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As rising mortgage rates and fierce competition for homebuyers helped mortgage brokers grow their market share in 2022, they also worked behind the scenes to grow their influence with politicians and policymakers by boosting spending on lobbying and political campaigns.
The Association of Independent Mortgage Experts (AIME), a trade group representing mortgage brokers that claims more than 65,000 members, more than doubled its spending on federal lobbying in 2022.
AIME also launched a political action committee (PAC) in July that’s raised more than $350,000 from executives at lenders including United Wholesale Mortgage (UWM), which surpassed Rocket Mortgage this year as the nation’s largest provider of home loans.
So far, AIME’s Broker Action Coalition Political Action Committee (BACPAC) hasn’t doled out much of the money that it’s raised, making just $25,000 in contributions to date.
But AIME spent $170,000 on lobbying in Washington, D.C. during the first nine months of 2022, according to an analysis by OpenSecrets.org. That’s a drop in the bucket compared to the $96.9 million in spending by the real estate industry as a whole during the same period, but represents a 112 percent increase from the $80,000 AIME spent lobbying in all of 2021.
A win in Florida with an eye on other states
As the year drew to a close, AIME and UWM took credit for “a huge victory for independent mortgage brokers” — rule changes allowing mortgage brokers in Florida to offer access to a state-run down payment assistance program, the Florida Hometown Heroes Housing Program.
The Hometown Heroes program — which provides up to $25,000 in down payment assistance to teachers, healthcare workers, police officers, firefighters and other…