Builders can’t complain too much about material prices anymore. Building materials prices rose only 0.7% in July, and are down overall year-over-year. Despite tariffs, softwood lumber prices are down 20% over the past year and other products like gypsum, tar, and asphalt (roofing) have also dropped. Rising home costs are less due to “sticks and bricks” and more to labor, land, and regulatory costs & regulations. Regulatory costs & regulations? MLOs know about those, and for lenders who put out videos, and everyone else, they should know it is illegal to improperly use the screeching, belting tones of the emergency alert/broadcast system. The FCC lodged hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines against a number of broadcasters for the use of a sound effect. For example, Animal Planet’s Lone Star Law paid a $68,000 penalty after that show accidentally captured a real wireless alert when filming Texas game wardens during Hurricane Harvey.

Lender Products and Services

“Trailing docs made easy, start to finish. Just the thought of your trailing docs retrieval process gives you a headache. Tedious and time-consuming, documents fall through the cracks or get lost. Deadlines are missed. Fines rack up. As a lender, these are not issues you want to deal with as you focus on moving loans and keeping your operations running smoothly. It doesn’t have to be this way. At DocProbe, we retrieve, audit, manage corrections, and ship complete and correct Trailing Documents to your investors on time, every time. Guaranteed. Our proprietary fulfillment process, driven by a hybrid model combining the latest technology and your personal account rep ensures efficient, accelerated results. No errors. No missed deadlines. No penalties. Just great results and satisfied leadership. DocProbe’s per loan fee structure and simple onboarding process makes it easy to start today. Email Nick Erlanger or call 866-486-0554.”

Simplify your underwriting process with Loan Product Advisor® asset and income modeler (AIM). Through the expertise of third-party service providers, AIM automates the manual processes of assessing borrower assets and income. AIM reduces the burden of traditional documentation, speeds up the loan origination process and helps you close loans faster. Freddie Mac is working hard to bring you solutions that create efficiencies for your business and improve the borrower experience - giving you a competitive edge. These capabilities are available now. Gain greater efficiency in your underwriting processes with AIM: get The Freddie EdgeSM.

Vendor Tidbits

There are thousands of vendors out there, vying for business, partnering, assuring clients that they can “talk to each other,” and hoping their product(s) can truly reduce cost and increase efficiency. Let’s take a random look at who’s doing what.

FundingShield announced a strategic partnership with Tavant to integrate into Tavant VELOX’s FinConnect enterprise bus. Tavant is a provider of AI-powered digital lending technologies. Tavant VELOX’s FinConnect is an enterprise service business for the financial services industry, and an intelligent lending data and services network that integrates with more than 120 ecosystem partners. FundingShield is an award-winning FinTech firm providing cloud-based, plug n’ play tools that prevent wire fraud, validate third party settlement agents, verify settlement documentation while providing recourse at the transaction level. FundingShield maintains the largest database of live, vetted and verified bank account information of settlement parties that clients can access via multiple API driven integrations working with lenders, asset managers, warehouse banks and investors. (For more information on FundingShield contact its sales team.)

Essent Guaranty, Inc. is ready to support the mortgage insurance (MI) needs for California Housing Finance Agency (CalHFA) approved lenders. Starting September 5, you can quote and order Essent MI for all your CalHFA first-mortgage loans. “We’re proud to be a CalHFA MI provider,” says Renee Pfender, vice president of product and business development at Essent, “and we’re really looking forward to helping homebuyers realize the dream of homeownership in a challenging market. CalHFA lenders will be able to take advantage of competitive rates through our new risk-based pricing engine, EssentEDGE®, as well as zero guideline overlays and quick underwriting turn times.” CalHFA has been supporting the needs of renters and homebuyers by providing progressive financing and programs to low- and moderate-income Californians for more than 40 years. (Contact your Essent account manager to learn more.)

South Carolina-based Resource Financial Services partnered with NestReady, a technology firm that has developed platforms to bring all parties in the home buying process together. Resource Financial expects NestReady to streamline its mortgage services offering and to provide an integrated experience for its customers, as the NestReady platform offers a transparent environment for potential homebuyers as they search for their home. Resource Financial Services is looking to capture more of the millennial market by enhancing the digital user experience, providing a single platform that streamlines all the difficult parts of the home buying process. NestReady also offers access to nationwide multiple listing services (MLS) coverage in the United States, putting Resource Financial at the center of the home buying process and joining lender’s originators and real estate professionals in a collaborative process.

Calyx’s Zip™ point-of-sale solution (POS) is now integrated with AccountChek® by FormFree®. AccountChek is an automated asset verification platform that accelerates credit decisioning. The platform uses augmented intelligence and more than 1,000 proprietary algorithms to generate digital verification of assets. With this integration, brokers and financial institutions that use Zip will be able to take advantage of the various benefits of Day1 Certainty, including greater speed and a simplified verification process. FormFree’s AccountChek has been integrated within Freddie Mac Loan Product Advisor® asset and income modeler (AIM), which is their cutting-edge, automated asset and income assessment solution that speeds up and simplifies the loan origination process. Zip allows borrowers to conveniently and easily begin the loan application process online or via any mobile device. And Zip™ has been enhanced to provide larger organizations with greater control and transparency over individual user profiles. With this update, banks, credit unions, and non-bank lenders can designate a Chief Administrator, who has complete control to oversee, manage and standardize all the company’s individual user accounts with ease.

