Appreciate everyone being here today. Got a bunch of questions. I'm gonna go through and go through them. I know last quarter we didn't do a Q&A, and I know people missed that. I'm happy, and hopefully this is valuable to you guys in any way possible about the industry, about UWM. I got a whole variety of types of questions. I'm gonna try not to duplicate and try to put some of them together, but I'll go through and, you know, maybe read off the person's name, read the question, and go through it. If anyone has any follow-up questions, I know I can't take them live this way, but obviously our investor relations team, Blake and everybody else, would will be able to handle your questions and help you with anything you need.
Let's get started, and we'll jump into it right now. First question. I got Doug Harter from BTIG. What is the status of bringing servicing in-house? What is the latest timeline transitioning all servicing to our own platform? First, status of bringing servicing in-house. Is the video on? It's working? It's not. The video is not, but we can hear you. They can hear you. Okay. Yeah. Sorry if you can't see me. I look good today. Hopefully everyone will see the video. My IT people will fix this. Anyways, I'll answer the question without the video for this first one. Anyways, status of bringing servicing in-house. It's going fantastic. We feel really great about where servicing is right now and how it's going.
We have, you know, we have less than 100,000 loans on, all new originations are going on, we've moved a bunch of loans over from Cenlar already. We feel really good about that. The process will be this year. Over the whole year, we'll bring all of our loans in-house. There'll be no sub-servicers by the end of this year, UWM will handle it all. Now, it's going really great. You know, our technology process is going great. We partnered with Black Knight, we partnered with Bilt, we've also built a bunch of stuff ourselves, we feel really good about where that's all going and how it's been going. Our client service has been excellent.
The, all the metrics that people look at are fantastic. We feel really good about that across the board. Servicing in-house is great. The transition, the timeline, that's this year. Hopefully that answers your question, Doug . I know there's some other servicing questions. I'm sure I'll get to them as we go through it.
All right, the next one. Ryan Nash, Goldman Sachs. What are your thoughts on future gain on sale margins? What does competitive landscape look like in a heightened rate environment? Obviously rates went up in March, and they've gone up even more in April. Now you guys can see me. See, I told you I had a good blue suit on today. Rates have went up in March from February.
I think the 10-year finished at 3.95. Seeing rates go up, how does that impact competitive landscape and gain on sale margins? What you'll see is, you know, we're in a really great position from a perspective of margin and competitive position. I feel like the competitive landscape is very competitive right now. Heightened rate environment means obviously purchases more than refi. However, you looked at our first quarter, we did a heck of a job on the refinance side. I guess my answer to you on this, Ryan, will be that, you know, gain on sale margins, I kinda see this range that they're in right now, being the right range. I think that it's gonna continue to be in these levels right now and not significantly higher, not significantly lower.
I actually think there's upside in the margins based on, you know, our margins were pretty strong in the first quarter. I expect it to be in those ranges again in the second quarter. Also if rates come down, you could see margins increase. The competitive landscape, it is very competitive out there right now. We obviously had a great first quarter. You guys saw the numbers and see what we did. First quarter's usually the slowest quarter. Now obviously rate's going up. It changes. The war going on, there's a lot of uncertainty which creates issues obviously in the rate environment. We feel really good about where it's at right now. He, Ryan Nash also asked thoughts on the Knicks winning it all. Obviously he must be a New York Knicks fan.
They have a very, very good team. We obviously just lost to Oklahoma City, who's an amazing team too. It'll be interesting. The East is open. The Knicks have a real good chance. I'm not really cheering for anybody. I'm just watching and learning. Good luck to your Knicks.
Let's go. Next question. Mark DeVries, from Deutsche Bank. What's the strategic value you see in Two Harbors, and what updates can you share of us regarding its progress or impact? Yeah, the Two Harbors thing's out there right now. It's interesting. You know, when we originally went to acquire the company, they have something that's really great. They have a pristine servicing book, a great servicing book.
When we bought the company or originally agreed on the deal before all the work was done, we thought there'd be a lot of synergies also. They had capital markets expertise, maybe some finance expertise, their servicing platform maybe we could learn from. You know, as we went through the due diligence process, we learned that there was a really great servicing book, and we still like that servicing book. We originally put an offer out there. Where that stands now is, like, we don't see as much value in their management team. I think their team members there, when we met some of their people are very good. Their leadership team we were not as impressed with. What's happened since then is they've went out and tried to get another bid, and they did.
