the Commissioner of FHA.
Written By Brian D. Montgomery, Keith Becker and Dror Oppenheimer
For the first time since 2015, the Capital Ratio for the reverse, or Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM), book of the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) has moved into positive territory.
The HECM portfolio’s measure of financial health swung to a remarkable 6.08% for the fiscal year ending September 30, up from a negative 0.78% in FY2020, and a substantial move from lows touched just three years ago, when it sunk to negative 18.8% in 2018.
The HECM Capital Ratio is the proportion of FHA Capital in the Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund (MMI Fund, or “the Fund”) to the Insurance-in-Force. Its rise has come following changes to the program in 2017 and 2018 aimed at increasing its financial viability, and to be sure, sustained home price appreciation, which has an outsized impact on the calculation.
On November 15, FHA released its Annual Report to Congress on the Financial Status of the Fund, revealing that the overall Capital Ratio in Fiscal Year 2021 had improved to 8.03%, a new historic high.
Read the full article: Reverse Mortgage Capital Ratio Turns Positive, But No Time for Complacency
Gate House Chairman Brian Montgomery and CEO Keith Becker recently opined in the M Report on the favorable condition of the FHA Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund.
In their article, Montgomery and Becker argue that FHA must be prepared to weather adverse events in the future similar to the wake of the Financial Crisis in 2008 or the COVID-19 pandemic. As pressure mounts to reduce mortgage insurance premiums (MIP), continued commitment to FHA’s countercyclical role would dictate caution. FHA must work, they wrote, “to put itself in a position to best serve low- to moderate-income borrowers who will be most affected should private markets constrict (which history has shown sometimes do).”
In urging caution on mortgage insurance premiums, they cite the Annual Report’s acknowledgment that the assumptions underlying the financial position of the fund can “change materially and quickly with changes in both actual and projected home values.”
Montgomery and Becker caution that unintended effects of MIP changes could occur, and FHA would be wise to keep available “all options that help to expand opportunities for low- to moderate-income homebuyers by deploying some of the excess capital into new programs, products, or underwriting policies.”
Gate House Vice Chairman Hunter Kurtz moderated a panel for the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) forum on the critical need to address homelessness amidst our nation’s veterans.
“America’s Call to Duty: Ending Veterans’ Homelessness” was hosted by the BPC’s J. Ronald Terwilliger Center for Housing Policy. The panel featured Rep. Mike Levin (D-CA) Chairman, Economic Opportunity Subcommittee, House Committee on Veterans Affairs; Philip Mangano, President and CEO, The American Round Table to Abolish Homelessness; Rosanne Haggerty, President and CEO, Community Solutions; John Kuhn, National Director, Supportive Services for Veteran Families, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs; and Kathryn Monet, Chief Executive Office, National Coalition for Homeless Veterans.
During the forum, the experts discussed the unique challenges facing our veterans population, the lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic, and strategies that have proven effective in combating veterans homelessness. While there has been tremendous success throughout the country reducing veterans homelessness in recent years, removing tens of thousands from the streets, significant work remains to demonstrate our nation’s commitment to our veterans and to ensure those who have served our country and defended our freedom are stably housed.
Reflecting on his long career in public service, Gate House Chairman Brian Montgomery spoke with DS News about the key lessons he has learned over the years.
Montgomery’s remarkable journey, which began driving in a Vice Presidential motorcade in his home state of Texas, took him to the White House, back to Texas to the Governor’s Mansion, and then back again to the White House and, eventually, to HUD and FHA (twice).
Montgomery was with the President of the United States on 9-11. He was at HUD dealing with the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and the housing collapse, and in 202, he was back at HUD addressing the unique challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Reflecting on what he has taken away from these experiences, Montgomery takes pride in getting things done, in working with people on both sides of the aisle, and seeking common ground. When trying to get something accomplished in Washington, he emphasizes, “Don’t ever assume anything, especially in a political environment. You never know how people will react to something, especially if you’re telling them you need their help.”