We wrote recently about why you should become a supported investor with Mortech’s mortgage pricing engine. We included a number of reasons, chief among them being the national footprint you have access to, with the ability to control who can and can’t see your products. Once you become a supported investor and want to let all those people know your products are available though, how do you market yourself?

The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) recently announced an increase to the target range of the federal funds rate to 1.5 to 1.75 percent. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell in his first meeting as the Chairman of the Federal Reserve approved the increase. This is in response to the strong economic outlook in recent months. The FOMC expects this to continue with gradual adjustments to monetary policy.

Digital mortgages are seeing an uptick in the number of systems people are using. With point-of-sales becoming a growing part of daily workflows, you might be tempted to add them to your suite of tools, coupling them with customer relationship management (CRM) and loan origination systems (LOS).

Finding the right pricing engine to become a supported investor on can be difficult. You need to make sure that the company you trust isn’t just putting your products in front of anybody and everybody, but in front of the right borrowers and in the right location. Not only that, but you need the rates that pricing engine is quoting to be accurate and updated at all times, so that borrowers are getting all of the right information, and preventing looking like you’re offering old or inaccurate rates.

Our user base stretches across the country, with each region of the U.S. accounting for at least 6% of our rate quote volume so far through 2018. No matter where your customers are using your products, Mortech has users there. Only want your products available in one region? With Mortech, you don’t have to worry about not having coverage.

Mortech can create and upload a wide variety of custom rate sheets to offer in our mortgage engine. We’ll also automatically update those rate sheets whenever intraday rate changes occur. Your rates won’t just be accurate at all times, but you won’t have to worry about being the one constantly going in and updating them.

There can be a lot of fear with trying to quote your rates online to multiple marketplaces. Getting your rates pushed to your own website is tough on its own, but trying to manage and maintain rates on different marketplaces around the web is even tougher. Constantly having to check and update those rates can be daunting, and hesitating to jump into online quoting is understandable.

Changes to Dodd-Frank are one step closer to being realized this week with modifications passing the Senate with a vote of 67-31. The bill, sponsored by Senate Banking Committee Chairman Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), is being presented as a way to diminish the negative impact the law has had on small banks and credit unions, according to The Hill. Those in opposition of the changes such as Sen. Sherrod Brown (Ohio) believe the bill favors "special interests and Wall Street."

We’ve written about the advantages that come with online quoting through Mortech. We can help you get your rates in the right online marketplaces to thousands of borrowers through lead sources like Zillow^®, LendingTree^®, and Bankrate^®. However, we can also get your rates on lead sources that can play to your strengths when it comes to quoting specific products and/or to specific buyers. Our account management team has years of mortgage experience, and are well-versed in finding the right fit for mortgage businesses who are trying to do online quoting.

There’s a lot of hesitancy to enter into the online mortgage rate quoting marketplace. The perception has been that online quoting marketplace is primarily something used for refinance loans, which is a market that continues to trend downward as rates climb. However, there’s a key reason why online quoting will see use, and possibly even growth, in the future: millennials.

When you think about how rate APIs play into the online mortgage process, most people’s ideas of their role are limited.

The traditional purpose behind rate APIs was always to provide a rate table shopping experience to borrowers. This was especially true of refinance lenders, who needed their rate tables to get in front of borrowers looking to refinance their mortgage and get a better rate. However, rate APIs typically weren’t good for much beyond that, and simply acted as the first step in a long process.

In the Desktop Underwriter/Desktop Originator Release Notes for version 10.2, Fannie Mae has announced an enhancement to the HomeStyle Renovation Mortgage. The maximum LTV on 1-unit, primary residence properties will increase from 95 percent to 97 percent with the implementation of the updates the weekend of March 17, 2018. This applies to purchase and limited cashout refinance transactions. For LTVs over 95 percent on purchase transactions, at least one borrower must be a first-time homebuyer. Refinance transactions will require the existing loan be Fannie Mae-owned, similar to the requirements of the HomeReady product.