Turns out the technology provider behind Freddie Mac's new tool, Freddie Automated Servicing TransferSM (FASTSM), is LoanLogics. It will also provide technology enhancements to expand the capabilities of FAST in support of Freddie Mac's Co-Issue XChangeSM. The FAST tool leverages LoanLogics IDEA™ (Intelligent Data Extraction and Automation) technology, which uses machine learning and other capabilities to transform digital images and scanned documents into verified and validated information for loan boarding. IDEA can be configured to support any servicer's defined naming conventions, stacking orders and required document sets. It includes data extraction for required information found only in documents and leverages machine learning for the accurate versioning and indexing of all documents.

Integra is now offering DocMagic’s document preparation solution to its client base via an integration with INTEGRA’s new LOS, EPIC. The partnership gives lenders the ability to leverage DocMagic’s end-to-end document production, preparation, delivery and automated compliance service as a fully embedded integration within EPIC. This includes the ability for borrowers to conveniently and compliantly eSign all documents required to meet state and TRID-based disclosures, eliminating paper and optimizing the document process from initial disclosures through closing.

A while back Blend announced the launch of digital deposit accounts for its bank and Credit Union customers. “This key offering will better help Blend’s customers serve today’s digitally savvy consumers while also enabling these institutions to remain competitive in an increasingly crowded field. The new product eliminates paperwork and any potential need for consumers to visit a branch to open an account (particularly key for credit unions, as becoming a member at most CUs has traditionally required an in-person visit). The digital offering also allows these institutions to offer an account opening experience on mobile.

Capital Markets

The trade war with China has dominated financial headlines and market movement as China devalued its currency in retaliation to the latest round of tariffs from the Trump Administration. Additionally, German industrial production for June came in weak and the expectation is for that weakness to continue. This resulted in a flight to quality as equities sold off and the yield on the US 10-year Treasury fell to a low of 1.62 percent by mid-week as the yield curve become more steeply inverted. The market’s implied probability of a rate cut by the Federal Reserve is near 100% for September, however some analysts aren’t sure the Fed will make a back-to-back move. Much attention will be paid to commentary from Federal Reserve officials following their annual symposium at Jackson Hole towards the end of the month. While there will be plenty of debate as to whether the Fed will or should cut rates again in September the broad consensus is that they will cut again before the end of the year.

U.S. Treasuries saw shorter-dated maturities outperform longer-dated maturities on Friday, steepening the curve slightly as the short end was hurt by weaker than expected domestic data and the long end was pulled by the sentiment that the market is overbought on a short-term basis; the 10-year closed +1 bp to 1.54 percent. Markets received a mixed total housing starts and building permits report, as well as the lowest University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment report (preliminary August) since January, which showed consumers are worried about the economic outlook and the implications of both recent and potential upcoming Fed rate cuts that could hurt discretionary spending activity. Despite the blackout period ahead of this Friday’s summit in Jackson Hole, Minneapolis Fed President Kashkari said in an interview Friday that it's much better to be "early and aggressive" in responding to slowdown than late, and Cleveland Fed President Mester said she sees economic risks to the downside despite not endorsing a July rate cut. Global growth concerns abounded, as Fitch downgraded Argentina to “CCC” from “B,” and it was reported Germany is preparing for stimulus spending in the event of a recession.

Today’s calendar is absent of data with just T-bills and FedTrade operations scheduled. Tomorrow also includes no data of note, before the much-anticipated release of the minutes from the FOMC’s July 30-31 meeting on Wednesday. There will be more Fed related happenings to close the week, as the KC Fed’s economic symposium “Challenges for Monetary Policy” gets under way Friday in Jackson Hole. Markets also receive New Home Sales for July on Friday. We begin today with agency MBS prices down slightly from Friday and the 10-year yielding 1.60 percent.

Employment

“PCF Wholesale is proud to announce its EZ-DSCR, a DSCR loan that is truly built for investors. We make it EZ to Qualify with interest only payment, no reserves needed, 75% LTV for cash out, 80% LTV for purchase and more. This product is underwritten 100% in-house removing the QC delay you’ll find at other lenders. Brokers can inquire about this product by emailing us. We are hiring AEs across the nation to sell our full suite of Non-QM products and agency loans. Please visit us at PCFwholesale.com: ‘Built for Brokers.’”

“ACES Risk Management is seeking a result’s driven sales engineer to lead the technical sales process and support our field organization. The sales engineer will lead the effort to collaborate with our clients and prospect to demonstrate ARMCO's award-winning product suite to the mortgage, banking, credit union and FinTech marketplace. You will be part of a dynamic and collaborative ARMCO sales team and will be supported by our corporate experts, industry veterans and experienced senior management team. To learn more about this position, click here.”

Are you a Texas-based Account Executive looking to make a change with a local presence? Plaza Home Mortgage has an exciting opening for a seasoned Wholesale and Non-Delegated Account Executive that covers the Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas and Oklahoma markets, who will take over a number of open and active accounts, as well as bring in your book of business. Enjoy selling one of the largest product menus in the country, with the traditional conventional and government programs, plus Plaza’s five Renovation Programs, distinctive One-Time Close Construction-to-Permanent Loan Program and our new Freddie CHOICERenovation offering. Non-QM products? Look no further, because Plaza offers eight Non-QM products, from well-priced Jumbos to programs using Bank Statements for income. You will also have access to our convenient Dallas sales and operations center. Plaza is nationally recognized for its service excellence, and has the products and technology to help you achieve the success you’ve always wanted. Contact Nick Pantell at 208-871-0850.