TheMReport — News and strategies for the evolving mortgage marketplace.
Issue link: http://digital.themreport.com/i/81279
COVER STORY By Ryan Schuette OUSES ING H analysts and economists are cautiously leaking that a recovery for one of the nation's most important sectors may just be around the corner. ousing finally seems to be on the mend—or so some say. Four years after the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, superstars we profile in our September cover story, called housing one of the few "bright spots" in an otherwise slow-moving recovery. He cited boosts in home sales by 9 percent and single-family housing starts by 20 percent. Still, politicians from both sides of the aisle are hedging Fannie Mae Chief Economist Doug Duncan, one of the their bets, preferring to use the economy like a 5-foot-by- 5-foot headboard to whack each other over the heads in a general-election year, maybe not unlike kids playing whack- a-mole in the Roman coliseum. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney rarely fails to take aim at the unemployment rate, currently towering at 8.3 percent, with blame aplenty to spare for President Barack Obama. The commander-in-chief meanwhile ties his rival to spotty tax records, slash-and-burn job tactics while with Bain Capital, and the 1 percent (a not-so-spurious claim, perhaps, since Zillow reports that his Republican challenger currently owns three mansions). Not surprisingly, then, housing drifts largely by the wayside, even in the face of a credible recovery. And that's why we thought you deserved a better look at all sides of the housing landscape—and the 10 brightest, most successful thought leaders and game-changers set to shape it. Who made the cut? Not all of them are people you'd expect to see on a shortlist. Sure, there are always public policy chiefs like Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) Acting Director Edward DeMarco, a hitherto career bureaucrat, according to crit- ics, who keeps home values down—and a true recovery far away—by denying principal reductions for homeowners with underwater mortgages. But there's also Lisa Whitaker, the first female CEO of an Ithaca, New York-based credit union with roughly $800 million on the books—and 26.4 percent of the share in its mortgage marketplace, according to CreditUnions.com. Let's start with the top five people we think deserve more than a penny for your thoughts next year. THE M REPORT | 23