Whether it was appropriate or not, we can discuss that at a later point. What's happened is if they would have just engaged with us, We always planned on paying $12. Quite honestly, based on where the stock price went down, I'd rather pay it in cash than in stock 'cause I feel like I'm giving my stock away at a really low price. They never engaged. They just went out to another offer. We made another offer. They just basically ignored it. Now they've, we've made another one and said, "Okay, we'll go to $12," what we originally planned on paying, which I think is maybe $11.95, but you can do the math, based on when the stock was at $5.11 or $5.15 the day we cut the deal, I think.
We still feel really good about that deal. I feel like it's very clear that their management team and their board is, which has had its own issues in the past with their lawsuits and stuff, is maybe playing some games doing things 'cause they realize that we don't see any value for them specifically. It's interesting. You know, they have really great shareholders, which we are excited to bring on to UWM. But their board and their management team doesn't have any value to us, so now they're trying to do anything they can to potentially go with someone else so that they have jobs and sustainability. I think it will play out. We'll see how it shakes out for us. That's the strategic value is their MSR book.
Their shareholders have some value because we think that we've got a chance to know a little of them during that process and feel like they got some really good shareholders, and we'd love them to be UWMC shareholders. Whether they take cash or stock, it does not matter to me. We feel really good about that. For the shareholders at Two Harbors, they obviously would prefer taking $12 in cash or UWM shares than taking $11.30 in cash.
That's obviously gonna play out that way. You know, it's really surprising to see how it is, we'll see how it goes, I feel good about that, we feel good about the strategic value. But it's very clear to us that it's the MSR book, it's the shareholders, and we're not, we don't have any value for their leadership team, which is obviously not what they like to hear.
All right. Mikhail Goberman, sorry if I don't pronounce everyone's name perfectly, from Citizens. How do you foresee the balance between origination income and service income evolving, especially given the post-war reversal of rates seen since end of February? You know, listen, we're in origination. We're the biggest and best originator in the country. We feel great about where we are in origination. You saw an amazing first quarter. We, we've been the number one originator for four straight years, and we'll continue to be the number one wholesale lender for 11 straight years. Origination is our game.
As I bring in servicing in-house, we're gonna have more servicing, and we're gonna continue to retain the servicing. Are we still opportunistic? If someone gives me a bid we believe is more than what the intrinsic value is, I'll sell the servicing. Like, I have those options. Now with the lower cost of servicing by bringing in-house and the better level of service, which will help retention, we feel like we got the best of all of it. How do I see it all balancing? Like, we'll see with the income levels, origination versus servicing, but origination's still our game. We're gonna continue to build out the servicing book.
But I'm always opportunistic, and people call us all the time 'cause, you know, even when I just talked about Two Harbors, some of the servicing book that they have, I called it a pristine servicing book. You know, a lot of that happens to be our old servicing book that we sold them. We feel good about the paper we originate every day and servicing the loans. If someone wants to come offer us a great opportunistic price, we will always look at that. Thank you for the question.
Jason Stewart. Let's see, Jason Stewart for Compass Point. Let me read through. Was there an increased number of high-producing brokers affiliated with UWM during the quarter supporting wholesale channel growth? Good question, Jason. You know, high-producing broker shops affiliated with UWM, I always say the numbers, and it's roughly this, there's 12,500 brokers that work with UWM, and maybe there's 400 or 500 that are not all in with UWM. There's not that many high-producing shops to bring over to UWM.
They're affiliated with UWM. Almost everyone in the market works with UWM. That's why we have almost 50% market share. I think it's 44.7% or 44.8% market share for the year, last year, of the broker channel. Our big focus is grow the channel, help brokers do more, help more originators realize that broker's the place to go, whether they join a broker shop or start their own, and that's been a really big focus.
As the broker channel grows, UWM will grow, even if our market share would happen to go down. I feel great about growing the broker channel, and then are brokers coming over to join UWM? Yes, they are. Every single day, people see the value of what UWM does. I got some actually examples that maybe will come up that I can share because I've been talking about some things recently, you know, with some new ideas that have happened. Now, separately from that, you know, the whole all-in thing with brokers from years ago, you know, one of the biggest adversaries of UWM was a guy named Mike Fawaz at Rocket, who was saying a bunch of things negative about UWM and about what we do and how UWM wasn't best for brokers.
