Episode 14: Diego Sanchez, President of HW Media

In this episode of Mortgage Tech Intelligence, host Dee Khullar sits down with Diego Sanchez, President of HousingWire Media, fresh off HousingWire's third annual AI Summit, to discuss how artificial intelligence is moving from experimentation to measurable business results across mortgage, real estate, and home building. Diego shares why the gap between AI hype and real ROI has narrowed over the past year, with AI now driving gains across the entire housing ecosystem rather than isolated pockets like servicing.

The conversation explores why the "harness" around AI, proprietary data, governance, and workflow guardrails, matters as much as the model itself, and why it's key to using the technology safely and effectively. Diego and Dee also discuss the rise of AI-informed borrowers and shopping agents, the coming "flight to quality" as AI increasingly directs referrals to top-performing loan officers and real estate agents, and how mortgage organizations may evolve into a "barbell" structure, with production and technology as the heavy ends and a thinner middle as AI absorbs more processing and underwriting work. Diego closes with predictions for the year ahead, including continued industry consolidation and the recent launch of HousingWire Intelligence, a new data and AI-powered platform for the housing market.

Whether you're a mortgage executive, technology leader, or industry analyst, this episode offers a grounded look at where AI adoption in housing stands today, and where it's headed next.

About Diego Sanchez
Diego Sanchez is President of HousingWire Media, where he oversees the company's newsroom, events, and data and intelligence products across mortgage, real estate, and housing. He plays a central role in HousingWire's flagship events, including the AI Summit and the upcoming Mortgage Banking Summit, and has helped lead the company's expansion into AI-powered content and market data through the recent launch of HousingWire Intelligence.

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MTI Intro

Intro 0:00

Welcome to Mortgage Tech Intelligence, the podcast that dives into the latest in mortgage technology brought to you by Blue Sage Solutions. For more resources and insights, visit Bluesage Solutions.com. Now let's get started with your host, Ed Furby.

Dee Khullar 0:17

Okay, welcome to Mortgage Tech Intelligence, the podcast from Blue Sage Solutions, where we talk with leaders across the mortgage technology and financial services about trends shaping the future of lending. I'm Dee Khullar, head of marketing at Blue Sage, and I'm joined today by Diego Sanchez, president of HousingWire Media. Welcome, Diego.

Diego Sanchez 0:38

So glad to be on your show again. Really fun to chat with you about what's happening in mortgage tech.

Dee Khullar 0:46

Yeah. And um, you know, HousingWire recently hosted the third annual AI summit, bringing together leaders across from mortgage, real estate, technology, and housing to move the AI conversation from experimentation towards more practical applications and business results. And I actually had the opportunity to attend the summit myself, which was fabulous again. Um, and you know, there was a lot to unpack. So rather than simply talk about AI at a high level, I wanted to kind of bring you in and, you know, dig in a little bit deeper on what you heard, the trends, anything that surprised you, and what mortgage leaders are really paying attention to next. So with that, um, we'll get started. Um, you know, I think you just wrapped up the summit, bringing together everybody. What surprised you the most and where did you see the biggest gap between AI hype and real business value?

Diego Sanchez 1:42

Yeah, it's a great question. Uh, you know,

Introduction to the AI Summit and Industry Trends

Diego Sanchez 1:45

I really saw that gap close this year. Uh so what I mean by that is when we first did, when we did the first AI summit uh in 2024, it was uh I felt like the content was much more speculative. It was like this is what we could do. Um, here's some experiments that we're doing internally in you know a small part of the company.

Dee Khullar 2:13

Yeah.

Diego Sanchez 2:13

Um and so, you know, like I said, that felt very speculative. In the second AI summit, you know, it was starting to become more tangible, but I felt like the tangible use cases were very focused. And a lot of it was in mortgage servicing. Yeah, a lot of servicing use cases, but not much in origination or in other parts of the housing ecosystem like real estate and home building. And so this year, it really felt like it's coming together and really getting integrated in all parts of mortgage organizations, real estate organizations, home building organizations, the entire ecosystem is using this technology to improve every part of the process. And so it it felt like we were closing that gap quite a bit over the past year between, you know, the buzziness and the hype and the actual reality of tangible and practical ROI that people are experiencing from the technology.

Dee Khullar 3:19

Yeah, I would have to agree with that. I think it felt like, at least because I've I've uh attended all of them from the beginning, this one felt like it was very holistic for me, which was great. And I loved hearing kind of the real estate and the other angles

Enhancing Customer Experience and Reducing Friction in Home Buying

Dee Khullar 3:35

because I think there's a lot of opportunities for us in the lending side to sort of listen and see what are other areas and how are they innovating and using AI. Um, I completely agree.

