February 2021 Issue

February 2021

HOUSINGWIRE MAGAZINE ❱ FEBRUARY 2021

Preparing for The unprecedented year ahead

LET’S FLIP STATUS QUO ON ITS HEAD Let’s rethink the norm.

There’s a dream. A home.

And the best loan possible.

That’s where the client’s head is.

Let’s focus on that.

Let’s Rocket.

Let’s amp things up.

Let’s connect with more clients in new ways.

With less surprises.

Go big with the most innovative technology, tools and services.

And people who are broker-born.

Let’s Rocket.

Let’s put you front and center.

Let’s make it easy for clients to connect with local brokers across America.

Let’s give you unprecedented exposure on national television.

Let’s make things happen.

Let’s ignite your business.

Fuel your dream.

Let’s Rocket.

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NMLS

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Sarah Wheeler

NEWSROOM MANAGING EDITOR James Kleimann SENIOR FINANCIAL REPORTER Kelsey Ramírez MORTGAGE REPORTER Alex Roha ASSIGNMENTS REPORTER Tim Glaze LEAD ANALYST Logan Mohtashami CONTRIBUTORS Christian van Dijk, Perry Hilzendeger PREMIUM CONTENT/HW+ HW+ MANAGING EDITOR Brena Nath DIGITAL MEDIA MANAGER Alcynna Lloyd JUNIOR DIGITAL PRODUCER Victoria Wickham COLUMNISTS Robyn Friedman, Scott Petronis CONTENT SOLUTIONS MANAGING EDITOR Maleesa Smith CONTENT EDITOR Jessica Davis ASSISTANT CONTENT EDITOR Jordan White CREATIVE GRAPHIC DESIGNER Emily Carpenter SALES VICE PRESIDENT, SALES AND REVENUE OPERATIONS Jennifer Watson Laws NATIONAL SALES DIRECTOR, REAL ESTATE Mark Adams CALIFORNIA Christi Humphries CENTRAL Chris Anderson SOUTHEAST Tamara Wren GREAT LAKES Michael Orme NORTHEAST Vernesa Merdanovic BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT Lindsley Harris BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT, REAL ESTATE Amanda Luzsicza DEMAND GEN COORDINATOR Brooke Combs ADVERTISING SALES ASSISTANT Amina Jahic

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HW MEDIA CORPORATE CEO Clayton Collins CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER Diego Sanchez PRODUCT MANAGER Matthew Stafford CONTROLLER Andrew Key MARKETING DIRECTOR Caren Karris MARKETING COORDINATOR Katie Galbraith CLIENT SUCCESS DIRECTOR Haley Hess CLIENT SUCCESS COORDINATORS Kambrie Laurent, Talia Quigley AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT MANAGER Alyssa Stringer

HOW TO REACH US LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: feedback@housingwire.com TIPS AND STORIES: editorial@housingwire.com CURRENT MEMBERSHIP / SUBSCRIPTION: hwplusmember@housingwire.com NEW MEMBERSHIP / SUBSCRIPTION: housingwire.com/membership MARKETING & ADVERTISING: jlaws@housingwire.com or (469) 893-1486 ADVERTISING CLIENT SUCCESS: clientsuccess@housingwire.com

FEBRUARY 2021

The pressure is on WE START THE BEGINNING of each year with a

in place that servicers had to navigate. But in the

magazine issue that focuses on servicing, and

year ahead, servicers will face even more chal-

this year is no different. But after the tumultuous

lenges as forbearance programs come to an end,

year we experienced in 2020, servicing will now

and loss mitigation efforts begin.

be more important than ever.

Flashback to the Great Recession that began in

Servicers will face challenges such as scaling up, and knowing when it’s right to do so, navi-

2008 and the devastation that followed, ser-

gating various forbearance exit trends and what

vicers were put in the hot seat as foreclosures

technology to use and when. We cover all this

swept across the U.S. Now, once again the spot-

and more in our cover story starting on page 26.

light is on mortgage servicers, but they are rising to the occasion. In fact, even Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Mark Calabria recognized the effort servicers were making to help borrowers in forbearance and thanked them.

But their work is far from over. Last year, servicers faced challenges as record numbers losses mounted. Regulators such as the FHFA and others put mandatory forbearance programs

Kelsey RamĂ­rez Senior Financial Reporter @kels_ramirez

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FEBRUARY 2021

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of Americans requested forbearance and job

GET MORE FROM YOUR MORTGAGE PARTNER A proven platform for originators, investors, agents and borrowers For over 125 years, Draper and Kramer has been a trusted name in home financing. Today, we’re carrying on that steadfast reputation while innovating for the future of lending. With our powerful DK Xpress™ mobile mortgage app, efficient in-house loan processing and award-winning customer service and marketing, everyone can benefit from our superior lending platform.

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312-654-7256 | eileen.andersen@dkmortgage.com | joindkmortgage.com EQUAL HOUSING OPPORTUNITY Draper and Kramer Mortgage Corp. (IL:MB.0004263 NMLS:2551) an Illinois Residential Mortgage Licensee located at 1431 Opus Place, Suite 200, Downers Grove, IL 60515. Telephone 630-376-2100. Regulated by IDFPR located at 100 West Randolph, 9th Floor, Chicago, IL 60601. Telephone 312-814-4500. www.nmlsconsumeraccess.org © 2020 Draper and Kramer Mortgage Corp. All Rights Reserved. 04340-01 12/2020.

“

With TMS as our sub-servicing partner, we now have independent access to a number of reports on our portfolio, including remittance reports, valuation data, servicing summaries, foreclosure numbers and delinquency data. We also have loan-level access that allows us to audit boarding data and track disbursements – independently. Having instant access to data and information like this without waiting for reports to be delivered has been a tremendous benefit to us since contracting with TMS.

”

– Paula Maag, Mortgage Accounting Manager, Draper and Kramer Mortgage Corp.

subservicing.themoneysource.com The Money Source Inc., 3138 E. Elwood Street, Phoenix, AZ 85034 (NMLS #6289) www.nmlsconsumeraccess.org | Licensed and/or exempt from licensing to service in 50 states. Licensed and/or exempt from licensing for subservicing and/or debt collection in 50 states.

HOUSINGWIRE Daily A deeper look into the HousingWire newsroom's most captivating stories.

Listen here: housingwire.com/podcast

8 ❱ HOUSINGWIRE

People Movers

Inside Agent

Fintech

10

18

62

Realogy Franchise Group appointed Susan Yannaccone as president and CEO.

Realtor Diana Bull was awarded NAR’s 2020 Distinguished Service Award.

Tech companies seek to disrupt mortgage finance in 2021.

Take 5

Launches

Politics & Money

11

19

66

Mr. Cooper’s Neenu Kainth answers five questions, giving an inside look at her life.

Equifax is expediting the borrowing process with its launch of Mortgage Duo.

President Joe Biden announced Rep. Marcia Fudge as HUD secretary.

Startup Profile

Local Intel

Q&A 1

12

20

70

Is PowerPay, a home improvement loan company, the next big disrupter?

The passage of Prop. 19 in California is projected to increase housing inventory.

Clarifire’s Jane Mason said tech opportunities sprang up from the urban exodus.

Unique Solutions

Trade Desk

Q&A 2

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50

71

Allied Solutions talks about a compliance-driven insurance servicing solution.

Trade associations prepare to work with the new presidential administration.

Black Knight’s Andy Crisenbery said COVID-19 created quick fix fintech.

Event Calendar

Mortgage

Kudos

14

54

72

NAHB is taking its International Builder Show virtual for the first time ever.

This is why 28% of mortgage applicants never close the loan.

The story of how Guaranteed Rate donated over $7 million in 2020.

Hot Seat

Real Estate

Parting Shot

16

58

74

ServiceLink’s Bryan Bellacosa talks about his outlook for servicers.

Austin has now become a magnet for tech workers wanting to buy homes.

Movement Mortgage breaks ground on its nonprofit recreation center.

FEBRUARY 2021

2021

February

SERVICING IN 2021

features

Servicers are ramping up operations in preparation for an unprecedented year of buyers exiting forbearance.

By: Kelsey RamĂ­rez

32

38

REMOTE

SERVICING SOLUTIONS

As remote work began, a mass exodus began to rural areas. But were they ready?

By: Joanne Cleaver

These companies offer capabilities to support all sizes of servicing portfolios.

By: HW Content Solutions

Embracing the future of mortgage servicing

Servicers undergo critical test for future success

22

24 FEBRUARY 2021

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2021

f

26

PEOPLE MOVERS

Susan Yannaccone

| Realogy Holdings | President and CEO

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Andrew Low Ah Kee |

Opendoor | President

Opendoor named Andrew Low Ah Kee as its new president. Low Ah Kee joins the Opendoor executive team to help drive operations across the company, especially as it expands into new markets and deepens its product offerings. Prior to joining Opendoor, he served as chief operating officer at GoDaddy, where he led a global team of more than 7,500 teammates and played a role in nearly quadrupling the company’s sales. Low Ah Kee also held roles at KKR Capstone and Boston Consulting Group.

Jeff McGuiness |

Waterstone Mortgage Corp. | President and CEO

Waterstone Mortgage Corp. named Jeff McGuiness as the new president and CEO. McGuiness brings more than 30 years of experience in the mortgage lending space to the company, most recently serving as the chief sales officer at Embrace Home Loans. He has also held roles at Lenders One, Aurora Bank and CitiMortgage. As president and CEO of Waterstone Mortgage, he is charged with overseeing all aspects of the company’s business and corporate functions.

Sheila Bair |

Fannie Mae | Board Chairwoman

Fannie Mae announced Sheila Bair, board member and former chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., will succeed Jonathan Plutzik as chair of Fannie Mae’s board of directors. Bair joined the Fannie Mae board of directors in August 2019, and has served as a member of the community responsibility and sustainability committee, the nominating and corporate governance committee and the risk policy and capital committee. Previously, Bair served as chair of the FDIC from 2006 to 2011.

Henry Cason |

FinLocker | CEO

Former Fannie Mae Head of Digital Products Henry Cason announced his move to FinLocker, a consumer-permissioned personal financial assistance tool. Cason will serve as CEO and succeed the company’s cofounder and CEO Peter Esparrago, who will become FinLocker’s executive chairman and will continue to lead key strategic business relationships. This move comes after Cason spent 27 years at Fannie Mae, where he played a key role in the creation of Desktop Underwriter.

Andrew Bon Salle |

Home Point Capital | Chairman

Fannie Mae‘s former head of single family lending, Andrew Bon Salle was named chairman of the board of Home Point Capital. Bon Salle, a 30-year industry stalwart who was tasked with transforming the government service enterprise from a fax machine-heavy operation into a 21st -century company, left Fannie Mae in the fall. He spent most of his career at Fannie Mae, heading underwriting and pricing and capital markets before being promoted to head of single family.

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Steve Johnson |Offerpad

| Chief Operating Officer

Finally, Offerpad added Steve Johnson as its new chief operating officer. In his new role, Johnson oversees the company’s operations and is tasked with the development of Offerpad’s product team. He also oversees Offerpad’s technological innovation, conversion strategies and data-driven analytics. Johnson joins the executive team after nine years at global finance company MSCI where he was managing director and president of InvestorForce.

FEBRUARY 2021

TAKE 5

Neenu Kainth Mr. Cooper Group Chief Digital OďŹƒcer

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Mr. Cooper Group was hit with an extraordinary spike in calls and inquiries from customers looking for options to mitigate their current financial situation. Chief Digital Officer Neenu Kainth quickly realized the need for her team to develop a solution to make it easier for homeowners to request mortgage payment relief and better understand their options. Kainth’s team worked tirelessly to develop and roll out a digital solution within 48 hours that allowed customers to sign up and eventually extend their forbearance plans. With 95% of the Mr. Cooper workforce working remotely, this was no small feat.

Kainth gives an inside look at her life by answering five questions:

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FEBRUARY 2021

STARTUP PROFILE

nonbank home improvement loan company is looking to create simpler, cheaper loans to encourage home renovations.

PowerPay eliminated the dealer fee which banks charge contractors, which averages about 7.5%. “Why should contractors pay a bank for the right to offer financing to consumers who need it, and pay the bank for delivering a new customer?� the company asked. So it created a model where it works with contractors to deliver unsecured loans to consumers for home improvements, saying it is a technology company that delivers loans. The company expects its origination volume to double in the year ahead from its estimated $1 billion in 2020.

Things To Know Home improvement industry Dec 16, 2019

Seed round funding derived from local Philadelphia investors with banking experience Nationwide

getpowerpay.com

The disruptor score, unique score and launch size were determined through interviews with and editorial research on the company.

5

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4

UNIQUE SCORE:

7

LAUNCH SIZE: FUNDING:

HIGH

LOW

DISRUPTOR SCORE:

$2 m Pre-Seed

A

Seed FEBRUARY 2021

B

C

UNIQUE SOLUTIONS SPONSORED CONTENT

Increased need for a compliancedriven insurance servicing solution

PETE HILGER CEO Allied Solutions

The regulatory environment remains complicated, especially as the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted regular service operations with deferments, restrictions and other measures enacted at the state level.

Additionally, states have already started to pass mandates focused on consumer data compliance and security. These regulations regarding mortgage compliance change regularly which impacts how servicers manage their portfolios.

With multiple organizations – such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Fannie Mae, FEMA, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and others – guiding these regulations and outlining protocols, it is necessary but challenging to maintain compliance.

A strategic insurance solution is a critical component to monitor and assess mortgage loans as part of a larger risk management and servicing framework. A comprehensive, technology-driven insurance servicing solution can monitor hazard, flood, wind and earthquake coverage while remaining compliant with the most recent state and federal recommendations and regulations.

Outsourcing the insurance servicing process allows servicers to save time and internal resources, mitigate risk and remain compliant while providing “best in class” customer service to consumers. Technology-driven solutions from Allied Solutions enable institutions to integrate with core data processors to monitor and process insurance statuses and billings more efficiently.

These technologies provide online access and real-time reporting to help track insurance, manage claims, provide blanket protection and communicate with consumers to confirm they're

FEBRUARY 2021

properly insured. The aim of insurance servicing is to avoid losses and provide excellent customer service to clients and their borrowers.

A comprehensive tracking program’s key integration with system data processors, 24/7 system access and processing make it easy to use. Insurance servicing with Allied Solutions helps decrease claim cycles and administrative workloads while reducing risk to clients’ mortgage portfolio. The full range of coverages include hazard, flood, wind, first and second mortgage portfolios, HELOC, and real estate owned properties.

Allied Solutions monitors the insurance for adequate coverage while following known rules and regulations issued by the Flood Disaster Protection Act of 1973 (and all subsequent amendments, including the Biggert-Waters Act of 2012), Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the CFPB. Allied Solutions understands the complexities involved with changing regulations and has processes in place to monitor and adapt to changes as necessary with in-house counsel, partnerships with A-rated insurance carriers and coverage available in all 50 states. The company is able to help reduce risk exposure and communicate with consumers via timely, compliant notices and inform clients of necessary changes.

Allied Solutions takes a consultative approach so clients can ensure a comprehensive insurance solution that works for their business, while also remaining compliant.

“Our 40 years of experience helps us provide solutions that allow mortgage servicers to minimize risk exposure on their mortgage loan portfolios,” Allied Solutions CEO Pete Hilger said. “And our ongoing investment in user-friendly technologies help us provide excellent customer service to clients and their borrowers.”

13 ❱ HOUSINGWIRE

After a tumultuous year of disruption and uncertainty in 2020, mortgage servicing continues to change in order to meet consumer needs, regulatory demands and best practices.