You know, recently that man left his company at Rocket and started a broker shop and called me, and now he's working with UWM. So the biggest anti-UWM, you know, I think he called it the bully shield. He came up with some stuff, whichever. I've got to know him now, and I like the guy. I always respected the guy because he was in the weeds of the business. He started a broker shop and chose to work with UWM and not to work with Rocket. I think that sends enough message. Someone that knows every detail that Rocket's doing and says, He came and learned about UWM and joined a broker or started a broker shop and picked to work with UWM, I think sends the message that there will be more and more big broker shops moving over to UWM.
There aren't that many left out there that don't work with us, but that's an opportunity. The bigger thing is grow the broker channel and continue to grow. That's been very positive, and the broker channel is continuing to be very positive, and we're excited about the growth of the channel. All right, I got a couple. I'm gonna bundle these, so I apologize. I'm not gonna name everyone's name. I got a couple questions on Mia and the AI initiative, so let me just hit on that and kinda combine these questions. Let me see if I'm kinda combining a couple people here and make sure I get it all here together.
Okay, I'll kinda read a couple of these, and I'll talk generally about Mia, but got one person asked about Mia's text messaging capabilities and how has it been going, customer's response to Mia generally, lead time, competitive, like, discuss Mia. Let me give you a Mia update. Mia has been fantastic. It's been almost a year. I rolled it out at UWM LIVE! last year, and it's been amazing. I think the data, and I'll get the exact numbers, but I'll call it roughly, I would say about 100,000 closings, but I think it's closer to, like, 80,000-85,000. Let's call it, you know, in that range of closings over the last year have come from Mia. It's been fantastic.
The Mia numbers, and like I said, I can get the exact numbers, but the last report I saw was so strong with the Mia initiation of refinance opportunity. If you look at our servicing book, people always ask me, "Hey, you have 2% or 3% of the servicing book, but you guys did 12% or 13% of all refinances." Well, Mia is a big part of that. Brokers do such a great job with the consumer up front, consumers want to come back to the broker. The problem was brokers did such an average to below average job, I won't say poor job, of following up with their past clients, that they would just be one and done. They'd do the purchase, they wouldn't talk to them again.
Now with Mia, she's keeping the broker in front of the consumer, when the consumer goes to refinance, they work with the broker, 'cause the brokers offered the better deal anyways. They just didn't know who to call. Mia has been fantastic. Now when she leaves voicemails, she does send a text message out, so that was an initiation that was different. It was just voicemails. So she calls, right now we're seeing the data, I think I gave this data before.
Mia, about 40% of her calls get picked up, which was a bigger number than we expected. 60% leave a voicemail, now we send a text message also. A lot of those call the broker back. Like, "Hey, was that AI or was that real? Was that spam?" "Yeah, it was real. I can save you some money. Let's talk." They do a loan. On 40%, or 16,000 of a 40,000 call day, let's just use that as a day, talk to Mia and have long conversation. I just played one today for the sales, they like, they have two, three, four minute conversations.
Some of them know it's AI and some of them don't know it's AI. It's gotten that good. We send a follow-up email to the broker, "Hey, you have a call scheduled at 3:00 P.M. with Jenny, the borrower," and it's really been successful. We got more things coming out with Mia. I'm gonna continue to enhance it, make it the scale that we're doing it with our AI, IT team has been phenomenal. Like, there's no one in the country, I don't think there's anyone that I know of in any industry, let alone the mortgage business, doing it at this scale that we're doing with Mia.
It's been great. We feel really good about it's gonna get better. You know, next week at UWM LIVE! and beyond, I got some big enhancements to continue to make it better and better and better, it will help brokers win. I think it's a big part of that 2, 3% of the servicing book, 12, 13% of refis. What's that delta? Mia. Brokers are doing a great job. We're doing a better job staying in front of them, it's been very, very successful. Hopefully that I apologize if I didn't answer anyone's specific Mia question, but that kind of combines a couple here.
All right. Let's see. Kyle Joseph. Could you review industry competitor trends, current broker share, and how do you anticipate evolving in the current market? I kind of answered that one, I apologize, let me kinda give it a little bit more, then we'll keep moving. Current broker share I think is about 28%. The mortgage broker market is, you know, brokers do about 28% of the market. You know, just five years ago, I think in 2019 or 2020, it was like 14%-15%, it's almost doubled. It's growing.