Diego Sanchez 3:46

Yeah, you know, the ultimately we're all serving uh the home buyer and the home seller, right? And we want to improve their experience going through this, you know, what has historically been a very challenging and emotional process. And I don't think you're ever gonna take all the challenge and emotion out of it. It's for most people the biggest purchase or transaction that they're ever gonna experience in their family. Um, and so it's gonna be, it's always gonna be a big deal. But if we can take, you know, some of that friction and challenge out of the process, you know, it's already it's already so challenging from an emotional perspective. But you know, why add that added frustration of like having to sign a thousand different places in a thousand different places, having to sit in a room for for three or four hours while people are going through large stacks of paperwork?

Dee Khullar 4:46

You're bringing back memories of what I bought my personal home.

Diego Sanchez 4:51

Why are we doing this to to folks who are already going through a very emotional and challenging experience? If we can take some of that friction out of the process, um, you know, I think it's it's a it's a pretty big victory.

Dee Khullar 5:02

Yeah. No, and I think one of the other things that came through in the summit was, you know, that simply not just having access to a powerful AI, but um also having kind of what you put around it and that matters. One of the fascinating ideas, I think, was that real value may not just be in the models itself, but the harness, air quotes, harness that you have around it, proprietary data, industry context, workflows, guardrails, you know, is what makes AI useful. So, with that,

The Importance of Data Governance

Dee Khullar 5:35

you know, how shall that change the way that lenders think about their tech strategy and the partners that they choose?

Diego Sanchez 5:44

Yeah, it's a really, really good question. And that's the first time I had used that, I'd heard that terminology of of the harness. Uh it it was it was really interesting. You know, you know, I I've seen um uh harnesses, you know, utilized. You know, we have we have them in in in housing wire because you know, we're we're very AI forward, um, but we want to do it safely and with the proper governance because it, you know, as we've seen um in the news, it's very easy to like delete an entire database.

Dee Khullar 6:19

Yeah.

Diego Sanchez 6:19

Uh you know, with without the proper safeguards. It's very easy to spend a significant amount of money with the push of a button.

Dee Khullar 6:27

Yeah.

Diego Sanchez 6:28

It's very easy to expose sensitive personal information, um, you know, without meaning to. Um uh and these are just some of the you know, sort of terrifying uh potential

Building a Corporate Platform for AI Governance

Diego Sanchez 6:41

outcomes of using AI and other technology without the proper harness in place. Um and so um, you know, I think it's a really important concept. Uh I do think it makes a lot of sense for companies to have a platform in place, uh and I'm agnostic about what that platform is, but a corporate platform for enabling employee access to these different models. Um, you know, I think some of the danger starts to come in when you have employees loading company information into their own cloud or their own Chat GPT or their own Gemini or whatever platform they're using. Um, and so having a corporate way to access these different models uh makes a ton of sense to me and allows for some of the governance uh to be put in place that I think is is necessary.

Dee Khullar 7:36

Yeah, no, I I completely agree. I mean, we at Blue Sage also have our own sanctioned area. It's an enterprise version. We all use the same platform. Um, you know, I think you're right, about a year, year and a half ago, we were all kind of using whatever. And it was like, whoa, whoa, whoa. I think having those guardrails in place, I think for any company, um, is is critical, right, for the safety. And and you can't sometimes afford a breach of security and the sharing of data, etc. So um I think it's absolutely I'm even seeing, you know, on the lender side, I'm seeing new executive roles come up, right? Head of AI and or something around that where they're looking at it holistically, not just how does AI help influence the product and mature the product that they're selling to their customers, but how are they using it and implementing it and executing it internally within the culture of their own organization? Um, so that's been really great to see that as well. And while lenders are, you know, building AI to better serve consumers, one of the most interesting conversations at the summit was really flip that idea around a little bit. I'd say, you know, there was a proactive discussion about um the rise of AI-informed borrowers. We talked about that earlier, right? You said you're right, we are all in the business of, you know, consumers, getting consumers, borrowers into homes. And, you know, I think they're becoming more savvy, more educated. Um,

The Rise of AI Agents in Consumer Interactions

Dee Khullar 9:07

you know, this agent experience, the idea that lenders may soon interact with an AI agent, you know, and acting on the consumer's behalf. Like, how quickly do you see that developing from your perspective?