EVENT CALENDAR

NAHB International Builder Show Date: Feb 9-12, 2021 Cost to Attend: $0-$349 Presented by National Association of Home Builders buildersshow.com

ON THE SHELF “What Got You Here Won’t Get You There”

BY MARSHALL GOLDSMITH

LOCATION: VIRTUAL FOR 76 YEARS, IBS has been where the industry comes together to learn, see new products, talk, laugh and just be with the people that could understand their challenges and successes. But this year, the National Association of Home Builders will take IBS virtual. As it does, the association said creating those opportunities and experiences remains its goal. NAHB’s event will allow participants to see product launches and cutting-edge housing and design innovations, tour The New American Home and The New American Remodel, learn from the top leaders in the industry through avenues such as expert demos and connect with exhibitors, speakers and other attendees all through its new virtual experience.

“Out of an abundance of caution and concern for the safety of our exhibitors, attendees and the thousands of onsite workers who support the premier event of the residential construction industry, we feel the only prudent course is to make this year’s show a virtual event,” said NAHB Chairman Chuck Fowke, a custom home builder from Tampa, Florida. “We have plenty of great virtual educational programs, innovative products, services and workshops on tap, and we are very excited about the 2021 show. It’s an opportunity to set a precedent for the industry by producing a dynamic virtual trade show, and we look forward to a very successful Design and Construction Week.”

The best – or worst – thing about self-help books: the endless choices. There’s not just one book on How To Be A Better fill-in-the-blank; there’s 50 books on becoming the perfect chef, 20 books on mastering the economy, another 40 books each telling you that THIS BOOK, RIGHT HERE will be the book that finally teaches you how to achieve true clarity or become the best husband or train your dog. It’s exhausting. How do I know what I need to get better at, anyway?

One thing most of us can agree on, though – making money is a good thing, and at your job, you can do that by moving up. Have you applied for that management position? Are you taking on more responsibility, hoping to catch your boss’s eye? More importantly, are you feeling stuck in your current position?

In “What Got You Here Won’t Get You There,” author Marshall Goldsmith shares insight on ways to climb the ladder. Spoiler alert: it’s going to get you out of your comfort zone.

Goldsmith lines up 20 habits found in the corporate environment, and how to turn those habits into a positive approach at work – and, possibly, the first step to a promotion.

“What Got You Here Won’t Get You There” is an important read for anyone feeling stuck – and for anyone wanting to take the leap to the next level.

14 ❱ HOUSINGWIRE

Event TIP “Without a change in location, it can be challenging to dedicate time for virtual conferences or focus on hours of streaming content. Consider treating them more like in-person conferences. Prioritize a few sessions to attend and use the gaps in between to schedule brief calls to catch up with other attendees, just as you otherwise would in a conference’s hallways or break rooms.” -Camelia Martin, Falcon Capital Advisors managing director of digital mortgage advisory

FEBRUARY 2021

e Close Today!

RANLife offers an exclusive e-closing option. With state-of-the-art technology, we have created a safer way to electronically sign documents. Our process allows for an expedited closing, with a secure exchange of information, and a streamlined experience. Each party is sent a secure link allowing them to read and review the closing documents and then e-sign, all in the comfort of their own home.

To learn more, contact us today at ranlife.com or call 801-478-4500 NMLS #3151

RANLife Home Loans, 9272 South 700 East Sandy, UTAH 84070, 800-461-4152 | www.nmlsconsumeraccess.org

“

The level of transparency we have with TMS and our clients’ engagement is unparalleled in the servicing industry. We can listen to any call and completely understand the client’s experience. This is incredibly important in maintaining a high standard of customer support.

”

– Greg Walker, CEO of RANLife Home Loans

subservicing.themoneysource.com The Money Source Inc., 3138 E. Elwood Street, Phoenix, AZ 85034 (NMLS #6289) www.nmlsconsumeraccess.org | Licensed and/or exempt from licensing to service in 50 states. Licensed and/or exempt from licensing for subservicing and/or debt collection in 50 states.

HOTSEAT

SPONSORED CONTENT

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HousingWire recently spoke to Bryan Bellacosa, ďŹ rst vice president of product management and information technology at ServiceLink, about the outlook for servicers in 2021.

Anticipating that foreclosure moratoriums will lift sometime during 2021, real estate investors and servicers need to be prepared for an increase in defaulted loans. While this market will look different than 2008, there still could be significant default activity.

Servicers should think about how they can best manage their portfolios in this demanding environment so that ultimately, they can make optimal disposition decisions and reduce associated losses as much as possible.

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Q&A

HW:

BB: EXOS One Marketplace is an asset decisioning tool that gives servicers and investors unprecedented visibility of assets throughout the entire lifecycle. The platform leverages a proprietary blend of artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Its personalized performance dashboards enable users to focus in on each property at the loan or portfolio level to project costs and review upcoming or missed HUD deadlines. Then, servicers and investors quickly compare and simulate projected losses and adjust disposition strategies. The platform allows users to mitigate risk and maximize returns through informed decisioning.

EXOS One Marketplace connects users with the right data at the right time. It includes property preservation data, such as vacancy checks and inspections for damage repairs, foreclosure title status and title clearance information and claimable vs non-claimable expenses, current status for properties in auction, and more. When auction is the optimal disposition strategy, it uses current valuations and data modeling to determine the optimal auction sale price and timeline. EXOS One Marketplace provides unmatched insight on disposition strategy through every stage of an asset.

HW:

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BB: EXOS One Marketplace helps optimize this process by providing a customizable dashboard that enables servicers to identify critical milestones and dates. Then, our powerful performance dashboards leverage AI and machine learning to provide users with an accurate view into current losses and forecast where their losses might be at a certain point within in the foreclosure process. Rather than spending valuable time and effort collecting and compiling data from many different systems, users have access to all the data aggregated within one system to help them quickly assess current status and prioritize next steps.

HW: Â?Â?Â?Â? Â Â? Â

BB: The market volatility underscored the need for servicers to build more efficiencies into their processes so they were prepared to manage large volumes of defaults. As one example, lapses in properly categorizing expenses would mean that these expenses could not be claimed or that a servicer’s team would need to spend several hours or days to properly re-categorize them. Rather than reactively engaging in massive data clean-up efforts for each loan as needed, servicers found that EXOS One Marketplace provides visibility into this data and allows them to proactively adapt their processes early on within the default lifecycle.

EXOS One Marketplace has emerged in this volatile environment as a timely solution for servicers that are working steadfastly to identify gaps and optimize their processes.

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BB: We’ve been hearing from many investors that they would like to see an expansion of EXOS One Marketplace’s capabilities in the area of REO asset management and disposition, so ServiceLink is putting substantial effort and resources into this area in 2021.

Our loss model calculations are being expanded beyond FHA to include private book, USDA and VA loans, and we will provide data modeling and machine learning to present views that enable investors to quickly make informed decisions on REO assets. They will have all the data at hand — property condition, current repair status, as-is vs repair valuations, etc. — to quickly determine whether to invest in repairs so they can sell the property at top dollar in the right market, or cut their losses and sell as is.

FEBRUARY 2021

2021

Honoring the next generation of leaders.

Nominate a Rising Star at: www.housingwire.com/risingstars Nominations close February 26, 2021.

INSIDE AGENT

Diana Bull Pacific Crest Realty inesflax@aol.com

1916 vintage home in Mission Canyon, California $2,050,000 3 bed 2 bath 1 half bath 2,243 sqft

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SANTA BARBARA, California-based Realtor Diana Bull was named one of the two recipients of the 2020 Distinguished Service Award from the National Association of Realtors. Bull led her own brokerage for over 40 years and is now chief financial officer and broker-associate with Pacific Crest Realty, owned by her daughter and 2020 president of Santa Barbara Association of Realtors Staci Caplan. The mother-daughter duo works on listings together, like the one featured here. During her nearly 50 years as a Realtor, Bull has served as a member of the NAR board of directors for 31 years and was president of SBAOR in 1982. In 1996 and 1997, she served as the first female treasurer of the California Association of Realtors and was CAR’s president in 1999. In her market, Bull said the median home price is $1.7 million and there is low inventory, leading to numerous over-bids.

FEBRUARY 2021

LAUNCHES

Canopy Residential due diligence is an area of the mortgage ecosystem that’s overdue for disruption, according to two industry veterans who want to offer something completely different in the due diligence space through their newly launched company, Canopy. Canopy CEO John Levonick and chief operating officer Andrew DeGood built Canopy on a cloud native platform with the goal of facilitating easier transactions and providing better data at a lower cost. Levonick said that by utilizing the LauraMac platform, Canopy is able to capture and transfer information to capital market participants in a way that doesn’t degrade over time. Levonick noted that the LauraMac tech platform allows Canopy to provide due diligence on a true fractional basis.

Quantarium Valuation Model Artificial Intelligence company Quantarium partnered with Valligent Technologies to launch a condition adjusted “Quantarium Valuation Model” for equity lending, broker price opinions and real estate owned valuations. The latest tech, coined QVM-Insights, leverages Quantarium's AI power to incorporate real-time updates of a property’s condition to provide users with an automated valuation model. It does so by prompting the AI to run hundreds of thousands of generations to understand and optimize information on micro-markets at the neighborhood, ZIP code or county level. Coupled with Valligent’s real-time streaming data and virtual inspection, the AI can then validate and learn what is most valuable in the data itself.

Mortgage Duo Credit reporting agency Equifax announced its latest effort to expedite the borrowing process with its launch of Mortgage Duo – a platform that allows credentialed mortgage lenders to return instant verifications of employment and income for joint applicants.

The tech works through a single transaction via The Work Number database – a centralized commercial repository of income and employment information in the U.S. Users then eliminate the need for a lender to place individual orders for each borrower’s report.

Mortgage Duo allows lenders to instantly verify employment and income for spouse borrowers through a single automated transaction which helps decrease duplicative tasks and further reduces friction in the loan origination process.

Shaker Indianapolis-based High Alpha launched Shaker, a collaborative CRM and real estate transaction management platform. Through the platform, Shaker offers a suite of tools to streamline client communication and collaboration, including transaction management, client communication, predictive insights and a built-in referral engine. According to Shaker, since launching its private beta earlier this year, the company is already working with teams at Coldwell Banker, RE/MAX and Berkshire Hathaway. Shaker Cofounder and CEO Chris Lucas said this launch is an effort to provide a transaction and client management platform that allows for a smooth transaction without antiquated technology.

Real-estate closing platform Qualia launched its Physical Document Service that will allow mortgage lenders to automate the management of paper trailing documents from title partners through the Qualia platform. Through its Physical Document Service, Qualia is able to manage the collection, sorting and quality assurance of physical trailing documents to ensure an on-time shipment and delivery to investors. Qualia Cofounder and Chief Technology Officer Joel Gottsegen said the Physical Document Service guarantees a fully automated process for lenders and much needed operational efficiency in a year where loan origination volumes increased by more than 200%.

FEBRUARY 2021

19 ❱ HOUSINGWIRE

Physical Document Service

LOCAL INTEL

By Julia Falcon, Tim Glaze

California The passage of Proposition 19 in California – which will generate wildfire relief funds while providing tax breaks for senior citizens – is projected to increase housing inventory in the state where demand is higher than available inventory. “I work with firsttime buyers throughout the county, and the majority of my clients are military and using their VA loans, so they don’t have a lot of liquidity,” said Alanna Strei, a California-based Realtor who said she has a “backlog” of first-time homebuyers looking to get into a home. “The more inventory available, the more they are able to compete with cash buyers and investors who snap up all the good deals. And allowing elderly, disabled and those displaced by natural disasters to carry their tax basis with them across the state just makes sense.”

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Las Vegas, Nevada Nevada’s census data projects a 1.51% increase in population between 2020 and 2025, as well as a 1.46% increase in median household income over the same time period – a forecast derived from an expected increase of California transplants. Already, the demand for homes in Nevada is dwarfing the current inventory, said Thomas Blanchard, the 2020 president of the Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors and managing broker for Signature Real Estate Group. “The shrinking supply of homes for sale is not coming close to meeting the demand,” he said. “Additionally, the lure of living in Nevada with the low- to non-existent tax rate and the great communities here just add to the demand. Then, add in that the current sales price in Nevada is one-third to one-half as expensive as the surrounding states and East Coast.”

FEBRUARY 2021

El Paso, Texas

The housing market in the Texas border town of El Paso has experienced an enormous uptick in home purchases since COVID-19 changed the course of last year. “Property managers are renting places that would usually be $800 a month for $1,200, so people figured if they’re paying that much, they might as well own their home,” said Tom Torres, an El Paso-based real estate agent and former president of the El Paso Association of Realtors. “Interest rates were so low, at 2.5% at the beginning of COVID-19, and they’ve only really fluctuated between 2.5% and 3.5%. Everyone is trying to dive into buying a home out here.”

Inventory has been depleted, Torres confirmed. Torres added that developers in El Paso are in the midst of planting “a ton” of new housing expansions that will most likely be scooped up early this year. “[The hot housing market] was a culmination of, I think, new home expansion, military move-ins, a huge medical professional base, and of course, border patrol and law enforcement,” he said. “These are jobs that people don’t leave and have actually added to during the pandemic.”

Boise, Idaho was the No. 1 midsized housing market to watch in 2020, according to Zillow, because of its draw for young professionals, families and retirees. A lot of homebuyers from Sacramento – a hot market in its own right – are reaching out to Christina Ward, looking for more space as they work from home and school their kids from home. Ward, a Realtor with Keller Williams, Christina and Company, said that her business is up 30.6% annually, but said this is a trend that’s been building up over the last few years. “Boise, Idaho, has really become famous for the last couple years, it seems like there’s a big relocation boom to our areas from the California and Washington State areas,” Ward said, saying that she sees multiple offers on most listings, including homes that are in the luxury housing market.

A study at the end of last year from Lombardo Homes found that Seattle was the most competitive market in the country, with 71% of homes selling in less than two weeks with an average time on the market of about 10 days. That demand is easy to see on the sell side. According to the Northwest MLS, the median price of single-family homes and condos that sold in the 23 counties it tracks was $500,000, up 19% from last year. It’s been a record seller ’s market, said Century 21 agent Michael Menin in Kirkland, Washington, and it’s tough out there for homebuyers right now. Off the top of his head, Menin said that he’s had home listing prices go over anywhere from $10,000 to $90,000. “[Pace of business] is not crazy, the crazy part is trying to get buyers in the homes of all the multiple offers and trying to get creative,” Menin said.

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Seattle, Washington Boise, Idaho

COMMENTARY

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mbracing the future of mortgage servicing 5 tips for a successful digital transformation

By Christian van Dijk

This year has brought plenty of disruption to mortgage servicing, from regulatory and economic uncertainties, to a long-term shift toward remote work environments. Meanwhile, the past decade has seen an explosion of digital solutions in mortgage origination, and servicing will inevitably follow suit.

In this context, it’s natural to consider digital transformation; as all our processes are upended, this is perhaps an ideal time to rethink the business, and the technologies that support that business.

But this is a decision to make with care. About 70% of digital transformations fail. The cause of these failures can often be traced back to not keeping the business goals at the forefront of the transformation process, or overlooking how technology impacts and interacts with the entire operational ecosystem.

It’s important to remember that digital transformation isn’t just about implementing new technology. It’s about strategically using technology to help you achieve your business goals. If your organization is looking for digital transformation, these tips will keep you on track for success.

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1. DEVELOP A NEXT-GENERATION DATA STRATEGY The rate at which we produce data has increased exponentially. Approximately 90% of the data in

If your organization is looking for digital transformation, these tips will keep you on track for success.

the world has been created in the past two years. Driven by the adoption of technologies like blockchain, artificial intelligence and machine learning, this explosion in data creation exposed a challenge: Where does all this data go? Most mortgage servicers followed best practices and addressed this issue by creating data warehouses.

The next step is to build a comprehensive data strategy. This requires a shift in focus, to consider the purpose of all that data.