Will it double again? Well, we're working on it. We're hoping so, it's obviously going from 14 to 28's harder or easier than going from 28 to 56. You know, our goal is to help brokers be the number 1 overall channel. 50.1% is where we're going to go with the broker channel, and we're on a path to doing that. With that being said, our share has been very steady. You know, it's been over 40% for years now. I think 44.7 or eight, whatever I told you guys earlier, is roughly what it is. We'll call it between 40 and 45 consistently for years now. Never been done in the wholesale channel before, never even close. No one's ever got close to those market share numbers. It's because we provide value, you understand.
It's not because, you know, I'm the best looking guy and people love me. Like, it's because we provide value. We help brokers grow. We help them look good to the real estate agents. We help them do more business, right? We help them make the process easier, and we help them be successful. We train them, we coach them, we give them cool tools to help them win more loans. That's why we're the best and why we're the biggest. We're gonna continue to be the best and the biggest in wholesale and overall, but the key is helping brokers win. As brokers win, UWM wins. The nice part is, like, being the largest lender in the country for four straight years, I only have a chance at 28 out of 100 loans. Think about that.
We're the biggest, we only have a chance at 20 out of 100 loans. Every other lender, the number two, the number three, number four, all those guys, you know, they have access to 100 out of 100 loans they're competing for. I'm not even having a chance at those 72. As that 72 out of 100, the retail channel, goes to 65 or 60 or 50, well, that's just growth for UWM. That's why we're so bullish on the UWM's growth, but also on the broker growth. We're gonna all win together. I think that answers your question, Kyle. You have another one. Well, I guess I kind of answered that. "What is UWM's current pro- share?" I kinda covered that one. Thank you for the question. All right.
I got a couple questions here. I think Ryan, I got a couple ones here tied to Yeah, I'm gonna kinda knock these out together. Expenses. You know, I got a couple questions on, you know, our expenses. You guys saw our expenses went down. The way I look at expenses in general is we've invested a lot. I've been talking about it for years. Now I'm starting to see, you know, the harvesting or the success of those investments, right? Whether you wanna talk about TRAC+ or the investment in free credit reports to help brokers grow, like I can go through a lot of these details. What we're gonna start seeing out is, like, more of a little leveling out of expenses. As you saw, they went down.
I don't, you know, I think our investments are gonna start paying off now, and you're starting to see it already. I think you saw a little in the first quarter, is, you know, we didn't have a great quarter by where I want us to be, but compared to the industry, we had a great quarter. I think we're up, you know, I think last year, first quarter was $32 billion, which was a great quarter, and this year we did about $45 billion. That's significant. Our gain on sale was up and volume is up. You know, year-over-year. Seeing that and then our expenses are flat or down, right? We feel good about where we're at from an expenses perspective. Like I said, I think of them as investments, and I think they're paying off in a really, really positive way.
I feel great about that. I think I mean, I'm trying to see, you know, if I'm hopefully I covered that comment and question enough with that. I think that covers it. Let's see. I got Mikhail, you got another question here. Let me hit this one 'cause, on what are your thoughts of the new VantageScore rating system for borrower credit? Sorry, Mikhail Goberman, I'm just using your question again. Another question you have on a VantageScore. Let me give you thoughts on this, 'cause it's actually interesting. I've got a lot of talk. Kudos to the leadership of FHFA and about rolling out a new way. FICO scores and credit reports have got really expensive, and if you have a competitor in there, now you have options.
Options usually create better outcomes, and that's why wholesale works 'cause brokers have options and they figure out what's best and people like us. What's happened is FICO and Vantage are both now on the top of their game to be the best they can be. There's very few companies that were put on the pilot. We were one of them. I think it got rolled out less than two weeks ago from FHFA Director Bill Pulte, and the support of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. You know, four business days later, Wednesday of last week, we rolled it out, VantageScore. It's been an enormous success, and not for the reasons you might think. Not for, "Hey, you're saving $50 a credit report." That's possible too.
What we're doing is we've got both FICO and VantageScore. We're making sure the borrowers get the best opportunity because they have different models. Vantage looks at it a little differently. If you have a little bit thinner credit, they understand they can add rent and other things in there so more people can qualify, or maybe they qualify with, you know, have a little bit higher score. Vantage, you have to take a 20-point haircut. If the VantageScore is 744, that's equivalent of 724 on FICO. If the FICO score was 719, well, I just got that borrower a better deal, lower LLPAs or a little better opportunity. That's a win for the consumers. This has been a massive thing in five business days.