Diego Sanchez 9:19

Yeah, I mean, I I I think it could be pretty fast. Uh, that was a pretty fascinating conversation. Uh, I mean, there it was across several sessions, but there was one that I moderated um with the CEO of Lower, Dan Snyder, um, and the the CEO of House Canary, Chris Rediger. And um, they were talking about, I mean, I asked them, you know, what do you think the the front door is to the to the home buying process in a couple of years? And they both thought that uh AI agents would take more and more of a role in in discovery, you know, finding that real estate agent that's gonna best serve you, and then getting the best deal on your mortgage if if you need financing for the transaction. And so I think we're gonna have to get used to pretty quickly, you know, sort of like shopping agents. Yeah. You know, that that ideal property, you know, maybe the um the potential home buyer says, you know, I want to be in a neighborhood that's got good schools and where um, you know, the home prices are in this range. I I want, you know, uh more than four bedrooms, more than three baths, um, and you know, I don't want it to be a very noisy neighborhood. You know, they're gonna put in all these qualifications that uh, you know, um AI can really help in terms of sorting and going out there and looking. I mean, there's at least four portals of note out there that uh you you have to look at if you want to see everything that's out there. You know, why not aggregate all of that into into one experience, into one conversation, right? Um so I I you know I I think it makes a lot of sense that this could happen. Um, and you know, especially if there's a decent range in available rates and you know potential borrowers want to shop, you know, around you know, price and service and speed to close, you know, why not have that be part of a conversation that you're having with your home buying agent, AI agent.

Dee Khullar 11:36

Um exactly, exactly.

Diego Sanchez 11:41

Um and so you know, AI agents are gonna be recommending real estate agents um and LOs. And I think it's it's already it's definitely already happening, but I think it will happen more and more over the next couple of years uh because the this pace of innovation is it's just so fast and it's crazy to see how things have changed and how much they have changed from just a year ago, our second AI summit uh to the AI summit this year. It really the the the progress is is I I don't think there's any other word for it, but but spectacular. Like it's just spectacular progress.

Dee Khullar 12:18

No, I completely agree. I think, you know, um it's sort of like when the internet came out, but the internet feels like it got adopted slower than AI, right? Um, but you know, I think it's it's absolutely it feels way slower. Yeah, yeah. And I agree with you.

Diego Sanchez 12:35

I think it feels feels way, oh no, after you.

Dee Khullar 12:37

No, no, um, I was gonna say it does feel

The Exponential Progress of AI in Mortgage

Dee Khullar 12:40

slow, like the internet adoption was slower. AI adoption is like this lightning fast speed. All of a sudden, everybody woke up and said, Whoa, look at this. And what's cool is I think it really helps the consumers find what they need and want. But ultimately, we go back to it's still a personal, emotional process. Ultimately, a real estate agent and a loan officer will come into the play and will come in to help support the consumer. We're not looking to replace those roles and functions, you know, completely, right? Um, from a consumer standpoint. I think they're still very much needed. They just can come further down. And that way the agent and the LO that gets assigned or that gets, you know, sort of introduced to the borrower, they kind of already are preset. It's already a match in a way, right? Um, and you they kind of can have a better experience and provide better service.

Diego Sanchez 13:35

So I think it opens up Go ahead. You better I think it opens up a ton of opportunity for quality real estate agents and load originators. And the reason I say that, you know, if you look at the last couple of years, you know, it's been a challenging housing market for really for four years now. Um

The Flight to Quality in Mortgage Professionals

Diego Sanchez 13:55

and there has been a real flight to quality during these challenging years. You know, folks want to work with full-time professionals who can give them the best advice, you know, whether that's real estate advice or mortgage advice. And I think that uh AI will accelerate this trend. You know, the folks who are are um the best at what they do, you know, and whether that's the best on a on a certain zip code uh or the best at a certain mortgage product, they're gonna rise to the top when it comes to the recommendations that AR AI is gonna make about real estate agents and loan originators. And so I think we're gonna see that flight to quality accelerate. Um, and uh and and real estate agents and LOs that want to stay in the game need to be ready for that. Um I think to your point, there's always room for quality human advice when it comes to the biggest transaction that most families will ever undertake.

Dee Khullar 14:56

Yes, I completely agree. So now let's move a little bit from consumer side to the technology mortgage professional side and sort of um around the concept of doing to reviewing. And so I'll talk a little bit about that to tee up the question. One

The Future of LOS: From Doing to Reviewing

Dee Khullar 15:13

of the sessions described the future of LOS as moving from doing to reviewing, with AI preparing most of the work that a mortgage professional would focus on. Now they would start focusing only on exceptions, decisions, and relationships. Do you agree with that as to where the industry is headed?