Think about data in the context of your “internal customer.” Who needs to use this data? How and when do they use it? How must the data be formatted to be useful? And perhaps most importantly, could changing the format of your data increase efficiency? You may determine, for example, that using BAI files for bank statement data will help your entire enterprise. Notably, your investor accounting team will be able to complete daily reconciliations and prevent end-of-month surprises.

2. ADOPT A CONSUMER MINDSET Consumer technology now defines what we expect from enterprise technology. We expect software to be intuitive, user-friendly and extensible. We expect features like easy document management and automated classification. These are increasingly common on the mortgage origination side, where digital technology has played a key role in dramatically reducing the time to close a new transaction – and where the end user of the technology is clearly a customer, rather than an employee.

On the mortgage servicing side, however, it’s easy to forget that our employees are our “internal customers.” Their adoption of new technology (and the accompanying processes) determines the ultimate success of any digital transformation. When you think about introducing new technology, think first about your employees and how the technology will change their daily lives.

Consider, for instance, how this new tool will change their current processes and procedures, and whether those changes really improve their productivity and engagement.

And the consumer-friendly approach need not end with the software itself. The next generation of enterprise software comes with far more customer support than it did in the past. Software providers once walked away after deployment. Now, they offer ongoing support to ensure that your technology continues to evolve alongside your business processes and industry.

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4. INSIST ON VISIBILITY A digital transformation is an opportunity to gain new visibility over those processes. And visibility has certainly gained importance in remote work environments. This isn’t just about monitoring employees; a recent survey from Prodoscore highlighted that employee trust is critical to productivity, and 90% of employees said they were open to giving employers more visibility into their daily productivity. As you evaluate new technology, consider the solutions that will give you more insight into the entire business process, including individual employees’ progress toward completion.

But that’s just the first level of visibility. The right tools can help you gain more visibility over the impact of your business processes through data and analytics. For example, your subservicer billing software might help you track the submission and status of each bill, giving you more access to the progress of the process.

As your technology ecosystem evolves, aim to adopt tools that integrate in real time.

But the data could also be harnessed to help you evaluate the profitability of different servicing relationships or even to help model different pricing structures.

5. BUILD A FUNCTIONAL TECHNOLOGY ECOSYSTEM Chances are, you and your operational team use a dozen different software tools each day. After all, no single tool can address every business need. This set of tools is your technology ecosystem. An important step in any digital transformation is to evaluate how functional that ecosystem is, and then to identify ways to make it even better. Step back to determine what tools you already have, along with any disconnects or information silos that cause friction in your business processes. You may even find that some tools are redundant or no longer fulfill your business needs.

As your technology ecosystem evolves, aim to adopt tools that integrate in real time. The type of integration (e.g., native, custom, iPaaS) doesn’t matter much, so long as the tools “talk” to each other. For example, integrating your servicing system with your reconciliation software can dramatically decrease the time required to complete custodial account and cashbook reconciliations.

Christian van Dijk is president and cofounder of Integra Solutions, a provider of mortgage servicing technology.

As president, Christian brings more than 20 years of experience in enterprise solution architecture, application design, ERP implementations, third-party systems integration and custom software development.

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3. EMBRACE SAAS AND CLOUD TECHNOLOGY The “build or buy” debate is probably already familiar to mortgage servicing leaders. Building your own proprietary technology allows full customization. But what about increasing data storage needs? Or regulatory changes? Given these challenges, buying technology is often the better option: the provider assumes the responsibility and risk for delivering the solution, along with updates necessitated by regulatory changes or new product features. The next decision is what to buy. Now is the time to embrace SaaS and cloud technologies. Among many other benefits, these are ideal for remote work environments, which have become the new reality for many of us.

If you’re looking to use cloud technology as the foundation for your digital transformation, it’s important to choose cloud-native tools, rather than cloud-enabled ones. Cloud-enabled technology is an application that was originally built as a traditional, static application and has been “moved” to the cloud. Cloud-native tools, on the other hand, are built specifically to operate in the cloud. They are nimble applications that are designed to offer easy integration, administration and scaling. This can be important in mortgage servicing, where sudden changes in transaction volume and number of users require software scalability.

COMMENTARY

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ervicers undergo critical test for future success Actions during pandemic forge a company’s path forward

By Perry Hilzendeger

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It hasn’t been that long since the mortgage industry worked through the challenges of the early part of the century and now, once again, we find ourselves in a time when serving our customers is filled with financial hardships and uncertainty about the outcome.

Just like we can look back and analyze how our industry rebounded from the Great Recession, we will one day be able to do the same regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. At that time, the book will be open, so to speak, on how mortgage servicers responded to the situation. Now is the time to determine if your servicing operation will be known as one that was there for their customers during a very difficult time – providing empathy, care and fully informed options – or simply one that ensured payments were made on time.

While 2020 was a productive and lucrative year for mortgage lenders and loan originators, it was not nearly as positive for millions of Americans who ran into financial difficulties because of the impact that the pandemic had on the economy. Jobs were lost, or significantly cut back, and small businesses around the country were forced to close or limit their business hours, forcing many homeowners into the unfortunate position of choosing between making their mortgage payment or putting food on the table for their family. Thankfully, the option of forbearance provided time for these families and our economy to recover.

Data at the end of 2020 from the Mortgage Bankers Association showed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans in forbearance decreased to 3.26% while Ginnie Mae loans in forbearance decreased to 7.68%. But despite these

improvements, more borrowers had once again started to seek relief with new forbearance requests reaching their highest level since the beginning of August. Roughly 1.8 million homeowners were also seriously delinquent on mortgage payments at the end of the year, according to data from Black Knight.

Of the borrowers nationwide who entered forbearance programs with their respective servicers as early as last spring, a healthy percentage have successfully exited the programs and returned to making regularly scheduled payments. However, another portion of the population has received one or more extensions to their forbearance. The extensions are indicative of the likelihood that those customers experienced a more permanent financial impact. That could mean a variety of things – someone’s position was eliminated and it won’t be restored, someone’s weekly hours were permanently cut or perhaps someone lost their job and found a new role that doesn’t pay as much.

It is imperative, perhaps now more than ever, that mortgage servicers approach their business and their customer relationships in a very empathetic manner, despite the financial toll these forbearance solutions can take.

These are real issues that many borrowers throughout the country are facing through virtually no fault of their own. Servicers and investors need to have solutions and alternative options in place for people when they ultimately come out of forbearance – particularly for those families whose household income levels are lower than when their loan was originated.

That is why it is imperative, perhaps now more than ever, that mortgage servicers approach their business and their customer relationships in a very empathetic manner, despite the financial

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customers in the future. It starts by listening to the customer and understanding what they want and expect from their servicer.

By meeting and exceeding their expectations, servicers earn the opportunity to gain their next loan, and hopefully continue to grow their business through referrals from happy customers.

2020 was a bittersweet When you look back on the year in housing, as COVID-19 pandemic and mortgage companies thrived with record related housing crisis, how volumes during a time of confident will you be that such financial discomfort you cared for your customers for many of the customers and created opportunity for within their respective aff ordable and sustainable servicing portfolios.

Servicers that center homeownership? their service model on delivering the best possible customer experience by helping their customers regain and sustain homeownership today can feel good about more than doing the right thing. They can also reap the benefits in the long run by distinguishing themselves from their competition and setting themselves up to win big through future referral business.

When you look back on the COVID-19 pandemic and related housing crisis, how confident will you be that you cared for your customers and created opportunity for affordable and sustainable homeownership? The answer will likely be revealed in the longterm success of both our customers and our companies.

Perry Hilzendeger is president of servicing at Homepoint.

Hilzendeger is a 30-year veteran in the consumer finance and mortgage industry, and spent time with Wells Fargo Home Lending in a variety of leadership positions including head of retail operations, head of servicing operations, senior vice president of default services and senior vice president of real estate servicing.

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toll these forbearance solutions can take. The mindset needs to be on giving customers choices, informing them of the options and helping them regain and sustain affordable homeownership.

This can be a difficult decision for servicers because of the upfront costs that are required to bring these programs to life, but it is the right thing to do. It will make a difference for our customers – and our businesses – in the long run.

An incredible evolution has taken place in the servicing space in recent years, and the pandemic has provided yet another opportunity for servicers to step forth and lead through the challenges, with customer experience guiding our actions. Servicers have come a long way from the days of simply sending statements and collecting payments. Greater effort is made to take a more accountable role in creating a customer experience that allows the customer choice and options on how to best manage their home.

Sure, part of the day-to-day customer experience for servicers will always include the basics, like sending payment reminders, checking balances, keeping escrow balances in line and making payoffs available conveniently and accurately. But there is more to it than that.

Borrowers should not only feel they can trust and rely on their mortgage servicer, but also count on them to add value in managing their home. Whether it is adding value by creating multiple channels of connectivity or sending reminders on simple household maintenance tasks, servicers should continuously be looking for new ways to help their customers be successful in creating long-term sustainable homeownership.

Servicers must aim to treat their customers in such a way that creates lasting relationships and extend themselves to provide additional financial services and products for their

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Preparing for the unprecedented year ahead

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TRAINING AND STAFFING: SCALING UP

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“We have trained more than 1,000 team members on the new forbearance process, and training continues as customers exit those plans.”

-Kurt Johnson

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AVOIDING A FORECLOSURE SURGE THROUGH MITIGATION

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EMERGING FORBEARANCE TRENDS

Unlike the great recession, impacted homeowners today likely say their home goes up in value rather than down, so there’s less incentive to walk away.”

-Ralph McLaughlin

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THE ROLE OF TECH

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“In 10 years, our industry won’t look anything like today.” -Bob Walters

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Remote

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By Joanne Cleaver

About the author: Joanne Cleaver has been producing stories since 1981.

Cleaver began her career as a freelance business journalist by writing for Crain’s Chicago Business. In 2004, Cleaver joined the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel as a deputy business editor. She remade the paper’s Sunday real estate section, winning a national ‘best’ award from the National Association of Real Estate Editors in 2006. Today, she manages projects to advance women in the accounting, transportation and other industries.

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How the pandemic is changing tourist towns forever

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Even Norman Rockwell couldn’t put a rosier cast to New Hartford, Connecticut, in mid-autumn. On the far western outskirts of the Hartford metropolitan area, the town’s converted brick mill buildings are now occupied by restaurants that sell and serve locally grown produce and locally made artisanal cheese. A river – the Farmington – really does run through the town, shallow and sparkling, punctuated by occasional fly-fisherman. Bridges arch over the river from stands of yellow-leafed birches to groves of flaming maples.

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I

It’s exactly the kind of place that’s attracting pandemic-panicked New Yorkers who, drawing a circle of two hours’ train travel from Manhattan, figure they can set up parallel lives in the country and city.

The COVID-19 crowds that are now seeking fresh air and socially distanced living are looking beyond what is considered more traditional second-home destinations to small towns that have struggled to catch the updraft of the broadband revolution. As city dwellers scatter, enough of them are landing in the semi-rural spots to potentially realign the very definition of economic development, land use and the consequent cascade of broad band investment, municipal services, taxation and local spending priorities.

“The economy is moving faster than the population,” said Mark Lautman, an economic development consultant who has helped local organizations in New Mexico and elsewhere forge partnerships that serve residents and employers.

In the past, economic development was defined by incentives for buildings and infrastructure with the aim of winning and keeping employers with substantial numbers of workers.

“If you don’t have qualified workers you can’t grow your economy.”

Nashville and people buying second homes in rural counties.”

Daniel Jeram is New Hartford’s First Selectman, the top official of the 7,000- resident town. He said he hasn’t seen anything quite like this year’s real estate sales burst.

“The game is on and it has been for months,” Jeram said. “You can tell from the license plates driving around town.”

He isn’t kidding. Regional market reports from the Greater Hartford Association of Realtors released at the end of 2020 show that year-over-year, pending single-family home sales rose 49.9%, days on market dropped by 32.1% and the median home sale price rose 13.3% to $280,500.

MAINTAINING

THE

GROW TH

With young families pouring in, New Hartford’s challenge is how to keep them, especially as support for enhanced broadband has been under discussion for years, with little progress, Jeram said. New Hartford is on the eastern edge of a subregion of northwestern Connecticut and southwestern Massachusetts that suffers from weak cell coverage and tepid broadband.

“We’re okay,” said Jeram, of New Hartford’s cable service, “but that is an ongoing debate that state and local leaders are struggling with, because cost to get broadband in is extremely high. Everyone knows it’s the wave of the future, but how will we pay for it?”

-Mark Lautman

“We’re attractive and affordable for a lot of people, but how do we keep them engaged, so they center their lives here, and spend their money here?” -Rista Malanca

Rista Malanca is trying to figure that out. She is director of economic development for neighboring Torrington, where broadband somewhat peters out.

“We’re attractive and affordable for a lot of people, but how do we keep them engaged, so they center their lives here, and spend their money here?” Malanca said.

Powerful broadband paves the digital way for not just telecommuting and remote collaboration, but also for telehealth, remote education for children and adults and a host of other services that frame the new hybrid of a sophisticated information economy invisibly driving growth.

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The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated a longer-term trend of separating talent from location. Economic development leaders are just starting to realize the profound implications of a distributed workforce on their local economies, workforce development, housing and real estate markets, he said.

“If you don’t have qualified workers, you can’t grow your economy,” Lautman said. “And all of a sudden, the cost of place of operation is zero. States throw massive resources at site-based economic development but remote economic development needs a fraction of that.”

Investors are already moving money into place to catch the coattails of COVID-catalyzed change.

Collin Gutman, managing partner of SaaS Ventures, a Washington, DC-based venture capital firm that works specifically with young companies in smaller metropolitan areas far from Silicon Valley, said that the pandemic has propelled high tech companies to redefine where and how they look for talent.

“Previously there had been a perception that these types of businesses could only get critical mass of talent in San Francisco or Boston,” he said. “That perception has changed very quickly in the past 12 months. We’ve seen an outflow to places like Louisville, Lexington,

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Consultants with McKinsey project that 22% of companies expect to hire more remote freelance workers in the foreseeable future. Before the COVID-19 pandemic reordered the American workforce in March 2020, only 4.9% of full-time U.S. workers telecommuted from their homes. By the end of June, 42% of the workforce was home-based, and workforce researchers expect that the dramatic shift is largely permanent. FlexJobs, a Boulder, Colorado-based employment site that serves both individuals and employers, projects that capturing work-life balance and reducing commuting stress are top priorities for people who want to move and either bring their jobs with them or find remote work.

we’ve had 1,100 teleworks jobs created. People move here because of the internet and we’re seeing even more of that because of the pandemic.”

C H A N G I N G

McKee still lacks a Starbucks, but it is making inroads with establishing a healthcare clinic that will pivot on telemedicine. And, Gabbard has even drawn local Amish into the high-speed loop as the cooperative hires their construction crews to expand into neighboring counties.

Communities that were a step ahead are both riding the first crest of post-COVID change while demonstrating the importance of close collaboration among regional economic, workforce and housing development authorities, investors and the private sector.

Broadband brought jobs to northwest New Mexico in 2017 and has anchored the local economy even as the COVID-19 pandemic has rolled from crisis to chronic.

Shelly Fausett runs the SoloWorks program in the area, which advocates for workforce development and related supports, and which helps employers find and hire connected workers. SoloWorks had just moved to a new a co-working space to build capacity for distributed teams but the health care crisis kept workers home… and working.

“Right now in customer service, there are more jobs than people,” Fausett said.

The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic simply accelerated longterm trends toward remote work, annihilating embedded cultural resistance and rapidly realigning work processes to support sustained collaboration and productivity from any location, said Brie Weiler Reynolds, the in-house career development coach for FlexJobs.

Remote work surged for both staffers who have always had the capability to work from home and among the current and aspiring self-employed who immediately seized the opportunity to redesign their careers around the location and lifestyle they had always craved. In March, the FlexJobs platform received a 50% increase of inquiries and applications from workers, she said.