The amount of emails I've gotten on loans that we've helped brokers win on consumers that have been so grateful and thankful that they can qualify for a home, or they got a better interest rate and lower fees, has been phenomenal. Kudos to FHFA. Kudos to Fannie and Freddie getting it out. We rolled it out with VA today, loans as well, and FHA will be soon. I think the MI companies, the leaders of MI companies like Essent and Enact, they're on it and others were They're coming and like how do we do this? How do we make things better for consumers? VantageScore and FICO By the way, FICO is still great in so many ways. It's not one or the other. It's both are great.
Now can we help consumers in a better way qualify for a mortgage? Can we have better credit profiles? I've been extremely happy with this and the rollout, just to give you guys recognition of what we do and, you know, our IT team. Like, to roll this thing out in four business days and have it work and flawlessly, you know, is obviously a different team than put together the Zoom earlier that wasn't getting my video on earlier. Just kidding for my guys behind me, behind the film. You get my point of, like, they did a heck of a job. They did a heck of a job of getting this thing done, it's out and live, and we're seeing so much success of it on VantageScore.
Congratulations to my IT team, to brokers that are understanding it, and to Fannie and Freddie who said, "Let's go. Let's do this," and FHA, of course, FHFA for leading. Hopefully that answers your question, but, you know, other people don't have it. I think nobody in the country has it, by the way, besides UWM right now because they can't implement it as quick as us. Maybe they'll have it out in May or June. Like, we're rolling with it. We're saving loans, helping loans, giving better deals right now because of Vantage. All right. Let's see. I got a couple questions here on Let's put this. We'll do a Bilt partnership question. There's a couple. Let me try to read a couple of them off and try to answer, but I'll talk about Bilt.
You know, indication of Bilt card relationship increased leads, like, your status partnership with Bilt, infrastructure is in place. Here's how I'll say about Bilt. Bilt, Ankur Jain, the CEO of Bilt, phenomenal CEO, doing great things. Their vision is ridiculously great, it's fantastic. UWM is servicing. UWM is a servicer. We brought servicing in-house. We are controlling everything. What we did is we chose a platform on the front end that was able to provide rewards points to consumers, which has never been done. They don't have to use a credit card. They can use ACH to get a point. It's never been done in our industry. Rewards points for making your mortgage on time. You know what? I mean, you guys are all consumers too. Everyone loves points. You can use points.
It hooks their credit card in there, once again, and they get points. If they get their American Express points, they also get points through Bilt. You can do this and earn points and use it for flights and other things that you wanna use it for. It's really, really cool. Beyond that, the servicing platform is really slick. We built this with them, obviously, 'cause they've never done this before, on the front end for mortgage. It's really cool for consumers. It's a great platform up front. On top of that, Bilt has over 6 million consumers, and, you know, depending on the year, 8%, 10% of them go buy houses. Those are now-curated leads. They're gonna wanna stay on the Bilt platform, and they're gonna work with a mortgage broker. That's a huge opportunity.
We've already had that in pilot. There's some really cool things. There's a concierge service that's really cool that gives our clients, our consumers, which are our brokers consumers, our brokers partners, an amazing platform to get things done and make their life easier. It's really a cool neighborhood experience. It's, it's hard to explain to people that don't understand it. I'm actually Ankur Jain is going to speak at UWM LIVE! next week, so I know a lot of you guys are going to be at UWM LIVE!, so hopefully you'll see him speak and you'll understand it a little better. The vision's going to be awesome. The key is UWM has servicing in-house. We've been the best originator in the country for a long time. Now we're going to be the best servicer because we're focused on it. It's going to help retention for our brokers.
It's gonna make the consumer experience better, there's all these other ancillary benefits, too. It's been a great partnership. It's off. It's launched. It's rolling. It's fully active, and of course, getting better every day like we do with everything at UWM. Because we don't have all 6.7 million consumers on it. We only have the ones that are on it right now, and they're all moving onto it. I've shadowed the team. I spent time with our team, our servicing team. The servicing process has been really great. I know you guys have asked me in the past, "Why don't you do it?" I've always said, you know, "Focus on originations," which I'm still doing. The cost expense will be great on the servicing now you're not outsourcing it anymore.
