New-home purchase apps up slightly year-over-year

📣 Welcome back to Mortgage Nuggets! We scour 100+ sources so you don’t have to. Today's newsletter is 674 words, a 2.5-minute read, let’s dive in…

1. Palantir and Moder team up to build AI mortgage ops platform

Palantir and mortgage tech firm Moder are co-building an AI-powered mortgage operations platform, with Freedom Mortgage as the first pilot customer.

The platform uses Palantir's Ontology to create an agentic AI framework that translates guidelines and policies into auditable, configurable rules — covering the full mortgage cycle from origination through servicing.

Early deployments at Freedom Mortgage are already showing faster processing and improved accuracy. It's the latest in a string of Palantir mortgage plays — the company previously partnered with Fannie Mae on fraud detection and powered Better's Tinman Marketplace back in 2022.

Related: What Does Palantir Actually Do?

2. PHH Mortgage is now Onity Mortgage

Florida-based Onity Group has rebranded its flagship mortgage subsidiary PHH Mortgage as Onity Mortgage, completing a brand consolidation that also pulls Liberty Reverse Mortgage under the Onity name.

The company is coming off a strong year — record profit of $185.4 million in 2025, $24.2 billion in origination volume (42% growth), and a servicing portfolio of $153.6 billion. It's been leaning into forward mortgages and non-QM while winding down its reverse mortgage presence after agreeing to sell Liberty's $9.6 billion in reverse MSRs to Finance of America.

Formerly known as Ocwen Financial, Onity has been on a multi-year makeover — new name, new tech stack, and now a unified brand across its mortgage platforms.

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3. More Nuggets

📊 Fannie, Freddie place large bids for mortgage-backed securities. (FXLeaders)

⚖️ Balance Homes updates co-ownership program with fee rebates, counseling. (HousingWire)

💰 Unsolicited offer disrupts UWM–Two Harbors merger, $25.4M fee looms. (NMP)

4. New-home purchase apps up slightly year-over-year

MBA's Builder Application Survey showed new-home purchase mortgage applications up 0.9% from a year ago in February, though down 1% from January. Estimated new single-family home sales came in at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 641,000 units — off 3.3% from January's pace.

MBA's Joel Kan pointed to macro uncertainty and a softening job market as drags on demand, with some Sun Belt markets showing early signs of cooling as inventory builds up.

FHA loans made up 35% of new-home applications, a sign that entry-level and first-time buyers are still active but rate-sensitive. Average loan size ticked down slightly to $383,570.

5. Ex-LOs sue Stockton Mortgage over alleged personal email access

Two former loan officers, Christopher and Ashley Hoehn, are suing Stockton Mortgage in federal court claiming the company illegally accessed their personal Gmail accounts — even after they left the company and returned their laptops.

The kicker: Stockton allegedly used those emails as exhibits in a separate lawsuit it filed against the couple and their new employer, exposing unredacted personal financial information in publicly filed court documents.

Stockton says the emails were captured by a data loss prevention system on company devices before the laptops were returned. The Hoehns say company policy only covered monitoring of Stockton's own systems — not personal Gmail accounts.

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☀️ You’re all caught up. See you on Wednesday!

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