Chapter 29 — Further Reading

Pricing is the most perishable material in this book. Almost everything below is a source you go back to, not a document you read once — the whole point of the chapter is that the structure is stable and the values are not.

If you read only one thing

Your own lender's current rate sheet, all of it, including the adjustment pages at the back.

Not a summary of it. The actual sheet, today's, front to back — every product block, the loan amount bands, the lock period table, the extension schedule, the price cap, and every LLPA and adjuster page your lender publishes. Most loan officers read the first page for years and never open pages nine through eleven, which is where the answer to almost every pricing question they have actually lives.

Do it once with a highlighter and a file in front of you. Build one real quote by hand, from the base price, and check it against the pricing engine. When the two agree, you can price a loan. That single exercise is worth more than every article ever written about mortgage rates.

Tier 1 — Verified canonical

• Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) — the conservator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the supervisor of their pricing framework. FHFA's announcements on single-family pricing, and its Request for Input on the Enterprise single-family pricing framework, are the primary record of the 2022–2023 changes discussed in case study 1.

• Fannie Mae Selling Guide and the Loan-Level Price Adjustment Matrix published with it — the authoritative source for conventional pricing adjustments delivered to Fannie Mae. Free, public, continuously updated. The matrix is the document this chapter's Figure 29.2 is a constructed imitation of; go read the real one.

• Freddie Mac Seller/Servicer Guide and its Loan-Level Price Adjustment schedules — the parallel authority for loans delivered to Freddie Mac. The two are similar in structure and are not identical, which is itself worth seeing.

• Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey (PMMS) — the weekly public series on average mortgage rates, running back to 1971. The single best source for what the rate environment actually did in any given period, and the one to check before repeating anything you have read about "historic" rate moves.

• Truth in Lending Act (TILA) and Regulation Z, and the TILA-RESPA Integrated Disclosure (TRID) rule — how points, credits, and the origination charge are disclosed, and the tolerance rules that govern what happens when a price changes after the Loan Estimate. Chapters 22 and 24 work this material; the regulations themselves are the authority.

• The Loan Originator Compensation rule (Regulation Z) — the rule that ended yield spread premium in the form it previously took, and the reason an originator's compensation may not vary with the terms of the transaction. Chapter 26 covers it in full.

• Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) and Regulation B, and the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) and Regulation C — the fair lending framework within which pricing exceptions and rate spread reporting sit.

• Ginnie Mae — for the parallel structure on government loans, including the mechanics of pooling FHA, VA, and USDA loans, which price on a different set of grids entirely.

Tier 2 — Attributed, specifics unverified or perishable

• Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) research and public comment — the trade association's reporting on origination cost per loan, production margins, and industry volume is the standard reference for the questions in §29.9. Every figure in it is a point-in-time measurement; use it for magnitude and trend, never as a permanent fact. MBA's public comment on the proposed DTI-based upfront fee is part of the case study 1 record.

• Your lender's secondary marketing desk. Genuinely: ask. Most desks will happily spend twenty minutes explaining how they build the sheet, and almost nobody asks. It is the fastest available education in this chapter's material and it will change how you read your own pricing forever.

• Guarantee fees. FHFA publishes an annual report on the enterprises' single-family guarantee fees. The aggregate figures are public; per-lender pricing is negotiated and is not. Any specific g-fee you see quoted — including the illustrative one in §29.1 — should be treated as illustrative.

• Mortgage insurance rate cards. Priced separately from the rate sheet, revised on their own schedule, and required on this file at 95% LTV. Chapter 16 owns the subject; the current cards come from the MI companies directly.

• Product and pricing engine vendors' documentation. If your shop runs a PPE, its help documentation will tell you exactly which fields drive which adjustments — which is the fastest way to learn what your engine can and cannot see about a file.

• TBA market commentary and MBS pricing services. Useful for watching the coupon your loans deliver into, and for understanding what "the six is down eight ticks" means when you hear it. Treat any specific level as stale the moment you read it.

Tier 3 — Illustrative and constructed (this book)

Everything in this chapter that carries a number:

• The Linden Street file — \$365,750 at 6.625% with 0.500 discount point, 95.00% LTV, 706 representative score, 30-day lock. Constructed throughout.
• Figure 29.1, the rate sheet page and its base price column — constructed teaching example, modeled on the structure of a lender rate sheet. Not current pricing.
• Figure 29.2, the credit score / LTV matrix — constructed teaching grid, modeled on the structure of published LLPA matrices. The published grids are revised periodically and were substantially restructured in 2023. Not current pricing.
• The lock period adjustment table (§29.5), the price waterfall (§29.1), the pricing engine screen (§29.8), the guarantee fee and servicing figures, the margin and hedge reserve, and the repricing example on the \$280,000 file (§29.10) — all constructed.
• The pipeline composites in case study 2 — constructed from documented industry patterns, not drawn from any specific company.

The rule that governs all of it: learn the structure here, look up the values at the source, and never quote a grid value you have not verified today.