Better than that, the retention and experience for the consumers and our brokers is gonna be even better. That's really what we're focused on. We're excited about that. Hopefully, that answered the Bilt things. Let me just see. I got all these pages. Make sure if anyone else had a Bilt question that could maybe tie into it. All right. Well, here, I got a couple. Let's see. I got a couple. This is an interesting one. This might take a little bit of time. I'll try to hit all of them together on what do you see in the business for the next three to five years?
I got someone who says, "What's a ten-year horizon?" Someone says, "What's a five-year?" I got someone asking about, how do I think expenses or volume will go over the next three years? I'm gonna kinda combine these and kinda give you my view on our business 'cause we've been spending a lot of time on it. Like, what does the next three to five years look like? I look out, I have three-year goals, but then we also have five-year goals and targets, so that's, I think, 2031.
If we were to say the next five years, here's a high level or high-end thought process on it. I think UWM over the five years from, whatever you wanna call it, 2027, 2028, 2029, 2030, 2031, those five years, we're expecting to do over $1.3 trillion in mortgages. I believe we're gonna do $1.3 trillion or more in that five-year window, that's a big number overall. There might be one year in there with $400 billion. There might be one year in there with $150 billion-$200 billion. I believe that $1.3 trillion is that kinda North Star over the next five years while, and it's important to understand, while my expenses basically staying the same.
With our AI initiative and our technology, the expenses you see today, we'll call it roughly $600 million in the quarter, I think it was 590 or whatever, but you get my point, I expect when I do one point Like, each of these years, that's kind of what we'll see from expense. Think about volume doubling, more than doubling and expenses the same. With that being said, there's another, which really is probably is not accounted for by many of you, outside of the volume and gain on sale margins basically being in those ranges that you see and expenses being flat. On top of that, I see another 20%, almost 25% in other revenue coming into UWM that's starting to happen with some of these ancillary products that we have. They're starting to really pick up steam.
Seeing revenue growth outside of just and it's tied to originations, of course, but outside of just volume and gain on sale or however you want to think about it, there's some of it that's in the gain on sale and some of it that's maybe not, and some opportunities. That's kind of like if I were to say, I know that's high level. I didn't get into the nitty-gritty of some of these questions. Let me just read and make sure. Some of those other revenue sources, some of them, you know, could there be opportunities on TRAC+ that's really taking off? Could there be other opportunities to grow and help consumers while helping brokers and UWM winning? I see $1.3 trillion. I guess I'll summarize it. $1.3 trillion over five years.
I see gain on sale margins basically being in these ranges, maybe slightly higher, we'll call it. Expenses flat or down. It might be down, but I'll call it flat to be clear. At the same time, other revenue tied to some AI initiatives that we have that is actually starting to produce margin and gain on sale while others are producing things that are other revenues, could be pretty cool. That's kinda where I look at that. Hopefully, that helps answer. I think that answered a handful of questions here. Let me look. Yeah. Hopefully that covers it. Obviously, if I didn't answer it exactly, someone wants shorter term or more detail, like I said, Blake Kolo, investor relations team will happy to jump on a call anytime.
You know, Matt Roslin, any of those people you can talk to. All right. Let's see. Let's see. I got Kyle Joseph, another question. Home buyer. Like, how are you thinking the Homebuyers Privacy Protection Act and its potential impacts on the industry competitive environments and overall margin? All right, Kyle, let me answer that question. He's talking about the trigger lead rule. The trigger lead rule, you know, I think about March 4th, I think is the date. It's definitely changed. You know, when a consumer used to pull credit, man, 50 people would call them. Now, it's the servicer, the original lender, original broker, you know, maybe their bank. It's, like, three, four. What it's actually done is change the competitive landscape. Probably a better experience for consumers.
They're not getting 50 calls, that's 1 thing. I think that was the goal of Congress and people that pushed this. You know, on the flip side, you know, the consumers maybe don't get as many options, you know, 'cause, you know, you get offered one thing you don't know any better, and you get offered 6.5% or with $5,000 of fees, and you don't know any better and no one else is offering things, you might pay that when you could've gotten 6.25% with $3,000 of fees by working with a mortgage broker and going to mortgagematchup.com or going somewhere like that. The trigger leads would get more people and make people compete more. From a competitive landscape, I could say, I could argue that that's maybe not as good for the consumer.