Companies and employment agencies – private and government-run – that already collaborated with local economic development and workforce training programs had a big head start on those that had in place only traditional programs, Weiler Reynolds said. Cross-functional workforce development programs that “combine broadband outreach with remote work training and company

L I F E S T Y L E

Professionals who bring high-paying jobs with them also transplant demand for higher-end dining, grocery, local entertainment and home renovation and maintenance services, said Shaun Greer, vice president of sales and marketing at Vacasa, a Portland, Oregon, company that provides property management services to more than 21,000 vacation homes in North America.

Unlike short-term renters, professionals relocating for a full-fledged second hub where they can work and attend school remotely, need functional and municipal services largely different from tourist demands.

“If this trend continues, it will affect municipal budgets,” Greer said. “Most of these communities are restricted in some way, such as [their level of] power or utilities.

If this growth continues they’ll have to put in a lot more infrastructure to keep up.”

New Hartford could take a cue from The Peoples Rural Telephone Cooperative in McKee, Kentucky, population 800.

In 2007, the cooperative, formed in 1950 and serving two rural Kentucky counties, decided to go all in on broadband, related Keith Gabbard, who has been the cooperative’s CEO for the past 25 years. Patching together about $50 million from federal, state and local sources, the service committed to bringing broadband to every home in its service area.

“Since 2014, we’ve had gigabit service to every home and business,” Gabbard said. “Once we got it built, we realized, ‘what do we do with it?’ We had to become more economic-development minded.”

Gabbard took on the role of one-man employment liaison, workforce training advocate, lobbyist to state legislators and public relations cheerleader, relentlessly promoting the cooperative’s ready, willing and connected workforce at conferences. Working relationships with national workforce development agencies and platforms – including FlexJobs – produced a stream of inquiries from American companies seeking to bring operations back to the U.S. from overseas, and looking to expand domestically.

“It’s been amazing,” Gabbard said. “In the last five years

“People move here because of the internet and we’re seeing even more of that because of the pandemic.”

-Keith Gabbard

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“It could be that saving the regional airport is your key to economic prosperity.”

-Collin Gutman

Workforce housing that is designed around and for home-based work will ensure lower paying, broadband-dependent jobs, such as customer service, highly skilled software developers and managers cut a very different profile, SaaS Ventures' Gutman said. They are “six-figure Millennials” who expect, if not big-city culture and amenities, at the very least, transportation services that can quickly deliver the big city to the rural doorsteps of spacious houses with dedicated home offices.

And, the ability to quickly get to major cities will be a key plank of rural economic development, especially as patterns of post-pandemic life emerge, he said. High-tech transplants want lots of fresh-air recreational amenities but also want to take just one connector flight to a major air hub.

“It could be that saving the regional airport is your key to economic prosperity,” Gutman said.

REDEFINING

TOURISM

ECONOMIES

The return on remote work-equipped workforce housing is short and sweet for communities long tied to cyclical tourism economies. A solid base of long-term second-home owners is already redefining tourism economies, Greer said, extending the 2020 season well into autumn, and thus continuing demand for cleaning, maintenance, renovation and some municipal services and activities.

“What we’re excited about is that this change means we keep more of our seasonal employees, hopefully longer,” he said, adding that a greater number of staycation homeowners could permanently stabilize tourist-town employment, municipal and local business cash flow and demand for broadband and other services.

The pandemic has proven the possibilities and powerful potential of a distributed workforce and, by extension, distributed economic development, said one longtime broadband researcher and advocate.

“The pandemic could yield a lasting legacy if municipalities, counties and states forge regional alliances for economic development, and use their combined power

to rapidly build universal broadband, align tax policies and regulatory incentives to encourage private and public expansion of broadband to connect all American citizens,” said Rouzbeh Yassini, executive director of the Broadband Center of Excellence at the University of New Hampshire in Durham, New Hampshire. “States need to relinquish counterproductive strategies focusing on stealing businesses from each other and combine forces. That’s the only way that many small towns and rural areas will gain critical mass to justify private investment in 5G, both through wired (cable and phone) and wireless services.

“If you get five or six state governments together, and get regional connectivity vision established, they’ll improve the economic value of that entire region for webbased daily services and for mapping, driverless cars and gain scale for recruiting residents, farmers and business,” Yassini said, citing the cascade of connected services that could support remote working, aging in place and other life-enhancing functions.

“The pandemic has also elevated the importance of health care, childcare and related services as essential to workforce stability and productivity.”

-Mark Lautman

Lautman, the economic development consultant, detects a rapid realignment of the definition of economic development with state and local resources to support distributed workforces. Hybrid strategies that blend satellite nodes for regional managers and occasional team meetings are a natural evolution of the urban model of co-working spaces, he said. The pandemic has also elevated the importance of health care, childcare and related services as essential to workforce stability and productivity.

As professionals and corporate leaders become acclimated to working from their second homes, they might become influential advocates for their industries to pivot to distributed workforce development, potentially bringing economic development authorities and broadband providers with them.

“To create an environment that incentivites and supports remote work, if I were a local economic development executive, I’d be at my state legislature asking for the same incentives to build houses with home offices that they give to industrial developers,” Lautman said.

“Now we have a residential real estate platform for economic development.”

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partnerships and that partner with FlexJobs to find the actual jobs, are serving people who already live in their areas and are hiring specifically from economic groups hard-hit by the tourism and hospitality industries.”

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Communicating with borrowers, ensuring portfolios are in compliance and leveraging technology to find efficiencies are crucial in the current environment. The seven companies featured in this section offer innovative capabilities to support all sizes of portfolios and every aspect of servicing. These solutions enable lenders to manage their workflow by overcoming the common challenges associ-

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- SPECIAL REPORT -

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BLACK KNIGHT blackknightinc.com

THE EXECUTIVES:

ANTHONY JABBOUR CEO Anthony Jabbour is responsible for the company’s overall vision and direction. He is passionate about delivering innovative solutions across the loan life cycle that help lenders and servicers retain existing customers, gain new customers and operate more efficiently.

JOSEPH NACKASHI PRESIDENT Joseph Nackashi is dedicated to Black Knight delivering integrated and innovative solutions that help transform the industry, and is committed to providing superior client support and helping clients achieve greater levels of success.

SHELLEY LEONARD

Black Knight’s industry-leading servicing solutions help servicers streamline forbearance and loan modifications

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lack Knight provides industry-leading servicing solutions, which includes the best-in-class servicing platform, MSP, as well as several innovative capabilities that support all size portfolios and every aspect of servicing, from loan boarding to default. The Black Knight MSP loan servicing system automates all areas of loan servicing, increasing operational efficiencies and reducing the cost of supporting separate systems. MSP’s broad-based functionality supports a wide range of loan products, including home equity loans and lines of credit. Using a single, integrated servicing system makes it easier for servicers to provide excellent service to their customers during these busy times.

The economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has forced mortgage servicers to modify many processes to support their customers. Notably, the pandemic has resulted in a surge of COVID-19-driven forbearance requests.

As a result, servicers need an efficient way to both manage the increased volume of forbearance requests, as well as prepare for a surge in prepayment plans when forbearance periods end.

Black Knight has made several investments in and enhancements to MSP, and other suites of solutions that integrate with MSP, to address this need.

As an example, Black Knight offers a comprehensive Loss Mitigation system, which is tightly integrated with MSP and can easily support loans as their forbearance plans end. This solution includes preconfigured capabilities and delivers end-to-end functionality that helps significantly streamline forbearance and loan modification processes. Black Knight also added functionality to Loss Mitigation that

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CHIEF PRODUCT AND DIGITAL OFFICER Shelley Leonard leads Black Knight’s enterprise product strategy and is responsible for defining the company’s product and digital initiatives, which are focused on helping our clients increase customer satisfaction and retention.

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allows business users to extend and adjust forbearances in bulk.

In today’s competitive market, servicers can distinguish themselves by elevating the level of service they provide to their customers. Black Knight’s innovative Customer Service solution is fully integrated with MSP and assists customer service representatives in providing proactive, personalized borrower support, faster responses and increased transparency.

Black Knight’s Servicing Digital solution is another powerful tool that helps servicers deliver superior support and empower their customers. Servicing Digital gives consumers the ability to make loan payments from their mobile devices, and offers detailed, timely and personalized loan information.

In fact, consumers can also request extensions to their existing forbearance plans directly within Servicing Digital, which servicers can review in MSP. “As an industry leader, Black Knight’s ability to develop and integrate advanced products, data and analytics across the loan life cycle and to support our growing client base is second to none. We are committed to helping servicers successfully navigate the unprecedented challenges of COVID-19, while providing the tools necessary to delight their customers,” said Joe Nackashi, president of Black Knight.

Black Knight continues to innovate and make significant investments in its products, regularly introducing new and enhanced solutions that help servicers successfully navigate the challenges of changing market conditions, including those experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic. In turn, servicers can address critical client needs to improve profitability and retain customers.

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ortgage servicers are staying busy. Whether they’re working with borrowers on forbearance plans or helping them refinance their homes, servicers are handling incredibly high call volumes. And during these hectic times, they could benefit from a solution that manages their portfolio to ensure they’re making well-informed decisions.

Clear Capital’s suite of field valuations, real estate analytics, and platform technology solutions help servicers prevent fraud, check the accuracy of completed appraisals and broker price opinions (BPOs), conduct portfolio valuation analysis and updates, and help with disposition analysis on distressed loans.

Most of all, they help servicers evaluate and mitigate the risk of investments in a timely manner.

“Leveraging our own real estate data and analytics to amplify our broker- and appraisal-based valuation services, Clear Capital delivers highly accurate information with rapid turn-times and a robust quality control process,” said Kenon Chen, EVP of corporate strategy. “Our solutions are highly compliant and follow the most stringent guidelines and valuation requirements.”

Cost, time, and compliance are three of the major roadblocks faced by lenders.

Even before the coronavirus pandemic, some servicers struggled to streamline the loan processes — especially when dealing with properties with higher valuation fees, operational costs, and longer loan processing times. Not to mention, it can be difficult for servicers to identify collateral that needs a more in-depth look at the start of the loan process, which can lead to additional obstacles. Clear Capital’s Complexity Score technology can help servicers determine the robustness of the valuation product needed for

each property, ensuring that risk is mitigated while maintaining lower costs and time-efficiency.

By paying close attention to what they really need, Clear Capital ensures customers get the best valuation products without overpaying. The company recently launched ClearLabs, an in-house research and development group that works alongside industry leaders and government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) to continually build on what’s possible in compliant real estate valuation and analytics.

ClearLabs has brought innovative solutions to the ma rket, including OwnerInsight, a first-to-market homeowner-enabled appraisal inspection tool, available for free to all lenders, appraisers, and AMCs. The department also unveiled its Modern Appraisal Program, which provides servicers turnkey access to the industry’s emerging bifurcation initiatives for origination loans.

“Our company goes wherever it leads and does whatever it takes to serve our customers,” said CEO Duane Andrews.

“We use analytics and technology to solve the challenge of having the right valuation product, at the right time, every time — ensuring our customers get some of the best valuation services in the industry.”

With an in-house team of more than 700 members across the country, Clear Capital was able to roll out several platforms to help mortgage servicers make confident lending decisions that save time and money.

“Our 20 years of valuation expertise, innovative research and development through ClearLabs and dedication to offering the best customer service set Clear Capital apart from others in the industry,” said Jeff Allen, EVP of innovation labs.

FEBRUARY 2021

CLEAR CAPITAL ClearCapital.com

THE EXECUTIVES:

DUANE ANDREWS CEO Duane Andrews works alongside more than 700 dedicated “nice people” to provide valuable services for nearly all of the top 100 U.S. lenders and nearly every mortgage investor, including the GSEs.

KENON CHEN EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, CORPORATE STRATEGY Kenon Chen sits at the intersection of our executive, product, marketing, and sales teams.

Since the beginning of Clear Capital, Kenon has developed and launched some of our most forward-looking solutions, including ClearProp and ClearCollateral.

JEFF ALLEN EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, INNOVATION LABS Leading ClearLabs, Clear Capital’s in-house innovation lab, Jeff Allen heads projects focused on advancing the collateral valuation industry into the future, including research and development projects focused on emerging technologies, market research, and early-stage product incubation.

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Clear Capital’s Complexity Score technology can help servicers choose the right valuation product

- SPECIAL REPORT -

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CORELOGIC Corelogic.com

THE EXECUTIVE:

CATHERINE CASTLE PRINCIPAL OF PRODUCT SOLUTIONS, ADVISORY MANAGEMENT

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Catherine Castle leads the CoreLogic Solution Engineering Team within the Data and Advisory Solutions Product Team. Castle is responsible for client engagement and solution consulting.

CoreLogic’s Portfolio Insights and Monitoring Solutions provides servicers with actionable insights

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n the days of COVID-19 and the CARES Act, mortgage servicers are staying busy working with borrowers as they make decisions regarding the future of their homes.

To help vulnerable homeowners, servicers need to be able to identify and understand potentially hidden portfolio risks so preventive action can be taken to avoid potential losses. They need to ensure adherence to regulatory requirements and obtain required data for reporting in a timely manner. Integrating a flexible, client-specific solution that utilizes the most robust and comprehensive analysis available is critical.

C oreL ogic ’s Por tfolio Insight s & Monitoring Solutions combines a broad set of data – including public records, credit, tax and natural hazard – with leading analytics to create a one-stop shop for servicers.

Portfolio Insights & Monitoring addresses portfolio risk and compliance by providing ongoing insights to specific changes in a servicers’ portfolio.

By using these insights into triggers such as lien priority status, collateral valuation analysis, borrower credit analysis, hazard profiling and event risk, compliance managers can act quickly to mitigate losses and minimize risk.

“The ability to do comprehensive, multi-faceted monitoring and analysis at scale sets our Portfolio Insights & Monitoring Solutions apart,” said Catherine Castle, principal of Product Solutions, Advisor y Management at CoreLogic. “Many of our competitors can only offer a small number of data points or more limited regional views.”

Portfolio Insights & Monitoring also supports borrower retention and cross-sell opportunities. Through an analytical approach, this product can identify borrowers that are at risk for early payoff or identify opportunities to expand a servicer’s

FEBRUARY 2021

existing relationship with the customer.

The suite is anchored by Clear 365 and provides real-time portfolio monitoring so servicers can stay ahead of the curve when it comes to emerging threats and opportunities.

Clear Snapshot is also offered and provides a single analysis on the health of a portfolio, merging credit and public record data for an enriched view.

“Many CoreLogic clients are utilizing Clear Snapshot to integrate the key data attributes needed for various ‘ad-hoc’ type decisions into one platform,” continued Castle. “Clear Snapshot delivers voluntary liens, collateral valuation and credit reporting information to achieve these efficiencies.”

Armed with these actionable insights, servicers are able to spend less time validating liens and more time making timely, informed decisions about new threats and emerging opportunities.

Portfolio Insights & Monitoring also has add-on options for Total Home Value, TrueStandings, Tax Portfolio Monitoring, Flood Adequacy, TaxWatch, Hazard Impact Reporting, Pre-Event Hazard Analysis, CoreLogic Real Estate Analytics Solutions, MLS Triggers, Loan Payoff Solution and the company’s patented Propensity Models.

“While many offerings focus on just one aspect of portfolio servicing, leading to the need for multiple providers, CoreLogic delivers a robust and comprehensive suite of solutions and analysis; not only identifying risks in a portfolio but highlighting opportunities as well,” said Castle.

Due to the continuing economic challenges stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic, many anticipate an increase in portfolio risk and defaults in 2021.

With CoreLogic’s Portfolio Insights & Monitoring, servicers can integrate key data attributes into one platform and experience significant advantages in terms of speed, cost, audits and compliance.

