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Mortgage origination still costs $11,898 per loan, Freddie Mac data shows

Freddie Mac data cited by HousingWire shows personnel make up 67% of origination costs, leaving manual steps a persistent driver even after years of “digital mortgage” spending.

Reported · Written up by our desk · Mortgages

HousingWire cites Freddie Mac data suggesting the industry spends $11,898 to originate a single mortgage, up from an average of $7,903 since 2008, implying costs rose by 50% during the so-called digital mortgage era.

The analysis points to personnel-heavy workflows, duplicative systems, and manual underwriting steps as major contributors, including retyping numbers across platforms that ultimately feed into the pricing paid by borrowers.

Freddie Mac’s study attributes two-thirds, or 67%, of the cost of a loan to personnel expense, even after significant software investment.

HousingWire argues that the current setup leaves valuable guideline and edge-case knowledge concentrated in loan processing staff, while software teams often build tools based on secondhand descriptions, and it highlights that underwriting remains at least partly manual despite automation gains.

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