Amir Nurani (pictured top), broker-owner at Left Coast Leaders in San Diego, said the numbers are already pointing in one direction. Originator licenses are renewed every year, which makes the headcount easy to track, and he expects to see that number decline.
“I think we are going to see a minimum of a 10% decline in renewed licenses for mortgages,” Nurani told Mortgage Professional America. “The volume is still contracted, and I think this is the normal part of the cycle. The cycle for mortgages is always the same. When rates drop, every lender in the United States starts a hiring frenzy. Then rates start going up, lenders go to layoffs, originators stop renewing their licenses, and you start to see a downtrend.”
AI-driven downsizing
Nurani said the decline is not just about demand. AI is already compressing the workload that used to justify larger originator teams, and if every originator can handle twice the volume with demand staying flat, the math points to fewer originators.
He noted that the same dynamic is playing out across financial services. Last week, Visa announced it was cutting 7% of its staff. Earlier this week, Zillow and Google announced additional layoffs of their own.
“AI is already hitting white-collar jobs,” he said. “Mortgage is not insulated from these types of shifts. AI expands the reach of the originator, but at some point it hits the demand cap. If it took 100 originators to meet the demand in a certain environment, and now every originator can do 2x the volume with demand staying static, the natural order of things is going to reduce that headcount.”