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oday’s servicers are working in a challenging environment due to several compounding factors. For one, the mortgage industry is experiencing historically low interest rates, which have set in motion a refinancing boom that has dramatically increased lien release volume processing. Secondly, the coronavirus pandemic has created a critical need to provide timely and compassionate borrower relief in the form of forbearance and loan modifications. The pandemic disruption to normal mortgage business operations and forced business closures has placed additional strain on the hiring and training of new employees with relevant experience to address workflow volume spikes associated with refinancing and loan modifications. The industry has also seen heightened regulatory scrutiny, which requires greater transparency and compliance.

These factors combined have created something of a perfect storm – increased volume and scrutiny without the ability to effectively staff up. Lenders and servicers need flexible options to manage the demand for lien release and loan modification requests efficiently, leveraging skilled expertise, automation and integration.

F i r s t A mer ic a n’s ma rke t- le ad i ng CleanFile Solutions lien release services and FirstMod loan modification suite enables lenders to outsource the workflow process to overcome the common challenges associated with processing large or inconsistent volumes, minimizing compliance risk and realizing greater efficiencies.

FirstMod is a comprehensive suite of services that includes: insured and uninsured title data products, document generation, multi-channel delivery, document signing and recording, as well as lien priority insurance. By using FirstMod, servicers can increase operational efficiency, reduce costs and speed up resolution throughout the loan modification process.

“The mortgage industry is experienc-

ing roller coaster-like market conditions,” said Chris Brinkley, First American Mortgage Solutions senior vice president of post-closing and servicing. “By outsourcing workflows like lien release and insured and uninsured loan modification services to First American, servicers can not only manage these rapidly changing market conditions without adjusting staff, they can apply their staff to more critical business objectives.”

First American understands compliance complexities and adheres to local, state and investor guidelines. With their lien release and FirstMod solutions, lenders and servicers can minimize compliance risk, while also better managing inconsistent, large volumes. The company’s industry-leading metrics on turn times, reject rates, and compliance scores enable servicers to realize improved overall performance.

In addition to default services, First American’s CleanFile Solutions providescompliant and easy-to-implement lien release services, supported by the largest database of U.S. recorded document images.

Spanning lien release generation, signing, recording and even trustee service. First American’s products and services provide a complete lien release solution that can be leveraged to support volume spikes or outsource the entire process to redirect staff in other areas of the business.

For lenders and servicers, it will be more important than ever to start 2021 off with the right resources and partnerships to effectively turn the tide on pandemic response.

“Our teams provide a proven solution to support lenders through these turbulent market conditions, while complying with stringent regulatory requirements,” said Brinkley. “By providing a flexible outsourcing model for lien release, partial claim and loan modifications, lenders and servicers can strategically redirect existing internal resources.”

FEBRUARY 2021

FIRST AMERICAN MORTGAGE SOLUTIONS firstam.com/mortgagesolutions

THE EXECUTIVE:

CHRIS BRINKLEY SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, POST-CLOSING AND SERVICING Chris Brinkley is the senior vice president of the post-closing and servicing division for First American Mortgage Solutions with more than 25 years of experience leading business operations, performance excellence, and global delivery platforms at First American and other national mortgage servicing companies.

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With First American’s FirstMod loan modification suite, servicers can speed up resolution and reduce costs

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FREDDIE MAC sf.freddiemac.com/ servicinggateway

THE EXECUTIVES:

DAVE LUCCHINO SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, SINGLE-FAMILY OPERATIONS Dave Lucchino oversees a variety of critical processes that support Freddie Mac related to origination, servicing for performing and non performing loans, and investor partners.

KEN BURKE VICE PRESIDENT, SERVICING OPERATIONS Ken Burke leads a team which includes loss mitigation, investor reporting, default fees and claims, non performing loan management, and Homesteps/REO.

Freddie Mac’s Servicing Gateway allows servicers to access a variety of essential tools via a single sign-on

I

ncreased delinquency volume as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic has amplified the need for servicers to work smarter, not harder, and respond quickly to struggling homeowners.

Thankfully, there’s a tool that allows servicers to do just that. Freddie Mac’s Servicing Gateway offers one platform, one login and one doorway to Freddie Mac servicing tools. The platform hosts 15 tools to support the servicing lifecycle for 14,000 external users (1,300 servicers), which has almost doubled since launching the platform in 2019.

Servicing Gateway addresses today’s market demands by providing servicers with a single sign-on and consistent experience to access a variety of essential tools to service performing and nonperforming loans. “We feel the weight of our current challenging climate and that fuels our mission to transform default management,� said Cecelia Raine, senior director, Reimagine Servicing Strategy and Integration for Freddie Mac. “We’re doing that by creating future tools within Servicing Gateway to improve servicers’ speed to market for mortgage resolution. New tools like PAID (Payments Automated Intelligent and Dynamic) and Resolve will play an important and positive role in the Servicing Gateway experience.�

Servicing Gateway is unique in that it incorporates policy with technology. Last fall, Freddie Mac integrated its SingleFamily Seller/Servicer Guide (Guide) with Servicing Gateway. The Guide is the foundation for clients to originate, deliver and service Freddie Mac loans. By integrating it with Servicing Gateway, users are now able to access policies and training related

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CECELIA RAINE SENIOR DIRECTOR, REIMAGINE SERVICING STRATEGY AND INTEGRATION Cecelia Raine leads strategy to modernize technology platforms and processes aimed at transforming Freddie Mac’s servicing experience for clients and partners.

FEBRUARY 2021

to their tasks or transactions, resulting in faster processing. “Not only is the Guide integration a competitive advantage, but it also solves for a long-standing request from our clients for a solution that streamlines policy and implementation of those policies,� said Dave Lucchino, senior vice president, SingleFamily Operations. “Having the Guide in Servicing Gateway puts the ‘smarter’ in ‘work smarter, not harder.’�

And there is data to back up that claim.

According to Freddie Mac, when Servicing Gateway launched, the platform saved an average of six to 10 clicks for investor reporting users.

With the recent integration of the Guide into Servicing Gateway, clients save time because they no longer need to leave Servicing Gateway to research Guide policies.

One servicer testimonial revealed that, thanks to its early adoption of Resolve and its API integration capabilities, the company is saving several minutes per transaction for Freddie Mac Flex Modification decisioning because no manual data entry is required.

Furthermore, for PAID, an early adopter has reported that they reduced duplicate data entry and are able to submit a larger number of transactions at one time. “We place client insights and industry collaboration at the center of our mission to Reimagine Servicing,� says Ken Burke, vice president of Servicing Operations. “As new Servicing Gateway tools like PAID and Resolve go to market broadly, servicers will have a clear competitive edge for default management activities, which, in turn, will result in reduced costs and speed to market mortgage resolution.�

Sponsored Content

ServiceMac’s Control Tower provides a series of mock audits to help servicers ensure portfolio compliance

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THE EXECUTIVE:

ROBERT J CARUSO PRESIDENT AND CEO Bob Caruso is a veteran of the mortgage servicing industry with more than 20 years holding senior-level positions at ServiceLink, Wells Fargo, Chase and Bank of America.

45 ❱ HOUSINGWIRE

or servicers and subservicers, com- “mock audits” based on federal, agency pliance with federal and state regu- and CFPB regulations. This allows lenders lations is a top priority, especially to clearly see ServiceMac’s operational regiven today’s record high loan volumes sults and have confidence that all federal, driven by historically low rates. It’s critical agency and CFPB guidelines are met for to quickly evaluate the success rate of a every single loan.

“I don’t think there is another system loan by identifying and correcting errors that solves these compliance challenges in real time.

ServiceMac is an innovative mortgage with this much transparency and efficiensubservicing company that offers each of cy,” said Bob Caruso, CEO of ServiceMac. its clients exclusive access to its propri- “Control Tower is unique in the industry in etary compliance solution. ServiceMac’s that it has more than 1,200 rules and runs Control Tower is comprised of more than daily against a servicer’s entire portfolio.

1,200 rules that capture federal, agen- This continual, comprehensive review allows lenders cy a nd CFPB t o i nc r e a s e regulations. their capaciE ach night, ty and manthe system age spike s runs every rule “I don’t think there is ani n dema nd, against ever y other system that solves while effor tloan in a clithese compliance challessly ma inent’s portfolio. lenges with this much taining comThe results help transparency and effipliance with identify loans ciency,” -Bob Caruso regulations.” that have failed By continuor could potenally auditing tially fail. its por tfolio C o n t r o l and processTower then e s, C ont r ol feeds those results into an end-user workflow applica- Tower is able to meet and exceed regtion that captures the rule, the data used ulatory compliance standards for all to evaluate the rule, and the result that ServiceMac clients. This type of modern needs review. Each rule is mapped to a lending technology is built to scale and department queue and worked daily, and offers distinctive advantages by tracking, the evaluation results provide a feedback analyzing and ensuring decisions are loop to minimize potential defects going consistent.

“Control Tower is built and managed forward. The goal is to support a client’s compliance or audit teams by identifying by a leadership team with 20-plus years of experience across both mortgage and and reducing errors.

As part of the standard reporting pack- servicing compliance and technology,” age, Control Tower provides a series of Caruso said.

SERVICEMAC www.myservicemac.com/

FEBRUARY 2021

- SPECIAL REPORT -

Sponsored Content

SOURCEPOINT www.sourcepointmortgage.com/

THE EXECUTIVES:

STEVEN SCHACHTER EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, MARKET LEADER Steven Schachter is tasked with leading the organization of 8,000+ associates, deepening relationships with existing clients, adding new clients, and strengthening Sourcepoint’s brand in the market.

ROSHAN SETHI HEAD OF GLOBAL SERVICING OPERATIONS Roshan Sethi employs his extensive financial services and mortgage industry experiences to oversee the company’s global strategic outsourcing, operations management, quality assurance and transitions.

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SUNDARA SUKAVANAM CHIEF DIGITAL OFFICER, FIRSTSOURCE SOLUTIONS, PARENT COMPANY OF SOURCEPOINT

Sourcepoint’s First Customer Intelligence offers insights on customer service calls to help improve performance

I

n May 2020, forbearance rates peaked at 9% and most lenders and servicers weren’t prepared for the rapid increase in calls. As the housing market shifts, building relationships between lenders and customers is more important now than ever. That said, making sure your mortgage company is providing excellent customer service can be difficult, especially in this distributed workforce.

Today’s borrowers demand a seamless and customized borrower experience through a channel of their choice, on their own schedule. Delivering such tailored borrower experiences requires lenders to gather deep customer insights. But not every mortgage company has the capabilities to analyze large volumes of calls and gather data in real time.

To effectively measure customer experience, lenders need to implement an intelligent customer analytics solution to understand the entire customer journey and improve customer experience.

S o u r c e p o i n t ’s F i r s t C u s t o m e r Intelligence (FCI) is a cost-effective proprietary analytics solution that helps companies better understand their customers.

FCI uses speech (calls) and text (emails and web chat) to gather multi-dimensional insights across four major pillars: quality and risk, agent performance, business intelligence and customer experience.

FCI measures customer experience across all calls – both inbound and outbound – to identify best practices, reduce agent call avoidance and ensure behavioral governance.

“It’s not just the key words or identifying what the customer is saying, but truly understanding the emotional aspect of what the customer is feeling,” Sundara Sukavanam, chief digital officer, Firstsource Solutions said.

FCI analyzes customer conversations to understand conversation topics and op-

Sundara Sukavanam drives the organization’s “Digital First, Digital Now” agenda and manages global partnerships with industry-leading platforms in RPA, ML/AI and SaaS.

FEBRUARY 2021

timize processes and contact channels, enabling deflection of calls to lower-cost channels.

FCI automates compliance and monitors 100% of the calls provided across 1,000 agents. The system ensures targeted call monitoring, enabling the company’s quality team to focus on outliers and increase monitoring of low performers. The Sourcepoint team currently publishes 18 different daily/weekly reports – including daily/weekly leadership reports, red alerts, quality and agent performance reports – to provide a 360-degree view of the client’s contact center operations.

According to a recent case study by Sourcepoint, in three months FCI was able to analyze 3.3 million calls across sales, operations and servicing. The results helped their client increase sales conversion, reduce repeat callers, and identify and improve call avoidance behaviors.

“FCI is a sound solution for distributed workforces who need to communicate with customers across the globe,” Roshan Sethi, head of global servicing operations said. “With FCI, mortgage companies are able to combine the best of humans and machines for maximum impact. And with these insights, companies are able to ensure that agents are targeting the right customers with the right messages for improved customer experience.”

In addition to FCI, Sourcepoint provides solutions for their clients to support the entire value chain of mortgage from lead generation to default services. From servicing solutions to customer retention, Sourcepoint brings extensive experience to the table, as well as a comprehensive licenses set, and can enable robust, easyto-manage digital operations. And, with Sourcepoint’s one-stop-shop approach to providing customized solutions, clients don’t have to manage an extensive list of vendor partners.

REASONS OR

RESULTS IT’S TIME TO GO FURTHER AND BECOME YOUR BEST ELEVATE YOUR BUSINESS AT SUMMIT FUNDING

LEARN MORE ABOUT SUMMIT AT:

WWW.EXPLORETEAMSUMMIT.COM Summit Funding, Inc. NMLS ID# 3199 | www.nmlsconsumeraccess.org | Equal Housing Opportunity

“

We wanted a solid partner in a sub-servicer. TMS has been just that! TMS is solutions based and works hard to provide good customer service to clients and borrowers. It is the primary reason we chose TMS and it is what has kept our partnership strong.

”

– Mary Bolar, Director of Mortgage Servicing at Summit Funding Inc.

subservicing.themoneysource.com The Money Source Inc., 3138 E. Elwood Street, Phoenix, AZ 85034 (NMLS #6289) www.nmlsconsumeraccess.org | Licensed and/or exempt from licensing to service in 50 states. Licensed and/or exempt from licensing for subservicing and/or debt collection in 50 states.

C O M PA N Y S P O T L I G H T :

SUPER IOR HOME SERVICES | SPONSOR ED CONTENT

Department of Defense honors Veterans United Company receives highest award bestowed on private companies by Secretary of Defense

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ortgage Research Center, which does business as Veterans United Home Loans, was awarded the 2020 Secretary of Defense Employer Support Freedom Award

by Secretary of Defense Dr. Mark T. Esper for its support of its National Guard and Reserve employees. The award was presented on Sept. 28.

The award is the highest honor given by the Secretary of Defense to a private employer. “Over the years, we’ve had many Guard and Reserve employees called to active duty overseas and called up to serve at home during disasters,� said Dr. Amanda Andrade, chief people officer at Veterans United. “We see that service is rarely convenient for the service member; it comes with an unforeseen cost. Worrying about your job while you’re in harm’s way overseas or working in potentially hazardous conditions at home isn’t something our service members should have to do.�

The nation’s largest VA purchase lender was selected from 2,623 nominations received from Guardsmen and Reservists. It was one of only 15 recipients chosen for the honor. The Freedom Award began in 1996 under the auspices of Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve to recognize exceptional employer support, with 295 honorees to date. Veterans United was nominated for the award by Adam Craig, who serves in the Missouri Air National Guard.

“Veterans United is like no other company I have worked for in the past,� Craig said. “They truly care about my service commitment and have shown me time and time again they are willing to do what it takes to help me honor that commitment,� he said. “I recently decided to re-enlist. I can honestly say I decided to re-enlist because of how much support I knew I would receive from Veterans United.�

When Guard and Reserve members are called to active duty, being pulled away from their civilian jobs and separated from family and friends at home can add additional stress to deployments. During this time, support can make all the difference in the life of a

FEBRUARY 2021

service member, said Brig. Gen. Gregory Mason, a retired Missouri National Guard officer who currently serves as the Missouri committee state chair. “I was a traditional Guardsman, and I realized how important it was for employers to support its military members,� Mason said.