Diego Sanchez 15:31

I I do. Uh I wholeheartedly agree with that. Uh, and I think that um more a lot of mortgage companies um uh and actually we're gonna talk we're gonna talk about this quite a bit. Uh you know, our next event is the mortgage banking summit coming up on October 1st. And one of our sessions is um the mortgage organization after AI. Um and and and so, you know, I I really pretty strongly believe that um mortgage companies are gonna um uh be a barbell. Uh and and and one of the weights um is gonna be you know sales and production, right? The people who are out there giving the advice um and and and selling mortgage products. Uh the other weight in the barbell is gonna be technology, the technology team that is building and revamping processes end-to-end. Um and I think the middle is gonna be fairly thin. Uh in the middle um uh you know, uh uh processing, underwriting, closing, all the stuff that, you know, you know, is is operations oriented. And there are several companies that have already gone there, um, that have already created that barbell. Um and and so you know, I think folks need to be prepared for a day where you know there's very few exceptions that AI can't handle, right? Yeah, um yeah, and uh and and and there's very few processing issues that AI can't handle. Um and uh and so I think that like, yes, absolutely, I think we're heading towards a bar towards barbell organizations.

Dee Khullar 17:22

Oh, I love that analogy. I could visualize it and see it. And it's not saying like you still need the bar. Like you can't, you're not gonna get rid of the bar. 100% still need the bar. Underwriters are not going away. No, they're not going away.

Diego Sanchez 17:35

They really aren't. And and but and this and the things that are gonna be left for them are gonna be the really hairy stuff. And so you need really good people in that bar.

Dee Khullar 17:45

Yeah. The quality of the underwriters are gonna go up, right? But they'll have technology like AI backing them up, supporting them, and you know, helping them just be able to focus on the hairy stuff, the heavy stuff. Now I love that analogy. Um, of course, you know, being technically capable of doing something with AI and successfully deploying it across an organization are two different things. You know, for all the excitement around AI, adoption, governance, trust come up repeatedly at the summit. I heard it over and over. Um, what are the organizations getting right that are doing AI correctly? Um, you know, what are they kind of doing that you're seeing?

Diego Sanchez 18:31

You know, I I heard several examples that when I heard them, uh they seemed counter counterintuitive to me, but in in thinking about them, they make sense. It feels like the ones that are doing it right aren't trying to boil the earth or boil, you know, boil the ocean, I think is the right expression, um, with you know, thousands and thousands of different experiments across all the employees in an organization. They are picking their battles and they're testing in in small areas, small pockets, and empowering people in small pockets and teams, doing those testing and then investing and doubling down in the things that are working and expanding from there. Um, and so I just heard, I feel like I heard that a half dozen times, you know, that from organizations that, you know, we think seem very successful when it comes to rolling out AI. They're not spreading it to everybody right away. They're creating these tangible and successful experiments that they're then doubling down on.

Dee Khullar 19:38

Yeah, and they're iterating, right? It's not just one and done. They're continuing to iterate and they're comfortable doing that, which is great. Um, that's how I think technology should be looked at in an organization. It's never, it's like, you know, as a marketer, it's like a website is never done, right? Um it's oh, you're always iterating and improving on it and optimizing it. Um, we've talked a lot about where things stand today. Let's kind of shift our gears a little bit to look ahead.

Exponential Growth and Industry Consolidation

Dee Khullar 20:05

You know, if we have this conversation again next year, which I hope to do, um, what do you think will have changed the most if you look at your crystal ball? What feels experimental today? And what do you expect will simply just be a part of the mortgage process uh a year from now?

Diego Sanchez 20:21

Yeah. Um, and and I would have gotten this totally wrong if you asked me this question after the second AI summit. I like again, the the progress between last year and this year has been spectacular. And it feels like that progress is exponential, right? So it like it keeps getting faster and faster, um, which is a little bit scary, but also like I think really exciting. Um, and so you know, one of the things that I expect is that um, you know, there are uh AI haves and and have nots. Um and so it's it's not inexpensive to build that barbell organization, especially that tech team that you need um to, you know, to improve all these processes um and to AI enable your organization. Uh and so I do think we will continue to see a lot of consolidation across mortgage and real estate and home building. Um, that is a trend that we've been seeing across all these verticals for several years now. Um and I think it will accelerate uh this fall and and into the spring. Um not only because of technology, you know, it also continues to be a difficult housing market, I think, for longer than way longer than anybody uh expected. Um and so um, you know, I think at the next AI summit uh in August of 2027, um there there will be fewer participating companies because there will be consolidation between uh here and here. and then um and so that's that's that's one thing that I expect um and then I also expect um you know more and more companies to move towards this barbell model uh over the next year um who are able to do that who have the the capital to to make that change um and so um so I think that'll be interesting to watch um and then um you know we're we're just seeing um the big servicing companies um you know uh continuing to take advantage of this customer life cycle right um and using um AI and other technology to recapture um the loans that are in their in their portfolio um and so I think what that does is it continues to make refi business more challenging for folks that don't have those books. Um so yeah those are some of the things that I'm expecting to to see over the next year.