The experience is better, but maybe the rates and fees aren't. Once again, if you're only winning on rates and fees, you ain't gonna be around long in this business. That's part of it. Now, I could argue that it actually will increase margins and you might see gain on sale margin increase a little bit because people aren't, you know, lowball, lowball to win a loan because there's not 19 people calling them, you know, in my example. You know, I think it's been good. It's been good overall. I don't have a huge preference one way for it or against it, but I'm just telling you what the results have been. You know, still early, it's only been 60 days or so, since that rule came out, but that's what we're seeing right now.
You know, brokers, our brokers that work with trigger leads, they're just finding other people are buying data now. It's just not trigger leads, it's other forms of buying data. People are still getting leads and so it's still competitive, so I don't want to make it seem like there's, it's just you go to one and you don't hear anything, but it's a lot less. It's changed the competitive environment on that. Hopefully that answers your question, Kyle. Let's see. Hopefully this format's good for you. I feel like we've gone through a lot of questions. Let's see. Here's one. A couple have asked a little bit about debt ratios, so let me go through. Why did secure debt go up relative to other aspects of the balance sheet?
You know, how do we look at the debt ratio? Obviously we look at the debt ratios every day. We're very focused on them. The debt ratios were really good a couple of years ago and the volume and the business wasn't as good. Now I think the business is really good and the debt ratios aren't as good as we'd like. At the same time, some of those debt ratios are a little bit of an anomaly based on, and same thing with the liquidity number, based on some trades we have out there to help balance the MSR book. That sometimes goes up and down, and it, at the end of the quarter was up, but it's already come down a little bit now.
Those things change and fluctuate a little bit, which kind of throws those ratios off a little bit from what you're looking at. They're better than you see, but, at the same time, like I said, I feel really good about it. We watch the numbers closely. The key is earnings, right? We're starting to see, we had a very good earnings quarter in the first quarter. I won't say very good, I'll say good. There will be quarters that we have a lot bigger earnings, but we're monitoring it, managing it, you know. We obviously really believe in delivering value to our shareholders of whether it's a dividend, which we've been doing obviously, but then, you know, buy back shares or other things. How do we continue to add value to our shareholders?
That's what we think about a lot. Overall, our leverage ratios, our debt ratios, we feel really good about where they are. We monitor them, we manage them, and we understand them very, very well. There's a lot of levers we can pull to make those ratios better while still doing more business and having higher earnings. You'll see some of those in the second quarter and then beyond, overall. I feel good about that. I think that covered a couple people on that. Let me just make sure I didn't miss a topic on that for anybody. Let's keep moving and let's see. I'm gonna try to hit a couple of these, but Jason Stewart, another one. Once again, please feel free to email.
Like I know I can't do them live right now because I'm on a Zoom with you guys, I'm trying to make sure I cover everyone's questions and make sure. Here's a question kind of tied about from Jason from Compass Point. During periods of high heightened volatility at the start of the year, how do you manage lock duration and pricing cadence? Did you increase frequency of rate sheet updates? I'll talk about that. How much volatility is rewarded by Bilt Rewards? It's got nothing to do with that, but I'll explain that in a second. Impact of Purchase Boost 50 and some of these. Let me just talk pricing and dynamics and volatility. First off, yeah, I mean, the market's been very volatile. We have an extremely experienced capital markets team.
Yeah, sometimes you have two and three different rate sheets in a day, maybe four. You know, rates get better, we're approving improvement out there, because if we don't put an improvement out there, we won't get the loans, because we want the brokers to have the most competitive opportunity they have. Pricing get worse, we have to worsen pricing. As you guys know, these numbers are all day. We have different thresholds that we move pricing up or down. When we hit those, we're like I said, I bet there's been days of four, maybe even five. There's some days that you put a rate sheet out at 10:00 A.M., nothing changes all day, or it doesn't move enough that I would make a price change.
You want to have some consistency for our clients as well. That's a balance, but we feel really good about that. That's why you saw really strong margins, you know, fourth quarter, by the way, and first quarter. You'll see them, same thing in the second quarter, strong margins, and we, our team manages risk and volatility. I think that answers most of your question. You had a thing about Bilt Rewards, and that doesn't really have anything to do with it. Bilt Rewards is just another benefit of brokers using UWM and consumers paying UWM as a servicer because they get rewards points and they get some cool things through Bilt, which I kind of explained earlier. It's got nothing to do with gain on sale or pricing, to be honest with you, at all.