Approximately 7% of Veterans United Home Loans’ workforce are veterans and currently serving military members.

For their veterans and service members, the lender provides: military employees are offered up to 80 hours of paid time off for deployed service member employees, differential pay up to five years during federal services and care packages every two months during deployments.

They also provide time off for Veterans Day and Military Appreciation Days along with sponsoring the “Hero of the Game� program with the University of Missouri. “Veterans United is currently hiring,�

Andrade said. “We are always looking for veterans, service members and military spouses to join our team.�

Veterans United has been recognized nationally as a top employer.

In August, it was ranked by Forbes as the best employer in the state of Missouri. Militaryfriendly.com named it a top “Military Friendly Employer� with gold distinction, and “Military Friendly Spouse Employer,� and by Fortune magazine as a “Best Company to Work For.�

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TRADE DESK

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FEBRUARY 2021

AIME members, Despite 2020 being a year of many challenges, the Association of Independent Mortgage Experts is proud to report that the broker channel continues to display value and nimble scalability as we continue to move toward a 25% market share. As advocates for independent mortgage brokers in the booming housing market, we have successfully leveraged our channel’s exceptional resources through technology and partnerships that help to position brokers as the best option for homebuyers. This commitment and support from our lending and vendor partners have allowed our community to grow at an unprecedented rate never seen before.

While we will undoubtedly still face significant challenges throughout this year, including the continuing presence of the COVID-19 pandemic and

ALTA members, In 2020, the way associations do their work changed.

Advocating for American Land Title Association members came with its own set of struggles. However, ALTA’s Government Affairs team and its partners in the real estate industry accomplished a great deal.

Once the pandemic shut down a majority of American businesses, ALTA’s Government Affairs team worked tirelessly to ensure title and settlement services were deemed essential and able to remain open and operational under guidance from Homeland Security.

Because of the government’s closures, ALTA members could not access the information they needed to do business. The Government Affairs team labored state by state and county by county to develop a county recorder operational status tracking system to help ALTA members and state land title associations monitor and troubleshoot local recording problems.

The team pushed for a federal remote online notarization bill which was introduced in both the House and Senate. The Securing and Enabling Commerce Using Remote and Electronic Notarization Act has more than 80 policymakers signed on as supporters.

Because of the economic uncertainty at the time, accessing the Paycheck Protection Program was essential,

the digitization of the home buying experience, AIME and the broker channel is poised to tackle these obstacles without hesitation. As we’ve seen from the past year, the determination of the broker channel to not only meet a refi boom directly but also handle a purchase season filled with unprecedented capacity shows the fortitude and flexibility that lies within the broker channel. We will continue to provide our members with the centralized resources and industry partnerships needed to support their ongoing business improvement efforts.

Together we can and will continue to support independent mortgage professionals with the resources they need, so they can provide consumers the most flexible options and the best service. Now truly is the time to become a part of our growing independent broker community.

especially for small businesses. ALTA’s Government Affairs staff helped its members understand and access the PPP to provide critical liquidity during the early months of the pandemic. It created a list of frequently asked questions and answers, discussing eligibility, loan maximums, forgiveness and more.

ALTA’s Government Affairs team heightened awareness of the growing problem of wire transfer fraud by securing language in multiple agency appropriations reports to ensure various agencies are collecting data and reporting their findings to Congress.

They built support for anti-money laundering language within the National Defense Authorization Act requiring shell companies to report ownership information to FinCen. ALTA’s Government Affairs team already has been working full time to identify and understand the new key players in President Joe Biden’s administration. A changing of the guard brings different obstacles and opportunities. ALTA looks forward to a new year of engaging its members in advocacy efforts.

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FEBRUARY 2021

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TRADE DESK

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TRADE DESK

MBA members, The Mortgage Bankers Association and the real estate finance industry are laser-focused on working with President Joe Biden’s administration and the new and familiar faces that will make up the 117th U.S. Congress.

What can the industry expect?

We are pleased to see that improving access to affordable housing – a growing issue even before the pandemic – appears to be a focal point for the new administration.

The MBA will continue to support policies that improve affordability and promote racial equity, including the much-needed work that needs to be done to increase minority homeownership.

All eyes will also be focused on the future of the GSEs. Their potential release from conservatorship could proceed on a more deliberative pace, with greater emphasis on mission-re-

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NAHB members, After years of cities trending as the hottest place for young people to move – leading to increased housing demand in high-density urban areas – the COVID-19 pandemic sent many of those young people, and their older generation counterparts, on a search for more living space and literal greener pastures.

The surge in demand for housing in lower-density areas came as families adhering to strict stay-at-home orders in many states sought more space for work and school within their homes. Many companies and workers have become more comfortable with remote work, offering the flexibility to live further out within large metropolitan areas or to relocate to more affordable, smaller metros.

Our economists at the National Association of Home Builders suggest these areas will remain attractive for the foreseeable future, persisting beyond the deployment of a COVID-19 vaccine.

The trend is borne out by NAHB’s Home Building Geography Index, a quarterly measurement of building conditions across the country. The latest HBGI showed

lated, affordable housing and cost-ofcredit issues, as opposed to recent themes of increased capital requirements, footprint reduction and taxpayer protection.

The good news? The MBA, in its over 100-year history, has worked with policymakers on both sides of the political aisle. Our members will always be most important to our success. Their direct engagement and advocacy will be a critical factor in influencing positive outcomes for real estate finance.

While our nation is still dealing with the impacts of the pandemic, the housing market continues to be a bright spot for the economy. It is therefore critical to support policies and initiatives that ensure its continued success, while maintaining a fair and transparent regulatory environment that protects all market participants.

the trend that began last spring has persisted into the fall, with single-family and multifamily construction continuing to overperform in lower-cost suburban and exurban markets, revealing a shift in consumer home buying preferences away from urban cores.

Record-low interest rates are also enabling more buyers and renters to afford larger homes that can accommodate home offices, gyms and other specialty rooms. Spacious yards have become a hot commodity for those who have expressed concerns over health risks from living in densely packed urban neighborhoods or in high-rises where it’s harder to social distance.

A lack of both new and existing inventory points to solid growth in home construction for the months ahead. And as our nation continues its economic recovery from the turmoil of 2020, home building will again lead the way.

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FEBRUARY 2021

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TRADE DESK

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NAMMBA members, As part of NAMMBA’s mission to diversify the mortgage banking industry, we have an exciting goal of bringing in 50,000 students into the industry through our Mission 2025 Program.

To reach this goal, NAMMBA is conducting a four-part College Town Hall Series to inform students, faculty and higher education stakeholders of our Mission 2025 goal and connect them with industry leaders to share their experience and background which will assist students with understanding the various opportunities within the real estate fi nance industry.

NAMMBA has also created a digital platform called the Talent Hub to connect college talent to the real estate fi nance industry through education, mentoring and internships that will result in full-time employment in our industry.

Beginning mid-February, students will have free access to webinars and courses through NAMMBA’s Talent Hub which has four pillars: introduction to careers in the real estate finance industry, financial health and wellness, mentorship/internship and mental wellness. NAMMBA’s Talent Hub webinars will focus on offering direct transferable skills applicable to our industry. Students will also be able to connect with mentors through NAMMBA’s VISIONARY Program.

If you or anyone you know may be interested in learning more about Mission 2025 and our Talent Hub or becoming a NAMMBA VISIONARY, tune into our College Town Hall series, happening monthly throughout the spring. Register for College Town Halls and go to our events page at www.nammba.org to find out more about our upcoming Talent Hub educational webinars.

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FEBRUARY 2021

MORTGAGE

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Mortgage FEBRUARY 2021

MORTGAGE

Why 28% of mortgage applicants never close the loan WOULD-BE BORROWERS DON’T CLOSE WITH INITIAL LENDER

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onnie Glessner isn’t normally one to turn down business.

But with origination volume expected to exceed $3.4 trillion this year, stretching the capacity limits of lenders and everyone else in the housing ecosystem, some mortgage applicants simply haven’t been worth his while.

“I have a refinance client in California and they own a geodesic dome home,” said Glessner, a senior loan officer at Draper & Kramer Mortgage in Englewood, Colorado. “They are nearly impossible to finance, thus not worth my team’s time currently.

We can’t be chasing rabbits all over the park right now. My team of LOAs, processors, assistant processors, underwriters and closers are still overwhelmed with business...I need to keep it easier for them.”

“I screen my mortgage applicants very carefully, and I am rarely surprised by an underwriter decision.”

-Steve Dominguez

FEBRUARY 2021

The geo-dome owner was among the tens of thousands of mortgage applicants that didn’t end up getting funded during the third quarter. According to a Mortgage Bankers Association report on profits at the end of 2020, 72% of mortgage applications in the third quarter were funded by independent mortgage banks, known as the pull-through rate.

Historical data from the MBA shows a huge variance in pull-through rates. In the fourth quarter of 2019, the rate checked in at 78%. Its low point over the last five years was 67%, in the first quarter of 2020. For the most part, the pull-through rate has hovered in the low 70s over the last five years.

HousingWire reached out to loan officers and mortgage executives across America to drill down specifics on which prospective borrowers weren’t making it to the finish line. After all, the average borrower’s FICO score today is at its highest level in recent history at over 750, mortgage rates are often below 3% for borrowers with strong fundamentals and people are desperate to buy a new home or save money through a refinance.

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BY JAMES KLEIMANN

MORTGAGE

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Multiple sources said their pull-through rates on refinancings are much lower than purchase (borrowers typically stick with the real estate agent’s LO recommendation), and that several factors can come into play: some LOs didn’t want to waste time with rateshoppers, others avoided borrowers with weak credit and limited cash reserves and others said tricky loans meant that they’d be leaving money on the table by skipping over easy-to-handle loans they could crank out and collect $8,000-plus a pop.

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“It’s just not worth it for me to chase thorny loans. I’m happy to hand out referrals – like, if you want it, cool, man – but this is such a crazy time it would be dumb for me to take that on.”

-Florida-based LO

Steve Dominguez, a Rancho Mirage, California-based mortgage broker at Nexa Mortgage, told HousingWire that

FEBRUARY 2021

his pull-through rates are consistently in the 90s. He credited that to a screening process he’s put in place to avoid wasting time on loans that aren’t in his wheelhouse.

“I screen my mortgage applicants very carefully, and I am rarely surprised by an underwriter decision,” Dominguez, a 30-year-plus industry veteran, said.

“I know upfront before I submit an app whether it will fly.”

Part of the screening process involves weeding out loans under $100,000, and loans with a lot of “hair.”

“I typically stay away from multiple coborrowers with low credit scores and no cash to close,” Dominguez said. “I don’t do down payment assistance loans anymore, although I’ve been known to do a USDA loan or two. I get requests for loans to borrowers with no socials (Individual Taxpayer Identification Number only), DPAs, foreign nationals. I

MORTGAGE

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According to a recent analysis from LBA Ware, commissions earned by LOs in the third quarter of 2020 increased 50% from the third quarter of 2019, principally because the average LO funded 51% more volume in 2020 ($2.6 million per month) versus 2019 ($1.7 million per month). Refinance transactions accounted for 46% of total volume in the quarter.

Although paychecks were fatter than a year ago, the increase in refi production meant a 0.9% decrease in per-loan commissions from the third quarter of 2019, to 106 basis points.

In other words, LOs were incentivized to churn refi loans and vanilla purchase

loans, which yielded an average of 110.8 basis points in profit in the third quarter.

It ’s really about ef ficiency and prioritization, according to John

were three common reasons for loans hitting the wall – the appraisal, that the borrower changed their mind or didn’t qualify or, most commonly, that closing

“It’s such a competitive market and there’s such a disparity in closing times, that creates a lot of the fallout.” -Mat Ishbia

Meussner, a production manager at Mason-McDuf fie Mor tgage Corp.

“Regarding capacity, we’re (my team, not my company) turning away difficult borrowers, shoppers, those who take up exorbitant amounts of precious time,” he said in an email.

Meussner told HousingWire that a mortgage applicant last week was seeking a small loan amount on a condo, so his team spent a half hour after the application going over fees and the finer points of the loan.

“The borrower continued to shop, continued to ask for more disclosures with numbers so he could shop, and I simply asked him to go to another lender, explaining [that] my team doesn’t have time to work on loans that aren’t committed to closing with us,” Meussner said.

“We had a lower rate and lower fees than the other offers he had, yet he didn’t trust us. We don’t have time for flaky shoppers that have zero commitment. There are too many good customers out there that want a good deal and will let us do our jobs without taking up hours of additional time – that’s where our focus is.”

The condo owner will have to eat an additional $3,000 in loan costs and a 125 basis points increase in the rate “because he didn’t trust us to do our job,” said Meussner.

Mat Ishbia , United Wholesale Mortgage president and CEO, said there

FEBRUARY 2021

times were too long and the borrower was tempted by another lender.

“Every day that loan sits out there, people call them to solicit them,” he said, noting that UWM’s pull-through rate was about 82%. “It’s such a competitive market and there’s such a disparity in closing times, that creates a lot of the fallout.”

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need to spend my time wisely, so I turn these down (for now).”

Multiple LOs shared similar sentiments . Some said they had developed an effective process for handling the incredible wave of refis – currently at record volume – and straightforward conventional purchase loans. Exotic non-QM loans or products for borrowers with checkered credit histories and limited cash reserves aren’t going to find a loan with them. Not these days, anyway.

One broker, who requested anonymity, said there’s a good chance the more challenging loans will still be around when volume wanes and he can catch his breath.

“I’m not going to step over dollars to pick up pennies,” said the Florida-based loan officer, who added that as a broker, he no longer loses deals on rate. “It’s just not worth it for me to chase thorny loans.

I’m happy to hand out referrals – like, if you want it, cool, man – but this is such a crazy time it would be dumb for me to take that on.”

REAL ESTATE

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Real Estate FEBRUARY 2021

REAL ESTATE

Austin now a magnet for tech workers wanting to buy homes OFFERS MORE AFFORDABLE LIVING AND NO STATE INCOME TAX

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he Lone Star S t ate has l o n g b e e n a t t ra c ti ve to businesses of all kinds. The combination of w a r m w e a t h e r, lots of space to build and the lack of a state income tax has been drawing companies for years. But in 2020, with tech companies and tech workers fleeing traditional tech hubs in droves, the trend only accelerated, especially in the state’s capital, Austin.

Austin, Texas, which has been dubbed “Silicon Hills,” is already home to technology companies such as IBM, Dell, Google, Facebook and Apple.

And Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has even said tech companies were flocking to Texas in “an absolute tidal wave.”

Computer technology company Oracle announced in a filing with the Securities and

“Austin’s rank as one of the best places to live, work, and thrive in the country is evident by not only the growth of our housing market, but also by the growth of our local economy.”

-Laura Huffman

FEBRUARY 2021

Exchange Commission at the end of last year that it would be relocating its headquarters to Austin, where it already has a sizable campus. The filing said that the company believes “these moves best position Oracle for growth and provide our personnel with more flexibility about where and how they work...this means that many of our employees can choose their office location as well as continue to work from home part time or all of the time.”

The number of tech and tech-adjacent companies moving to Austin just keeps growing. Over last summer, car manufacturer Tesla announced plans to open a $1.1 billion factory in Austin, claiming it could hire 5,000 people over time. And later in 2020, Tesla CEO Elon Musk confirmed to The Wall Street Journal that he had relocated to Texas, too.

Austin is ranked the No. 4 metro by net inflow of users and their top origins by Redfin– meaning 39.5% of users who search for homes in Austin are from outside the metro area. The top out-of-state origin location is San Francisco.

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BY JULIA FALCON

REAL ESTATE

“Austin is much more recession-proof, at least, from the pandemic than a lot of [cities] not just in our state but across the nation, because our economy is much more of a tech-based economy, versus a service industry economy, or oil and gas like in the Houston area.” -Romeo Manzanilla

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Throughout the course of the pandemic, more companies have been allowing employees to work from home, therefore allowing them to live anywhere and still get work done. In addition to the more affordable cost of living Texas has to offer, the state also has zero income taxes.

