We’re two-thirds of the way through with the third quarter of 2019, and with Labor Day behind us places like Minneapolis and Seattle are losing three minutes of sunlight per day. Rumor has it that lock desks all over the nation are trying to hire this guy in St. Louis. My cat Myrtle has always given a "claws up" to anyone who ignores an armed robbery, or who can write a book about the mortgage biz, especially if it saves companies money by not having to hire consultants to remind them of simple concepts. The latest example is “Mr. Tenkey’s 100 Tips to Win the Mortgage Industry” by Chris Mason. “This book will challenge the way you think about the mortgage industry. And by the time you finish it, you just might have found the keys to surviving and thriving in it… The author's depth and breadth of experience is evident throughout.” Post-Labor Day reading material.
Lender Products and Services
Franklin American Mortgage Correspondent Lending is proud to announce its latest innovation with the roll-out of Encompass Investor Connect! Encompass Investor Connect is the fast, easy, and accurate way to get your loans funded quicker than ever before, with batch document uploads, minimized conditions and stipulations, and assurance of accurate loan data. Visit Franklin American for more information.
Norcom Mortgage, headquartered in Avon, CT, is launching its fully automated application process. This application, dubbed Easy Street, has been meticulously designed to optimize user experience. Easy Street technology allows a borrower to submit their streamlined mortgage application anytime, anywhere, and on any device. Throughout the paperless process, borrowers receive real-time loan updates via SMS and email messages. Easy Street’s highly efficient system cohesively integrates with Norcom’s accelerated e-closing process, Swift Sign. For more information, please visit www.easystreet.norcommortgage.com.
“Freddie Mac Single-Family is ALL FOR reducing barriers and raising hope. Freddie Mac is expanding the thinking around affordable lending and inspiring others to do the same. With All For HomeSM, we’re leading the way through providing insights, education, mortgage products and business solutions that address the needs of today’s borrower and of The Borrower of the FutureSM. Rising home prices and interest rates, coupled with a lack of entry-level inventory, are increasing affordability challenges. Demographic and cultural shifts, migrations from rural to urban, first-time homebuyers with thin-credit files and complex processes pose additional barriers to achieving the American dream. It takes collaboration and partnership to innovate solutions that make a positive impact. Learn more about All For Home, discover key insights to inform your business and take advantage of solutions and tools that will enable your borrowers to make Home Possible®.”
Home Point Financial keeps making moves. As part of its “Customer For Life” approach, Home Point is now offering VA Sponsorship Assistance to broker partners. As they put it, “Remembering to pay that annual renewal fee can be a pain. Why not let us pay it for you? And if you’re not yet approved for VA loans, we’ll cover that first application fee too.”
XINNIX is challenging the industry standard timeframe of 12-18 months to assimilate rookies into the industry. “Companies are reeling from meeting the volume surge with leaner teams built for the decrease in volume last year. For XINNIX, we started to feel this seismic shift with our customer conversations and increased enrollments into our ORIGINATOR™ Program over the past year. The ORIGINATOR™ Program is designed to get Rookies into the market and productive FAST. Earlier this year, a national lender approached us after increasing their staff by 10% with rookie sales and support staff to keep up with the volume surge. With the help of XINNIX, this new rookie team was able to start producing in their first month in the business. Are you ready to get your sales and support teams seriously skilled to ride the volume wave now and into 2020? Visit us at XINNIX.com or give us a call and we can show you how.”
Whether you're a loan officer, manager, or executive, we all need to continue learning how to be successful. Todd Duncan recently announced two new webinars to assist you on your journey to excellence. The Death Spiral of the Loan Officer: If you're not prepared for rates to go up, you're at the front end of diminishing returns. Avoid the downfall of your business and prepare for the future! Watch the Death Spiral of the Loan Officer to learn four strategies to build your business the right way and succeed no matter the market conditions. Watch Now! The Purpose Driven Leader: Everything rises and falls on leadership. Whether your team is winning or failing, there's a good chance you're the reason. If you want to strengthen your leadership skills, register for Todd Duncan's FREE Webinar, The Purpose Driven Leader: 4 Decisions to Radically Impact Your Leadership Effectiveness. Register Now!
