As the launch date of Freddie Mac’s Loan Advisor Suitesm approaches, lenders should familiarize themselves with the new functionality so they can fully utilize the benefits of this new technology. They have designed their new tool with lenders in mind. The end-to-end technology solution provides lenders with greater certainty and efficiency.
As winter begins to turn into spring, more potential borrowers are going to be entering the market; some looking to buy for the first time, others possibly looking to build their own home or refinance an existing loan. We’ve touched on mortgage quote seasonality before, and it’s not really a secret that the spring and summer are the mortgage industry’s busiest time of the year. With that in mind, here are three things you can do to prepare for the next several months of increased traffic and prospects.
Coaching youth sports has allowed me to utilize some creativity when designing plays, as well as placing the players in situations for them to shine and help the team achieve success. Obviously different sports require different skills for the athletes to be successful, and as the coach, it’s my job to both determine the best spots for different players, and what plays are the best to run for them to succeed. Mortech allows you to do the same thing with data we can provide to you through our API (application program interface) capability.
The CFPB has issued a technical correction in the supplementary information to the TRID rule, published in the Federal Register. The correction addresses an apparent oversight regarding tolerance of property taxes and similar charges paid in advance, but not into an escrow or impound account. According to the CFPB Monitor, the correction is not actually addressing the issue appropriately.
We recently announced a new integration with Ellie Mae’s Encompass®, providing a third party origination (TPO) solution for our users. The new integration streamlines pricing and offers a centralized, secure web portal for lenders and third party originators to collaborate throughout the loan process. The integration allows for lenders to transmit proprietary pricing from Mortech for distribution of both initial and intraday rate changes, while also including base rates, SRPs, LLPAs, and layered profitability.
While there are several practical reasons to utilize this integration, we wanted to show some concrete, statistical reasons why and how this TPO integration helps TPO users on Marksman® with regard to bringing in leads and a higher quote volume. Using data from Marksman, we examined some different stats and results between TPO and non-TPO users.
As the data above illustrates, TPO users in Marksman process 98% more quotes than non-TPO users. Loan size is substantially larger as well, with TPO users processing loans that are 15% larger than those processed by non-TPO users. TPO users also have an average of five more investors than non-TPO users, making for more competitive pricing online for their borrowers.
Volatility in the market has continued to shift money away from stocks to safer assets such as bonds and then reverse the trend taking money out of safer assets and buying stocks. We have seen some upward pressure from inflation as the Consumer Price Index (CPI) came in 1.4% higher than a year ago and was the highest since October 2014. As inflation pressure continues to inch slowly higher it influences mortgage rates to follow suit. While a stronger dollar and extremely low oil prices have countered some of the inflation, the upward surprise was not great news for those seeking to keep interest rates lower. The key indicator going forward may end up being the CPI as that will require the Fed to take a long look at the indication of possibly slowing down future rate increases even if the world economy struggles to right the ship.
Last week, Zillow Group celebrated it’s 10th anniversary as a company, with festivities stretching, quite literally, from coast to coast. Zillow Group offices from New York City to Seattle, Vancouver, San Francisco, and Lincoln all celebrated the milestone, with a little help from NASDAQ, who allowed CEO Spencer Rascoff to ring the closing bell from Benaroya Hall in Seattle.
While Mortech is a little bit older than Zillow Group (we turned 28 last November), we’ve been a part of Zillow Group for over two years now, and are excited to be moving into the future with the world’s largest and most vibrant home marketplace. Check out some photos below from the festivities.
Over the last week I have had the opportunity to attend Parent/Teacher conferences for my children, getting to know their teachers and talking about my kids’ progress through school. The whole process has changed dramatically since I was a student; now parents can stay up-to-date with homework, grades, activities, as well as communicate with the teachers via their landing page on the school website. It hasn’t been that long since I was in school (at least, that’s what I’m telling myself) and the entire experience has evolved, giving parents more opportunities to be involved. At the simple click of a button I can communicate with my child’s teacher, not only on parent teacher conference night, but any day throughout the school year.
At the direction of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), Fannie Mae and Freddie Mae have implemented an independent dispute resolution (IDR) program, which was developed to assist in resolving repurchases disputes. Lenders are allowed to submit unresolved disputes to a third party arbitrator once all other efforts have been exhausted. This will hopefully clear up many of the disputes that can take an extended period of time to resolve and will provide clarity for lenders, ultimately increasing access to mortgage loans for creditworthy borrowers, according to the FHFA news release.
Homeownership rates in the U.S. are finally on the upswing after steady declines, according to an article in Bloomberg. The U.S. Census Bureau reports homeownership rates are at 63.8 percent, an increase of 0.1 percent over the previous quarter. This is the second straight quarter of increases, following a long stretch of declines starting in 2013. We are still a long way away from our peak of 69.2 percent reached in 2004.