“Austin’s rank as one of the best places to live, work and thrive in the country is evident by not only the growth of our housing market, but also by the growth of our local economy,” Laura Huffman, Austin Chamber of Commerce president and CEO, said in a report from the Austin Board of Realtors.

“Our region has a lower year-over-year job loss than any other major metro, and despite the pandemic, a record number of businesses have chosen to relocate to or expand in the region this year,” Huffman said. “We expect this growth — attributed to Texas’ business-friendly environment paired with Austin’s deep talent pool — will continue through 2021.

FEBRUARY 2021

Despite this, in 2021 the region needs to address housing affordability to help people from being priced out of the market, even as salary and job growth continues.”

Indeed, during the third quarter last year, the homeownership rate in Texas rose to an all-time high of 70%, exceeding the national metric for the first time since 2012, according to a report from the Texas A&M Real Estate Center.

Another reason more buyers are coming to Austin? Romeo Manzanilla, 2020 president of the Austin Board of Realtors, told HousingWire that it might be due to low-interest rates and its stable economy.

“Austin is much more recession-proof, at least, from the pandemic than a lot of [cities] not just in our state but across the nation, because our economy is much more of a tech-based economy, versus a service industry economy, or oil and gas like in the Houston area,” Manzanilla said.

“I think we’ve seen fewer people affected by unemployment here in the Austin area than in other major metros.”

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The median home sale price in Austin went up 13% year over year in October, making the average home price $441,250, according to the Austin Board of Realtors.

Additionally, residential sales increased 22.7% while the number of pending sales had outpaced new listings – 29.8% to 19.7%, respectively.

For comparison, Redfin says that the median home sale price in San Francisco was $1.43 million as of late last year.

Kevin Burns, Urbanspace Real Estate + Interiors CEO, said that he’s been working the mass exodus from the West Coast and even New York, with buyers coming for tech jobs or to avoid state income taxes. Burns, who has been selling real estate in Austin since 1997, said that this is the hottest market he’s ever sold in.

“It’s a Zoom phenomenon,” Burns said.

“Why live in San Francisco, when you can work a San Francisco job, get paid San Francisco wages and live in Austin?”

Over the last 10 years, Jason Berknopf, a Realtor at austinrealty.com, said that home prices have just risen consistently and that it’s not new to this market.

“People will call in and be like ‘oh I just heard an Apple campus is in this area, must be really hot,’” Berknopf said. “Well, that area’s been coming hot for the last 10 years.”

Sal Silva, a Realtor at Realty Austin has two clients in California – one in San Francisco and one in Los Angeles. He said his client from San Francisco was so floored with how affordable homes are in Austin, that now he is not only seeking out a home for himself but also seeking one to purchase and rent out.

“Several times he’s told me like ‘man, I can’t believe this house would be, you know, $750,000 [in Austin],” Silva said.

“In San Francisco, this home would be like $2.5 million, easily.”

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Berknopf said that COVID-19 multiplied the demand for homes and that it’s extremely hard to find properties right now. The popularity of Austin combined with COVID-19 are two factors that have created the gap in inventory, he said.

“Well, reality is, we had population growth and job growth every single quarter during the last Great Recession… lending stopped on new construction, so we found ourselves in a huge supply shortage coming out of that and we never caught up.” -Kevin Burns

“People come in from out of state to look...there’s nothing to show them,” Berknopf said. “It’s very, very slim pickings and possibly due to a combination of, maybe some owners that were hesitant about selling this year for COVID reasons,

FEBRUARY 2021

on top of the economy and the business is still moving forward, increasing the demand and the popularity. That didn’t stop.”

According to the Austin Board of Realtors, Austin inventory sat at 1.3 months at the end of last year. However, Burns said that the shortage of inventory is nothing new. “ We ’ve b e en exp eriencing the shortages in housing in Austin since the great recession of 2007, 2008, 2009,” Burns said. “Well, reality is, we had population growth and job growth every single quarter during the last great recession...lending stopped on new construction, so we found ourselves in a huge supply shortage coming out of that and we never caught up.”

New home starts in the Austin metropolitan statistical area started dropping in the fourth quarter of 2006 from 17,784 and didn’t hit a number like that again until the third quarter of 2019, when there were 17,447 new home starts, according to data from research firm Zonda.

At the end of the third quarter this year, there was a 17% year-over-year increase in housing starts in the Austin metro area, jumping from 17,447 to 20,395 new home starts – but it’s a 1% dip from the 20,576 new home starts in the second quarter this year.

Silva said he's even had a listing go on the market at 9 a.m. and already had a showing scheduled five minutes later. By 11 a.m., he had received the first offer on that house.

Silva said that he’s had agents ask him what it would take to place a winning offer on a home.

“The shortage of inventory right now is just kind of making it really competitive, everybody is wanting to outdo each other, especially when they find a home that they love,” Silva said. “That’s what I’m seeing today with this particular listing.

It’s incredible.”

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REAL ESTATE

FINTECH

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Fintech FEBRUARY 2021

FINTECH

New kid on the block TECH COMPANIES SEEK TO DISRUPT MORTGAGE FINANCE IN 2021

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he nex t time you apply for a mortgage, or your lender services that loan or sells it on the secondary market, you might be helping to disrupt an industry. That’s because the entire transaction, or at least parts of it, may be powered by blockchain in the not-too-distant future.

Blockchain – most simply defined as a decentralized, immutable digital ledger – is perhaps best known as the technology underlying digital currency.

But blockchain is also being increasingly adopted by tech companies in the mortgage space seeking to revolutionize and disrupt the industry.

“There are a lot of different use cases – everything from information sharing in the origination ecosystem to servicing to title and capital markets,”

“There are a lot of different use cases – everything from information sharing in the origination ecosystem to servicing to title and capital markets.”

-Debbie Hoffman

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said Debbie Hoffman, founder and CEO of Symmetry Blockchain Advisors in Orlando, Florida.

“Mortgage has a very long supply chain, from the initial marketing and purchase of a home to the origination of a loan, servicing a loan, selling a loan and the secondary market, and within each one of those sectors there are areas where you could have a blockchain.”

The advantages of blockchain are encouraging disruptive companies to integrate it into their operations.

Hoffman said that blockchain makes the process of originating a mortgage simpler, easier and cheaper because blockchain allows information sharing so the cost of producing the loan is less – a savings that players say will be passed along to the consumer.

For investors, the advantage of blockchain is accuracy – the odds of having defects in the loan are lower, Hoffman said, because there are fewer inputs along the way and transparency in the process.

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BY ROBYN A. FRIEDMAN

FINTECH

“Those are the two areas where I see tremendous value,” she added.

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Although change is taking place slowly, “there has not been much progress, sadly,” Hoffman said. Some companies are already utilizing blockchain or about to launch new technology incorporating it in 2021. These include: Bee Mortgage App. If you check out the Bee Mortgage App in the iPhone’s App Store today, you’ll find a home affordability calculator to help homebuyers discover their homebuying power. That will all change in late 2021, when Bee Mortgage App Founder and CEO Curtis Wood said the app will go live as a mortgage originator utilizing blockchain that will allow applicants to submit a mortgage application and receive an approval without having to interact with a human.

“You’re not going to be waiting on a loan officer to process your loan application data,” Wood said. “We

“Basically, any financial services vertical that historically has required intermediation is a candidate for blockchain disruption.”

-Mike Cagney

FEBRUARY 2021

will be using AccountChek and The Work Number for income and asset verification, but what we do with that data is different. We have an AI program scrape it. It performs simple LTV and DTI calculations and then it’s run through a smart contract, which has the minimum qualifying standards pre-coded. If you meet those standards, we push out a preapproval notification.”

The advantages? Speed is one. Wood said the application process for a single applicant would take about three minutes.

Accuracy is another advantage, since you’re eliminating the risk of human error.

Cost is an advantage as well.

Wood said the automation due to blockchain allows loan officers to triple their production “because they’re not going to be touching up to 70% of their production pipeline.” Those savings will be passed along to the consumer, he said.

Wood expects to launch in the fourth quarter of 2021, and he hopes to disrupt the mortgage industry in 2022 and beyond in the same way that TurboTax disrupted tax preparation.

Figure. San Francisco-based Figure Technologies has been incorporating

FINTECH

Symbiont. New York-based Symbiont has partnered with Lewis Ranieri, who is considered to be “the father of mortgagebacked securities,” to create a blockchain

getting lost at every stage. By allowing everybody to share a common record, when a loan moves servicers, there is absolutely no data loss.”

“The benefits that originate in servicing will flow down to the end-investors, who will have better transparency into the quality of the loans they’re getting, into the performance of the loans they’re buying and a far better ability to enforce their rights in a circumstance where the need arises.” -Michael Manning solution for the mortgage market – a decentralized mortgage record that securely shares data among servicers, investors and other key parties. The goal is to convert legacy mortgages into auditable, immutable and verifiable Symbiont Smart Securities.

“The mortgage industry is a great poster child for the virtues of blockchain,” said Michael Manning, a business development executive at Symbiont.

Manning said it ’s not uncommon under the present system for “bad loans” to be written – loans that don’t conform to the representations and warranties originators make to their investors. But through the use of smart contracts, which are applied to the underlying mortgages, loans in noncompliance can be flagged.

“In essence, you eliminate reps and warranties claims because they are a function of trust,” Manning said. “I no longer need to trust that you as an originator are giving me a valid loan. I can verify it for myself because I can see all the data.”

Another advantage of using blockchain is the elimination of data loss.

“Mortgages transfer across different servicers throughout their lifetime,” Manning said. “Every one of those transfers is a nightmare event, with data

FEBRUARY 2021

Of course, blockchain doesn’t eliminate the potential for bad data, Manning admitted.

“But it greatly limits it and leaves an audit trail that is unprecedented,” he said.

The company plans to roll out its system in early 2021.

“It will be a mortgage servicing system – the ability to handle both performing and non-performing loans,” Manning said.

In the short term, Manning said the Symbiont system will make it more ef ficient to service mortgages by eliminating errors and compliance violations and by providing greater transparency to all parties. In the longer term, he said it will dramatically lower the costs and risk and therefore improve the profitability of the entire lending and securitization system.

“The benefits that originate in servicing will flow down to the end-investors, who will have better transparency into the quality of the loans they’re getting, into the performance of the loans they’re buying and a far better ability to enforce their rights in a circumstance where the need arises,” he said.

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blockchain technology since 2018 and is the creator of Provenance, a blockchain used for financial services. Using Provenance, Figure has successfully completed loan origination and securitization transactions. The company is currently incorporating blockchain in the origination process for home equity lines of credit, according to Cofounder and CEO Mike Cagney. “ We were the first to originate, trade, finance and securitize loans on blockchain,” he said.

The company uses smart contracts to validate loans and create real-time exception reporting. It also uses omnibus banks and digital wallets to fund loans, as well as blockchain for HELOC and nonGSE mortgages for loan sales, financing and securitization, Cagney said.

T here are four advantage s of blockchain over traditional methods of financing, Cagney said. Blockchain reduces the audit and quality control costs in originating a loan; it allows for bilateral trading of loans; it reduces many of the expenses of securitization; and the real-time nature of blockchain allows for transparency to asset performance, supporting better liquidity.

Cagney said he expects his technology to ultimately extend to banking, payments and asset management.

“Basically, any financial services vertical that historically has required intermediation is a candidate for blockchain disruption,” he said. “We also believe the technology will drive new product innovation, such as fractional home sales.”

This year, Cagney is hoping to get one of the GSEs to agree to take receipt of loans on blockchain.

“That has massive benefit to originators, selling loans the day they are funded, reducing cost and risk, and to the agencies, creating one-day MBS passthroughs versus 55-day securities,” he said.

POLITICS & MONEY

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Politics & Money FEBRUARY 2021

POLITICS & MONEY

Biden chooses Rep. Marcia Fudge as HUD secretary HOUSING EXPERTS VOW SUPPORT THROUGH SENATE CONFIRMATION

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President Joe Biden has announced his choice to lead the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development: Rep. Marcia Fudge, D-Ohio.

Fudge will leave her role as Representative for Ohio’s 11th congressional district to serve on the cabinet if confirmed. Fudge is likely to be one of the few members of Congress chosen to serve on the cabinet, as Democrats lost significant ground in the House during the 2020 election, and control of the Senate is split 50/50 with Vice President Kamala Harris being the tie breaking vote.

But Fudge represents a majority-minority district in Ohio, and Democrats could safely fill her seat if needed.

If confirmed, Fudge would be the first Black woman to serve as HUD secretary in more than

“It is something that probably in my wildest dreams I would have never thought about, so if I can help this president in any way possible, I am more than happy to do it.” -Marcia Fudge

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40 years. The first was Patricia R. Harris under President Jimmy Carter. This choice from the Biden administration comes after the president-elect promised to put together the most diverse cabinet in history.

“It is something that probably in my wildest dreams I would have never thought about, so if I can help this president in any way possible, I am more than happy to do it,” Fudge told reporters. “It is a great honor and a privilege to be a part of something so good. If it were to happen, I would happily accept it.”

Throughout her career, Fudge has been a strong advocate for fair labor practices and civil and human rights. While she was previously thought to be a contender for Agricultural Secretary due to her position on the House Committee on Agriculture, Biden selected Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack for this role, who previously served as Agricultural secretary under President Barack Obama for eight years.

Fudge’s previous work with the housing industry includes introducing legislation to help states and cities enact a speedier, more efficient process

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BY KELSEY RAMÍREZ

POLITICS & MONEY

for abolishing vacant and abandoned properties.

Notably, Fudge was not a member of Biden’s transition team for HUD.

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Now, the housing industry is welcoming HUD’s next potential leader.

“On behalf of MBA, I congratulate Rep. Marcia Fudge on being selected to be nominated as the Secretary of HUD,” said Robert Broeksmit, Mortgage Bankers Association president and CEO. “While the housing market has been one of the few economic bright spots during the pandemic, HUD will play a central role in addressing a number of important challenges in the post-pandemic recovery, including how to resolve the mortgage forbearance afforded to more than 800,000 borrowers who have loans insured by FHA. “Also, the new administration will tackle the ongoing housing affordability crisis affecting both homeowners and renters,” Broeksmit said. “MBA and its members look forward to working with the administration and Rep. Fudge as she builds her team of housing experts who will manage these and other important issues at HUD, FHA and Ginnie Mae.” And the National Association of Home Builders joined in, congratulating Fudge and expressing its hope to work together after she is confirmed.

“NAHB congratulates Rep. Fudge on her selection as HUD secretary,” NAHB Chairman Chuck Fowke said. “Upon her confirmation to the Cabinet post, NAHB looks forward to working with Secretary Fudge to enact a robust rental assistance program to help millions of renters and small business property owners who have been hurt by the COVID-19 pandemic. We also seek to work together

to ensure qualified home buyers have access to housing credit and to promote affordable homeownership and rental housing opportunities for all Americans.”

Fudge enters the picture at a time when housing is a frontline issue across the U.S. in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Housing leaders voiced their confidence that Fudge will make sure every American has a place to call home.

“As HUD secretary, Rep. Fudge will use her considerable intellect and energy to

“Millions of Americans are finding themselves on the verge of losing their homes due to the Trump administration’s and Senate’s unwillingness to pass eviction protections for those harmed by the COVID19 crisis.” -Mara Rudman

ensure that every American has a safe, secure place to call home,” said Mara Rudman, Center for American Progress executive vice president for policy. “For many years, Rep. Fudge has advocated for af fordable housing and fought housing discrimination in rural and urban communities alike. Through her years as a mayor and congresswoman, she has shown a deep commitment to use

FEBRUARY 2021

federal policy to better communities and people’s lives.

