It depends which bucket of the mortgage market you're in, because the buckets don't tighten together. The vast majority of U.S. home loans run through Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, FHA, VA, or USDA. Those agency guidelines are remarkably stable, and even in periods of financial stress they tend not to change. Individual lenders can layer on "overlays," extra requirements stricter than the agency baseline, and if most buyers see tightening at all, it shows up as overlays rather than a change to the core rules. The bucket that actually moves is the loans banks keep on their own books or sell into riskier secondary markets: non-QM and jumbo products. When credit conditions tighten, it appears there first, because the institution carries the risk directly. Commercial real estate is more sensitive still, since a large share of commercial lending comes from small and mid-sized banks whose cost of funds and risk appetite swing harder. So check which bucket you're in. An owner-occupant on an agency loan rarely feels day-to-day credit-cycle noise beyond the occasional overlay. In jumbo, non-QM, or investment and commercial territory, conditions genuinely flex, and it's worth asking your lender directly what they're seeing in that specific product before you plan around it.