Then kind of another question from you, and I think it's all one, but I'm kind of answering it. Sorry to keep hitting on your same question, Jason. Purchase Boost 50 or pricing initiatives like, you know, all those things are designed to help brokers succeed and win. Our brokers are not, "I need the lowest price to succeed," because you know what? If that was the case, they'd cut their comp in half and they'd all use Provident Funding and that doesn't make. If lowest price does not win. Lowest fees does not win. A lot of our price incentives are more strategic than that. They're incenting brokers with a price incentive, but to use a tool of ours.
I think it was in the fourth quarter, maybe even the beginning of the first quarter, we had an incentive tied to 40 or 45 basis points, but use a hybrid or virtual closing, because I know that makes the experience better for the consumer, which then makes the consumer more likely to like you, John Smith at Smith Mortgage, the broker, and more likely to refinance with you in the future. How do we make the Borrower Happiness Score, which we track on every single loan, higher? A lot of those are investments. And it's all put in the gain on sale. When you see I did some stuff in the fourth quarter, I did some in the first quarter, and the gain on sale is still much higher than it was last year in the first quarter.
Understanding that 123 basis points I think is what it was in the first quarter, or 122 in the fourth quarter, I understand the margins. I personally get involved with it every single day, you know. We track it, we understand where we're at with these things, and we give a very competitive price to our broker. We add significant value to our brokers to help them win more loans. We give the best service in the industry. We come out with AI tools and technology. We invest with free credit reports for brokers to help them compete even more and help more consumers. I can go through all these things. I'm not gonna go through them all, but it's all part of the deal. Hopefully that makes sense.
I hope you realize that one thing I said there, which maybe I've not done a good job explaining, is a lot of these decisions are strategic to help brokers win. Sometimes brokers have never done a virtual closing, and it's them getting extra 45 basis points will get them to do it, and then they do it on all the loans now, even though they don't get that incentive, because they realize it was the best thing for the consumer, and it helped them build their business and grow and be a better experience, and then we all win. If brokers win, UWM wins. When consumers realize the fastest, easiest, cheapest way to get a mortgage is through brokers, UWM wins. Real estate agents win. Like, we're all one team, because that's best for consumers.
When a consumer goes to some random commercial or goes to their local bank, which by the way, no disrespect to any of those people, but they usually are paying higher rates. When a consumer goes to mortgagematchup.com, they're gonna find a broker that's gonna get them a better rate, better fees, and a better experience. Anything I can do to drive more business there is what I will do. I think I've covered a lot of I know I didn't answer every question. I apologize, I did combine a bunch of them. I think I've covered most themes, if that's the right way of thinking about it. Let me just make sure. UWM LIVE! questions. I think I kinda answered UWM LIVE! about, it's next week, thank you for those of you that are coming.
It's the biggest mortgage event of the year. Please come. I look forward. I'm gonna meet with some investors, analysts, anybody that's out there. Like, I spend time. I'm there all day. We got some great speakers. It's really cool to see the broker community. I think that's kind of answering your question here about is UWM LIVE!, am I gonna be there? Of course, I'm gonna be there. I love that. I'm here every day grinding at it. We're about 40 minutes in. I feel like we've covered a lot of the questions. I don't know. How about this? Let me just make sure I'm not missing anyone's specific question that asked. I think I've covered it all. Let me know how you like the format.
Maybe next month I can see you guys too, and we can have more interaction. Either way, hopefully you like the format. Hopefully it's different. I know that last quarter you didn't like that we didn't do the Q&A, I'm here for it. I love this. I'll do this any time with you guys. I enjoy talking about our business, also you can use me as, talking about the industry, 'cause this is what I live, breathe, and sleep every day. Please give us feedback, give our investor relations team on the, on the format if you liked it. If, make sure if we didn't answer your questions, I apologize. I think I got everybody, if I didn't and you're asking, ask investor relations team, Blake, that whole team will answer all your questions.
We appreciate you guys. Thanks for being partners at UWM, shareholders, investors, analysts. Anything we do to help make your life easier, thanks for everything. We're gonna keep winning together, hopefully, with our brokers, the broker community, and UWM's gonna continue to grow with my amazing team members here at UWM. Thank you for your time. Excited about the future here at UWM. Second quarter's gonna be great as well, and we'll do the same format again, unless I get a lot of different feedback that you didn't like it. Hopefully you did, and hopefully it was valuable to you to spend this time with me. Have a great day.