Dee Khullar 23:04

I think those are all very well thought out and very logical and I'm excited to see a year from now effort right because I'm gonna go back and play this back and say were we right or were we wrong? Yeah. But before we kind of put you through our last quickfire round of questions, I did want to obviously give you a chance to kind of share a little bit about what's ahead and HousingWire,

Future Initiatives at HW

Dee Khullar 23:26

what's coming up for your team content-wise development conversations, conferences you mentioned um as well I'd love to to give you the platform to share that a little bit with us.

Diego Sanchez 23:37

Yeah so two two things I'm uh really excited about right now one is our mortgage banking summit which comes up on October 1st back in Dallas, Texas. It should be a really interesting day where we talk about um uh technology, uh MA, um interest rates and mortgage rates um and other you know top themes in mortgage uh and we're gonna have great speakers and it'll be a great room of mostly uh senior executives from mortgage companies um to to network with um so excited about that one uh also want to talk about how housing wire intelligence um we launched housingwire intelligence just last week last Wednesday the 19th nice congratulations yeah super excited about this um it is uh combining a a dashboard with charts and data we have a pretty big proprietary data set now at Housingwire uh and so we're giving our Housingwire intelligence subscribers what we think of as the Bloomberg terminal for housing right you can come to your dashboard you get our news you get data you get insights from all these different charts that you can build uh and you can drill down into housing market data at the national regional state city zip level depending on your business and and what you need from that data um and uh so marrying the news with the data and also by the way layering AI on top of it we have a an AI housing market analyst that has been trained on uh all of our housing market analysis that we've done over the past several years, you know, including by uh our lead analyst Logan Motoshami that AI analyst is available to HousingWire intelligence subscribers. It's a really cool feature inside the platform.

Dee Khullar 25:36

Oh that's great. So you're saying you're not just sharing what the industry is doing but Housingwire is also using AI and creating some great insight solutions for the industry.

Diego Sanchez 25:47

We're all over AI and uh you know it's it it's interesting um I mean we've got a very big newsroom that covers the news across all of housing real estate mortgage home building title appraisal and valuation um we even dip into to multifamily because of that relationship between rental and and for sale um and and so really high quality reporters like Flavia Ferland Nunez and Sarah Woloch um in in mortgage um it but the top writer uh over the last couple months for Housingwire

The Future of AI in Mortgage and Housing

Diego Sanchez 26:27

is Housingwire Automation which is uh our AI agent that um you know notices filings uh SEC filings on Edgar notices press releases and interacts with our newsroom um uh and you know tries to understand from our newsroom and our editors you know whether it's a worthwhile story to to move forward with uh on its you know you know writing it and and having it edited by a human editor or should they should they hand it off to a to a human reporter. But last couple months Housingwire automation has been our top writer uh and that's thoroughly powered by AI. So we're you know we're very invested in AI at Housingwire. We also have this AI analyst inside of HousingWire intelligence um we want to make sure that we are covering everything important that's happening across the entire housing economy um and you know AI is enabling us to do that really effectively I think that sounds so cool.

Dee Khullar 27:32

I'm literally visualizing AI agents sitting at their own desk, having their own space, drinking their own coffee, you know, you know having water cooler talk. I think it's it's fabulous that you're thinking about it and also utilizing and implementing it to help make you guys smarter faster just like all of us. Well Diego this has been a great conversation as always. Thanks for joining and giving us a look not just behind the scenes from what you heard at AI Summit but more importantly what are all the things that this could mean for our mortgage industry moving forward. Thank you everyone for listening and joining us at mortgage with at Mortgage Tech Intelligence. To learn more about Blue Sage we're here to help we modernize mortgage lending I'm D Collar thank you for listening and until next time.

Intro 28:19

Thanks

MTI Outro

Intro 28:20

for listening to Mortgage Tech Intelligence brought to you by Blue Sage Solutions. Catch new episodes every other Thursday and for more ways to elevate your lending game head to bluesage solutions.com keep innovating keep growing and we'll see you next episode