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The Five Star Institute to Launch MortgagePoint Magazine

MortgagePoint logoDS News was born out of the challenges and turmoil of the 2008 financial crisis, at a time when widespread foreclosures and REO volumes were reshaping the industry and exerting unprecedented pressures on the system of American homeownership. It was designed to spotlight the unique challenges of default servicing and all related industry functions and to showcase the subject-matter expertise of those industry professionals working in this difficult sector. A few years later, DS News’ parent company, the Five Star Institute (FSI), expanded coverage to include the originations half of the industry with MReport magazine.

In the early months of 2023, Five Star is preparing for the next evolution of our commitment to covering the mortgage and housing industries. This April, we’re taking the next step forward as we prepare to bring you MortgagePoint magazine: a unified publication that represents the next step in our commitment to covering all aspects of our industry, all in one place.

MortgagePoint was born from countless discussions with our readers, our clients, and our other industry partners over the past couple of years. From those conversations, a few things became apparent. One, while we’re enormously proud of the work the Five Star reporting team has done with DS News and MReport over the years, the division between the two has become increasingly artificial. While our readership encompasses professionals working in all aspects of the industry, from originations to default as well as supporting areas such as real estate agents, financial services attorneys, service providers, fintechs, and more, our reader feedback has made it clear that most of our readership doesn’t tune in only for DS News or only for MReport—they read both. This makes a lot of sense, given that the American system of housing and mortgage is a complex ecosystem, and no portion of that ecosystem exists in a vacuum. The economic factors impacting originations and refi volume may lead to adjusted foreclosure volumes down the road, and the shifts in default numbers can serve as harbingers of where the larger industry is headed in the months to come.

“In the face of challenges such as inflation, recessionary conditions, and the lingering ways the industry landscape has been fundamentally altered during the unprecedented past few years, it’s never been more critical for mortgage professionals to have a clear, comprehensive understanding of the big picture. That is the perspective that MortgagePoint is designed to bring its readers,” said Ed Delgado, Chairman Emeritus, of Five Star Global, the parent company of both MortgagePoint and the Five Star Institute.

It’s all of a piece, in other words, and MortgagePoint is our solution to that feedback: putting all the industry news you’ve come to rely on from DS News and MReport in one place. MortgagePoint will offer businesses and individuals access to up-to-date mortgage industry data, news, and commentary alongside in-depth profiles of the hard-working individuals who support all aspects of this complex sector of the American economy. Through that single portal, MortgagePoint will also continue to bring you multimedia features such as webinars and podcasts to provide users with a comprehensive view of the mortgage landscape.

MortgagePoint will also give our industry partners an ideal platform to spotlight their companies and contributions, providing streamlined content accessibility for partners. Throughout its properties, DS News reaches a combined readership of 50,000 people each month, and an additional audience of well over 20,000 on social media. MReport reaches a similar amount of 45,000. Together, they share 80% of the same audience.

“With MortgagePoint, our goal is to create one unified brand across our magazine, email marketing, and website properties, organically increasing the reach for advertisers without the risk of losing a captive audience,” said Jonathan Hughes, President of Five Star Global. “With MortgagePoint, our partners will enjoy greater magazine circulation, a larger subscriber base through our Daily Dose, and greater digital impressions without having to choose between the brands and risk missing an important segment of their potential audience. We strongly believe that MortgagePoint represents the natural next step for the growth path FSI has been on since the launch of DS News nearly a decade and a half ago, and we can’t wait to show our readers and partners where this new platform will take us.”

MortgagePoint Magazine will launch this April with a special edition focused on government loan servicing and the government’s role in the mortgage and housing industries, timed to coincide with Five Star’s annual Government Forum at the National Press Club on April 11. It will include a cover spotlight interview with Julia R. Gordon, Assistant Secretary for Housing and Federal Housing Commissioner, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. From there, we’ll bring you a new edition of MortgagePoint each month, alongside a supporting website (launching in May) that will unify the strengths of DS News and MReport in one single location, continuing to bring you the insights and reporting you’ve come to expect. Existing magazine subscribers will be folded into MortgagePoint seamlessly, so you won’t have to worry about missing a single issue.

For those who enjoy our daily and weekly email blasts, the DS Daily Dose and MDaily publications will continue, now co-branded under the MortgagePoint banner but continuing to bring you the same mix of news, interviews, features, industry announcements, and more. And MorgagePoint Weekly will take over the Saturday morning slot, bringing you a roundup of each week’s most important and impactful coverage.

To reserve your MortgagePoint subscription and ensure you’re kept up to date on all the announcements, make sure to sign up here. We’re excited about everything we have to show you in the months ahead as we begin our MortgagePoint journey. We hope you’ll all join us on that road.

David Wharton
Editor-in-Chief
The Five Star Institute

About Author: David Wharton

David Wharton, Editor-in-Chief at the Five Star Institute, is a graduate of the University of Texas at Arlington, where he received his B.A. in English and minored in Journalism. Wharton has nearly 20 years' experience in journalism and previously worked at Thomson Reuters, a multinational mass media and information firm, as Associate Content Editor, focusing on producing media content related to tax and accounting principles and government rules and regulations for accounting professionals. Wharton has an extensive and diversified portfolio of freelance material, with published contributions in both online and print media publications. He can be reached at [email protected].
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