According to the latest Zillow Real Estate Market Report, the housing market is as competitive as ever, moving at record pace. Buyer demand has been strong enough to keep the market moving at a record pace, even after a massive spike in mortgage rates.

Don Layton, the current Senior Industry Fellow at the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University—and former CEO of Freddie Mac—released a new column on the policymaking implications of record-high mortgage origination profits during the pandemic he authored after the release of the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) Annual Mortgage Bankers Performance Report.  Citing the MBA’s report, the “net production income” of mortgage lending firms—a key measure of those firm’s profits—was a record 1.57% in 2020 and 0.82% in 2021. However, this compares to an average, since reporting began in 2008, of just 0.60%.  Putting this another way, mortgage lending profit margins were 262% of the historic average and are still 133% of average in 2021. “That’s an extraordinary increase during...