The Velocity Is the Story

Two numbers came out of the mortgage industry's research desks this spring that almost nobody is connecting.

The first one is from STRATMOR Group's 2024 Technology Insight Study, reported again last month by the ABA. In 2023, 15 percent of mortgage lenders said they were using AI or machine learning in some part of their operation. One year later, 38 percent said the same thing.

That is a 153 percent year-over-year increase.

The second number is from STRATMOR's April 2026 Insights Report. Thirty-six percent of borrowers now begin their home search online, in environments where AI-powered tools are actively shaping which loan officers, brokers, and real estate agents they will eventually consider talking to.

Supply and demand are moving in the same direction at the same time. The institutions are racing to adopt AI on the back end. The consumers are already using AI on the front end. The space in between, the part where a professional gets named or doesn't, is being decided in conversations that the professional is not part of and cannot see.

I have spent thirty years building sales organizations in financial services. I have watched a lot of technology curves come and go. Most of them moved at the pace of human adoption, which is to say, slowly. This one is not moving at that pace. A 153 percent jump in a single year is not a curve. It is a snap.

Here is what I want every top producer in mortgage, real estate, and financial services to understand. Your 2019 visibility strategy is not a 2026 visibility strategy. It is not even close. In 2019, the question was whether your name showed up on the first page of Google when a referral did a quick search. In 2026, the question is whether your name shows up in the AI answer before the consumer even thinks to do a search.

These are not the same problem. The first one was solved with reviews, a clean website, and a few backlinks. The second one is solved by being present, accurate, and authoritative in the places that AI models learn from. Those places are not your social feeds. They are not your CRM. They are not your paid lead-gen platform. They are specific kinds of content, published on specific kinds of domains, in specific kinds of formats. Most professionals do not know what those are, and the ones who do are quietly building a moat right now.

The reason I am writing this is not to sell you anything in this article. The reason is that I am watching a lot of high producers in my network keep doing exactly what worked for them in 2022, and I am watching their referral flow get quieter without them being able to explain why.

It is getting quieter because the consumer asked an AI, and the AI did not say your name.

That is the part nobody is telling you.