Mortgage Connects an MGIC Podcast

Sneak peek at the 2025 Loan Originators Survey results

MGIC MI

In this episode, MGIC's Alexis Panaro and Liz Keuler share a sneak peek at the 2025 Loan Originators Survey. Hear insights on:

  • Successful marketing tactics
  • Referral partner trends
  • How loan officers help borrowers navigate affordability challenges
  • Originators' goals and their roadblocks to meeting those goals

For a recap of this episode and quick access to related content, including the full Loan Originators Survey report, visit mortgageconnects.com. There you can subscribe for email alerts so you'll be among the first to know about new episodes or other resources, including the full loan originator survey report.


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Alexis Panaro:

Welcome to Mortgage Connects by MGIC, bringing you the latest insights from top mortgage professionals around the industry. I'm your host, Alexis Panaro, and joining me today is my colleague Liz Keuler, the editor for Loan Officer Hub, MGIC site dedicated to insights and tools for loan officers. Here with a sneak peek at the results of our 2025 loan originator survey. Welcome, Liz. Glad to have you join us today. Tell us a little bit about this year's survey.

Liz Keuler:

Thanks, Alexis. I'm glad to be here. I always love talking about the survey because it's interesting to dig into those results year after year. It is the fifth year we surveyed loan originators. We do that in June every year. So this year that was before the rate cuts. Keep that in mind. And the full report will be out in early November, and you'll be able to find it on loanofficerhub.com and mgic.com. But today I'm just going to give you like just taste and hopefully whet your appetite. We had about a thousand originators participate this year. That's the same as it's been for the last couple of years. We mostly have loan officers, just a few branch managers or sales managers in there. And then in terms of uh what types of institutions they work for, 31% are mortgage bankers, 20% work for banks, 17% are brokers, 15% work for community banks, and 14% for credit unions. 66% are over age 50. And uh, in terms of how many loans they did in the prior year in 2024, we had a range of options. 16% of respondents said they did 10 or less loans. On the other end of the spectrum, 15% said they did 76 or more loans in 2024. And then of course we had a mix of tiers in between. So that's who we're talking about when we talk about who took the survey this year.

Alexis Panaro:

Wow, that's a great mix of respondents that filled out the survey. I think we'll get some great insights from that. Now I know the survey is broken out into a few key topics. So let's just go through those one by one. And if you can give me one or two takeaways on each of those topics, I'm going to start with marketing. So, what did you see in the results that interested you when it came to marketing?

Liz Keuler:

Yeah, as always, this is never going to change. Word of mouth or referral, number one by a landslide. Um, 88% of originators selected at selected it as a successful marketing medium. And then coming in kind of a distant second is social media with 34%. I would think it's interesting to see uh those social media results because 25% of respondents said they don't use social media for business at all. And that percentage rises to 49% for originators at credit unions, for example. So there's there's a big contingent of people who aren't using social media really for business, even though we all consider it to be just like part of the landscape. And some folks are having a lot of success with it. So uh I always find that a little bit curious.

Alexis Panaro:

Sounds like referrals are still hugely important to originators. And I know there's a whole section on referrals in the survey. So, what key takeaways did you see there?

Liz Keuler:

So, in coming in again at the these will never change category, real estate agents and past clients remain the most important referral sources for LOs. Um, and we asked a few different questions about how those originators connect with referral partners, what's the most important to real estate agents specifically? Um, and what I noticed this year is there's a slight downward trend across all of the answers to those questions. So we ask those questions with a select all that apply kind of approach. And each answer choice has fallen by around four percentage points from 2024 to 2025. So it's hard to say for sure, but I think this could indicate um like declining confidence in their ability to influence referral partners because I have noticed that frustration sort of echoed in comments throughout the surveys about how difficult it is that, you know, uh real estate agents are not paying attention uh the way they used to.

Alexis Panaro:

Now it's interesting you say that they seem less confident. Uh, do you have any tips on what originators can do to help build up that confidence when it comes to connecting with referral partners?

Liz Keuler:

Yeah, even though the the answers were a little more subdued this year, there are still things that are working for uh for loan originators. They say that service and availability is absolutely the most important part um of working with referral partners, but those are the basics. But there's also a decent percentage who say that educational opportunities can really help. And that's something we can help with actually at MGIC. We have a few different referral partner presentations sort of out of the box that you could give. So if you're a loan originator who's thinking about adding uh referral partner education to your roster of things to try, go to mgic.com and search referrals and see what you can find. Uh, that might be something that you want to do.

Alexis Panaro:

All right. In the next section, we kind of went to the other side of the home buying process. Uh, we asked about challenges for borrowers. So can you give us some insights there?

Liz Keuler:

The top three challenges uh for borrowers according to um loan originators interest rates, mortgage payment affordability, price of homes. So that's not too surprising. Uh, as a mortgage insurance company, of course, we always like to ask about low-down payment mortgages because that's really our wheelhouse. In the 12 months prior to the survey, 64% of LO closed loans were 80% LTV or more on average. Um that's the same result as the previous previous survey showed that there's a big portion of the home buying market out there. We are happy to say that when it comes to those low-down payment options, conventional mortgages with PMI, it's the most popular solution that they offer. 75% said they use it often. And then one thing I noticed that was uh a little bit interesting is that originators uh in that top tier who are doing 76 loans or more in the previous year, they were more likely to say they use down payment assists assistance often, uh 55% versus 44%. So um sometimes I think that could be a little surprising because there's a reputation for down payment assistance is maybe taking more time, but uh clearly originators are finding that to be a useful thing in their toolkit.

Alexis Panaro:

And successful loan officers, it seems if they're doing more than 76 years in a year. Yep, that's right. Well, honestly, I'm not surprised that down payment assistance has become more popular given all the challenges that borrowers face, especially first-time home buyers in today's market, totally. Now we ended this survey with asking about originators' goals. So, what were their goals kind of throughout 2025, where they expected to be at the end of 2025? I know we asked this as an open-ended question. So, what trends were apparent when you looked through all of those answers? I did actually, I read every one of those answers.

Liz Keuler:

I want everybody to know it is very interesting. Um, a quarter of respondents shared like a specific loan or production amount goal, and we were able to kind of split those out and crunch those numbers. The average production goal in dollars, 25 million. The average production goal in units was 54 loans. Um, those goals are a little higher than the goals originators shared in 2024, the year before. And I saw that 47% of respondents said they expected their production to be slightly or significantly higher at the end of 2025 than it was in 2024. So there's there's some signs of optimism there. We also asked about major roadblocks to meeting their goals, and many of those answers focused on the challenges of the market, you know, including interest rates. Um, but a decent number of loan originators wrote about internal factors. So their own time management, their own motivation, how they get work done, how they approach their work. So I did think it was interesting that some of them are turning inward to identify that there are things that they can do differently in how they approach the work that's different than just uh what's out there in the market.

Alexis Panaro:

Awesome. Well, Liz, thank you so much for stopping in today and giving us that quick sneak peek at the latest loan originator survey. That brings us to the end of this Mortgage Connects episode. So for a recap of this episode and quick access to related content, visit mortgageconnects.com. There you can subscribe for email alerts so you'll be among the first to know about new episodes or other resources, including the full loan originator survey report. Thanks for tuning in.