Practically every lender and investor base their disaster policies on FEMA’s declarations. Early last month, with DR-4451, FEMA declared federal disaster aid with individual assistance has been made available to 6 additional Missouri counties affected by flooding during the period of 4/29/2019 and continuing. And Amendment No. 1 provided an Incident Period End Date of 7/5/2019 for DR-4451, which provides individual assistance for 20 Missouri counties affected by flooding during the period of 4/29/2019–7/5/2019. Cameron, Hidalgo and Willacy counties in Texas have been declared by FEMA as Major Disaster Areas for the Incident Period Date: 06/24/2019 to 06/25/2019.
FHA published Mortgagee Letter (ML) 2019-14, Updates to FHA’s Loss Mitigation Options for Borrowers in Presidentially-Declared Major Disaster Areas (PDMDA). This ML strengthens and expands FHA’s loss mitigation options to homeowners located in all PDMDAs by adding new options and improving several existing options that were originally put in place in 2018 as temporary provisions for specific PDMDAs. Read the Press Release, issued by HUD for more on the topic. Servicers may begin implementing these new policies immediately; however, they must begin implementing them no later than November 30.
Fannie Mae is reminding those impacted by Hurricane Dorian of available mortgage assistance and disaster relief options. Fannie Mae also offers help navigating the broader financial effects of a disaster to homeowners with a Fannie Mae-owned mortgage through its Disaster Response Network*. Homeowners can call 877-833-1746 to access Fannie Mae’s Disaster Response Network™* or other available resources.
In areas where FEMA has not yet made individual assistance available, mortgage servicers may immediately leverage Freddie Mac’s short-term forbearance programs to provide mortgage relief to their borrowers that have been affected by hurricane damage. Freddie Mac Single-Family disaster relief policies authorize mortgage servicers to help affected borrowers in eligible disaster areas: those federally declared Major Disaster Areas where federal individual assistance programs have been extended. A list of these areas can be found on the FEMA’s website.
PennyMac posted Disaster Policy implementation regarding Hurricane Dorian.
loanDepot Wholesale has outlined requirements for all loans in the state of Florida. The following actions are suspended: Document Draws, Loan Signings, Loan Fundings and Wire Requests. loanDepot Wholesale will continue to monitor the impact of Hurricane Dorian and will provide additional guidance as needed.
At this time, FEMA has not issued a declaration specifying impacted areas of Hurricane Dorian. Continue to refer to the Wells Fargo Funding disaster policies in the Wells Fargo Funding Seller Guide and to disaster declarations listed on the FEMA website.
Mortgage Solutions Financial: issued revised Announcement 18-19W regarding the Missouri Storms, posted Announcement 18-19C regarding the Missouri Storms, posted Announcement 20-19W regarding the Texas Flooding, and issued its Disaster Alerts pertaining to the Missouri Storms and the Iowa Flooding.
With Guide Bulletin 2019-17, Freddie Mac updated its Guide to clarify eligibility for property valuation flexibilities that apply to appraisals in eligible disaster areas. AmeriHome Mortgage will continue to require that all Freddie Mac transactions meet current document age requirements (generally 120 days before the Note date). Additionally, although Freddie Mac allows “Sellers who sell mortgages” without escrow accounts under certain circumstance with additional requirements, AmeriHome overlay requirements for escrow/impound accounts are unchanged. Unless in violation of Applicable Laws, all mortgage loans with a loan-to-value greater than 80% must have an escrow/impound account established at loan close. Mandatory flood insurance must be escrowed.
HMDA: Every Stat You’d Ever Want!
The CFPB oversees HMDA data collection and analysis (which lenders have been naughty and nice), and the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council announced the availability of data on mortgage lending transactions at financial institutions covered by the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) for 2018. The press release regarding the data is available here. Two articles summarizing the 2018 HMDA data and recent trends in mortgage and housing markets are available here and here. In addition, financial institution disclosure statements, MSA and nationwide aggregate reports for 2018 HMDA data, and tools to search and analyze the HMDA data are available here.