“She is entering HUD at a particularly crucial time in its history,” Rudman said. “Millions of Americans are finding themselves on the verge of losing their homes due to the Trump administration’s and Senate’s unwillingness to pass eviction protections for those harmed by the COVID-19 crisis.

“She is also entering a department that, under its current secretary, has actively worked to increase housing dis c riminati o n by revo k in g th e Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule and by lowering its standards for proving racial discrimination housing by blunting its disparate impact rule. I have no doubt that as HUD secretary, Rep. Fudge will work tirelessly not only to address these immediate crises but also to address the long-standing structural issues that have left so many people without secure housing for so many years.”

The National Fair Housing Alliance applauded not just the selection of Fudge as HUD Secretary, but also Biden’s commitments for his first 100 days in office.

“NFHA is ex tremely encouraged

by President-elect Joseph R. Biden’s selection of Rep. Marcia L. Fudge to lead HUD,” NFHA President and CEO Lisa Rice said. “An unflagging advocate for civil rights, Fudge brings decades of experience as a public servant and a strong commitment to ensuring equitable access to credit, education, healthy food, clean environments and other resources, which go hand-in-hand with access to housing.

“Having served as mayor of Warrensville Heights, Ohio, Fudge will bring a unique understanding of how HUD programs are implemented on the ground locally,” Rice said.

“We are further encouraged by the incoming administration’s indication that its Day One priorities for HUD will

POLITICS & MONEY

“I look forward to working with her to boost resources for affordable housing production and community development, to fight homelessness and eviction, to bolster resiliency in the face of a changing climate and to restore bedrock fair housing principles that uphold equal opportunity for all our citizens.” -David Price

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Not surprisingly, Democratic members of Congress also supported the nomination, with Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., chairwoman of the House Committee on

Financial Services, saying she is standing by, ready to work with Fudge on the next steps.

“In nominating Rep. Marcia Fudge as Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, [Biden] has selected a seasoned legislator who is ready to address the challenges that lie ahead,” Waters said. “The last four years consisted of a Trump Administration intent on doing everything in its power to diminish, rather than promote, fair access to housing; rescind, rather than strengthen, bedrock rules that prevent discrimination in housing; and ignore, rather than address, the housing and homelessness crisis our country faces amid an unprecedented global pandemic.

“According to recent reports, $70 billion in back rent will be due by the end of the year and 20 million renters could face eviction by January 2021, while 2.8 million homeowners are in forbearance and 3.8 million are estimated to be in some stage of delinquency,” Waters said. “It is clear that in order to meet the scale and scope of this crisis, swift action must be taken.”

And Rep. David Price, D-N.C., the chairman of the House Transportation, Housing and Urban Development Appropriations subcommittee, joined in on congratulating Fudge.

“I applaud President-elect Biden’s decision to select Congresswoman Marcia Fudge to head the Department of Housing and Urban Development,” Price said. “Rep. Fudge is a steadfast champion for working families, spending her time in Congress fighting for better health care, nutrition, economic opportunities and safe and decent affordable housing.

FEBRUARY 2021

These qualities will serve her well as HUD Secretary at a critical time when the nation faces a pandemic that has not only exposed but exacerbated our national housing crisis.

“As Chairman of the House ‘T-HUD’ Appropriations subcommittee, I look forward to working with her to boost resources for af fordable housing production and community development, to fight homelessness and eviction, to bolster resiliency in the face of a changing climate and to restore bedrock fair housing principles that uphold equal opportunity for all our citizens,” he said.

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This acceptance from the housing industry is vastly different than the reception her predecesor HUD Secretary Ben Carson received upon his nomination to the post.

Many members of the industry welcomed Carson and expressed their hope to work with him during his term, but that was far from unanimous. His nomination divided the housing industry as some balked at his lack of qualifications while others lauded the decision to bring in someone who might offer a unique perspective.

As Carson stepped down from his post in January and he looks ahead, his plans for the future may include a role in the private sector. Back in 2019, Carson revealed that he intended to leave HUD at the end of President Donald Trump’s first term.

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include reinstating the 2015 Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing and 2013 Disparate Impact rules.”

Housing leaders said they look forward to supporting Fudge through the Senate confirmation process.

“Congresswoman Fudge would bring a much-needed fresh approach to national housing policy,” said David Dworkin, National Housing Conference president and CEO. “She has been a strong supporter of the HOME program and played a leading role in getting Congress to approve desperately needed funds to stabilize the hardest hit neighborhoods during the Great Recession.

“Her background as mayor of an inner ring suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, and as a leader on education policy, would be important as HUD plays an important role in reversing the catastrophic loss of Black homeowners over the past 10 years,” Dworkin said.

“Congresswoman Fudge understands the need to make housing policy work for all communities, urban, suburban and rural. We look forward to supporting her confirmation by the United States Senate and working with her in the days and years to come,” he said.

with Jane Mason Clarifire Founder and CEO

Tech opportunities spring up from mass urban exodus The role of technology in an ever-changing housing market As the mortgage industry continues to navigate record-low interest rates, many companies are seeing tech opportunities, and modernizing thier processes to keep up with demand. “For [mortgage servicers and lenders], demands for technology responsiveness and capabilities are at an all-time high,” said Jane Mason, Clarifire founder and CEO. “As a result, lenders and servicers both require automated business logic to address continually changing regulations and process record large loan volumes.”

HousingWire reached out to Mason to discuss how tech resources are helping lenders “control the chaos” while meeting the needs of its clients in these unprecedented times.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

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HousingWire: How has COVID-19 impacted technology strategies and roadmaps for mortgage lenders?

Jane Mason: The impacts have been extraordinary. Many new tech opportunities are springing from the mass urban exodus, low interest rates and enormous, rapid market demands. Forbearance volumes are now stabilizing, however, the industry is facing imminent defaults. Lenders that also service mortgages face growing complexities and convergence of disasters – the COVID-19 pandemic and the record number of hurricanes for this time of year. For these organizations, demands for technology responsiveness and capabilities are at an all-time high. As a result, lenders and servicers both require automated business logic to address continually changing regulations and process record large loan volumes.

HW: Where would you advise clients and colleagues to focus their tech resources as we prepare for 2021?

JM: I would encourage all organizations to expect and prepare for the unexpected. The best approach is to focus on continuity of processes and implement seamless, automated, straight-through processing and corporate-wide, centralized customer-centric interactions. These are the types of improvements that will improve both flexibility and efficiency. We have found that grouping loans and adding technology to drive the appropriate logic results in providing straight-through processing in bulk for refinance, forbearance, extension and loan modification requests.

Centralizing the standard processes in a transaction with visibility and flexibility not only controls the chaos but attains final results faster and with greater efficiency.

HW: In your business, where are you finding the opportunity to meet client needs and grow relationships?

JM: For us, the unrelenting demands on mortgage servicers have been an ongoing opportunity to demonstrate the importance and capabilities of modernization. I’ve found working tirelessly and side-by-side with mortgage servicers to solve their current challenges has made a real difference.

Our clients have expressed confidence in our ability to use creative solutions to meet their challenges head-on.

We’re also seeing many new customers who have reached out to us for our process automation expertise and our reputation for delivering results. As a small company with a big product, this helps us grow and further deepen our long-standing business relationships in new ways.

HW: As an executive, how do you keep your learning curve steep and prepare for an increasingly digital future?

JM: Helping the industry achieve the results they need through technology is at the forefront of our vision, and educating myself about the evolution of digital technology is a massive part of this effort. I tend to diversify my research into current trends and keep an open-minded approach to new methodologies. I also read all of the industry publications, including HousingWire, which gives me an excellent perspective on where the industry is headed.

I’m particularly interested in current technology innovations and process cognitive computing, which helps me better understand the industry’s needs and other strategies that are working well for servicers. I’m always in discussion with my colleagues and peers, from whom I receive excellent insights into incrementally improving chaotic areas within servicing. We consistently exchange ideas about new ways to enhance our offerings and how best to implement them. The result is being able to continually evolve our technology’s digital benefits as a part of our everyday business.

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with Andy Crisenbery Black Knight Senior Vice President of eLending Solutions

COVID-19 created “quick fix” fintech solutions How technology is transforming the industry Early in 2020, the housing industry was forced to pivot its traditionally in-person processes and harness available technology resources amid the spread of COVID-19. Now, the industry will need to take a step back to figure out which fintech solutions can provide long-term solutions, according to Andy Crisenbery, Black Knight senior vice president of eLending solutions and 2019 HousingWire Tech Trendsetter.

HousingWire: How has COVID-19 impacted technology strategies for mortgage lenders?

Andy Crisenbery: COVID-19 had a profound effect on almost all business lines in real estate and lending. Not only from the standpoint of the wellbeing of everyone affected, but it has quickly established a more remote working environment. Real estate and lending have traditionally been social businesses, from the time a property is listed for sale, through the selling/purchasing process and, in most cases, the mortgage banking and lending activities as well.

All participants in the real estate transaction have had to re-learn how to do business due to COVID-19, and technology has played a big part of this transformation. We have all been working quickly to further advance digital mortgages and related technologies for years, and COVID-19 drove those technologies into each part of the mortgage lending process with urgency and with measurable commitment.

HW: Where are you finding opportunity to meet client needs and grow relationships?

AC: At Black Knight, we had closing technologies for both the lenders and title agents for some time. Many of our clients were really caught by surprise with the challenges of operating remotely and transacting using electronic technologies.

We had, and continue to have, a focus on streamlining ef-

forts required to deploy electronic technology and helping our clients optimize those tools in their business environment. A great example is remote online notarization. This is a great technology solution that helps with the challenges of COVID-19, but unless your business is prepared to deploy, use and support RON, you won’t be very successful. When you are able to help your clients, and partner with them in surviving the market environment and helping them grow using new technologies, it’s a winning relationship.

HW: Where would you advise clients focus their technology resources as we prepare for the year ahead?

AC: As COVID-19 drove the use of collaborative technologies and digital processes into the mortgage lending market quickly, I believe the beginning of 2021 will require our resources to step back and really take a look at how they can use those tools to help their business most effectively.

Technology needs to support the business, not define how the business operates. COVID-19 forced us to use these tools as a quick fix, and now the industry has recognized that many of these technologies will support the new normal business model. We need to work to provide better integrations, tune the technologies to support the business and make sure that considerations for digital mortgages are included in the mid- and long-term technology roadmaps.

HW: As an executive, how do you keep your learning curve steep and prepare for an increasingly digital future?

AC: Working with clients across the lending market has been extremely helpful in exposure to new operational or technical challenges, as well as strategies to address them. I believe one of the biggest tests is to address those challenges in a way that is consumable to all of the mortgage lending participants and systems involved. Adoption of digital mortgage and closing tools for many of today’s problems will be supported by well thought-out and integrated solutions.

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“Technology needs to support the business, not define how the business operates,” Crisenbery said. “We need to work to provide better integrations, tune the technologies to support the business and make sure that considerations for digital mortgages are included in the mid- and longterm technology roadmaps.”

HousingWire reached out to Crisenbery to discuss how COVID-19 has driven technology resources into the housing industry and what’s to come as we enter 2021. This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

KUDOS

Distant but not disconnected: How Guaranteed Rate donated over $7 million in 2020

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By Brena Nath

kudo

Every month, Guaranteed Rate CEO Victor Ciardelli sits down and reads through story after story of people who are working to overcome extraordinary hardships and are in need of financial support, looking at ways the company can step in and provide help.

This is one of the final steps in the application process for the Guaranteed Rate Foundation, and it’s the part of the process that keeps the mission of the foundation close to home for Ciardelli.

By reading each story on how they can help a person who’s in hardship and going through a tremendous amount of pain, whether that’s providing relief for them mentally or physically, Ciardelli said that it constantly reminds him about the difference and impact that they’re able to make in the lives of people who really need it.

“We can’t free it up for them completely, but we can make a big difference in their lives,” Ciardelli said.

So far, since the foundation launched in 2012, the difference that Ciardelli is talking about can be seen in the more than $4.7 million to over 1,470 individuals that the foundation has provided in relief.

The foundation was built to help specific people who are in desperate need of help, Ciardelli said, with funds going to help recipients who have been affected by domestic violence, homelessness, medical emergencies, natural disasters and the unexpected loss of loved ones. On the application page on the foundation’s website, it says, “We realize it can be difficult to ask for help in times of need, which is why we strive to make the process as simple as possible.” It then asks applicants to provide a detailed summary of their hardship to start the process.

In 2020 alone, the foundation has granted over $1.3 million, along with $7.8 million from Guaranteed Rate, showing that even in a year of social distancing, they weren’t disconnected from those who need financial relief.

“Karma is a real thing,” Ciardelli said as last year came to a close and Guaranteed Rate was able to announce its last big initiative for the year. “I’m a big believer that the more you give,

FEBRUARY 2021

the more it all comes back. The more we grow, the more good we can do to help people in need. This year, we’ve doubled loan volume to $73 billion, and tripled revenue from $1 billion to $3 billion. We’re so thankful to be in a position to help.”

At the start of 2020, right after COVID-19 started to close down most of America and families were forced to stay at home, Guaranteed Rate launched an initiative to purchase meals for those experiencing food insecurity during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Through employee-led contributions, the company was able to donate more than 4.2 million meals to those in need. The goal at the time was to raise $500,000 in one week to purchase food for pantries across the country.

Surpassing its goal, the company was able to raise over $600,000, which included a dollarfor-dollar match from Guaranteed Rate.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has been devastating to so many individuals and communities,” Ciardelli said at the time. “After seeing all the heartbreaking news stories and the stark images of empty food pantries around the country at this unprecedented time of need, we wanted to do something to help.”

Then, halfway through last year and following the same theme of rallying together in a short amount of time, Guaranteed Rate donated to the largest domestic hunger-relief organization in the U.S., Feeding America. The organization provides meals to more than 40 million people each year through a network of 200 food banks and 60,000 food pantries and meal programs.

To support this organization, which was witnessing a spike in need and a decrease in volunteers at the time, employees came together and contributed more than $1 million to help provide meals for individuals and families across the country, with Guaranteed Rate then adding a two-for-one dollar company match

to what was raised. In total, they raised $3.4 million for Feeding America.

The final initiative from G u a r a nt e e d R a t e a nd the Gua ra nteed R ate Foundation focused on helping provide basic necessities to children living in poverty, donating to the nonprofit Baby2Baby. The nonprofit is uniquely positioned with strong buying power that allows them to buy essentials substantially below retail cost.

Through its initiative, Guaranteed Love, the company’s employees, families

and friends were able to provide essential items to children nationwide through B a by 2B a by. T he t o t a l amount donated, which was over $3.3 million, translates into approximately 4 million diapers, 80,000 cans of formula, 80,000 packs of wipes, 40,000 warm coats, 40,000 blankets, 12,000 pairs of pajamas and 12,000 toys.

“As a company, we are blessed to be in a position to make such a positive difference,” Ciardelli said after the donation to Baby2Baby.

“We have an amazing group of incredibly generous employees who came together yet again to make a real im-

pact on so many families and children. By working together, we can accomplish amazing things.”

While Guaranteed Rate is one of the largest mortgage lenders in the industry, its stor y of a booming and record-breaking mortgage origination year is not too different from many others in the industry. Refinance business thrived on recordlow interest rates, and this demand is expected to continue into this year.

Ciardelli urged all CEOs and leaders to find ways to integrate giving back into their mission, just as Guaranteed Rate’s No. 1 core value is to grow for good.

“Personally, I think that it should be a mission for every CEO, no matter what size organization, to give what you can and work together,” he said. “By having more CEOs out there being able to drive initiatives like this, you’re talking about an incredible amount of power that is created as far as being able to help individuals.”

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dos

KUDOS

FEBRUARY 2021

parting shot

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FEBRUARY 2021

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