For example, about 36% of the reverse mortgage records reported under HMDA are purchased loans, and none of the reverse mortgage records have a code indicating a preapproval request denied or preapproval request approved but not accepted. In total, there were about 33,000 reverse mortgage originations reported. The median age for FHA borrowers is 39 (6 years younger than the median age of conventional loan borrowers), and their mean age is 40.7. About 3.65 million (86%) of conventional conforming loans are secured by principal residences, whereas 4% of conventional conforming originations are secured by second residences. About 406,800 (almost 10%) of conventional conforming loans are for investment properties. Among jumbo loans, 86% are for principal residences while almost 9% are for second residences. (5% are for investment properties.) About 99.9 percent of FHA loans and 99.7 percent of VA originations are for principal residences
Capital Markets
The Open Market Trading Desk at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has released a statement regarding aggregation of agency mortgage-backed securities holdings. More specifically, it addresses a service/process offered by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac called CUSIP aggregation where aggregated CUSIPs are formed by consolidating existing agency MBS with similar characteristics. It’s a good way to cut down administrative costs!
We had a little “rally in the alley” on Friday, including the 10-year closing the month -1 bp to 1.51 percent. It was a relatively quiet day ahead of the three-day weekend, with a dearth of negative developments on the trade front, and only a couple arrests by Hong Kong police of pro-democracy activists, and lawmakers ahead of a rally and a march that were scheduled for Saturday. Elsewhere in Asia, the Bank of Japan lowered its daily purchases of 5-10-yr JGBs, as expected, while the country’s July Industrial Production increased well beyond expectations, though both July Retail Sales and July Housing Starts fell. South Korea's July Industrial Production beat expectations, as did July Retail Sales. Domestically, personal income and spending registered high enough figures to all but rule out a 50-bps rate cut at the September Fed meeting. The week closed with light volumes and a relatively tight trading range ahead of the holiday, as expected.
We have a busy calendar for market participants during this condensed week, headlined by the payrolls report on Friday and a central bank decisions from the RBA, BoC and Sweden’s Riksbank. Today’s calendar begins shortly with August Markit manufacturing PMI, July construction spending and August ISM manufacturing PMI. After the close, Boston Fed President Rosengren will speak. Tomorrow, things continue with the weekly MBA Mortgage Index, the July Trade Balance, and the September Fed Beige Book. Thursday is the busiest day for economic releases, with the August ADP Employment Change, Q2 revised productivity and unit labor costs, July Factory Orders, and August ISM Non-Manufacturing Index in addition to the usual jobless claims figures. The week concludes with the ever-important payrolls report and an appearance by Fed Chair Powell. We begin the week with agency MBS prices little changed from Friday afternoon and the 10-year yielding 1.49%.
Employment
“If you’re an experienced INHOUSE Account Executive or Loan Officer who can work from a CA or MI office, an expanding Southern California based National Mortgage Lender who is a Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Ginnie Mae seller/servicer that also provides Non-QM Products is looking for you to join its exciting team! Qualified candidates must have proven ability and success in developing and building new relationships. The Inhouse AE/MLO will drive product sales by promoting the brand, loan products, and services to mortgage brokers, bankers, credit unions and consumers.” Please contact Anjelica Nixt if interested.
“Recruiting producers in the mortgage space is challenging. Quality talent doesn't typically come to you. Utilizing technology that rely on candidates to respond to job postings & upload resumes, aren’t going to be all that effective. That's why leveraging the right technology can make all the difference. Model Match, an award-winning Talent Management Software (TMS), was designed by Mortgage Recruiters, for Mortgage Recruiters. Offering a full suite of solutions, the Model Match ecosystem solves the challenges of sourcing, attracting and hiring, qualified candidates. Our Market Insights Integration provides complete visibility into valuable loan production data and origination reports, helping to target candidates doing the type and amount of business best matched to your organization. Model Match brings your entire pipeline and team into one central, collaborative space helping your you and your team stay organized and on-track. Click here to see how Model Match is changing mortgage recruiting.”
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