Friday, November 29, 2024

Industry Insight

Mortgage Delinquency Rate For July Hit Lowest Level in 20 Years

Just when you think mortgage performance can’t get any better, it improves yet again. According to CoreLogic, just 3.8% of mortgages were in some stage...

How Mortgage Servicers Can Prepare For the Next Downturn

When mortgage rates fell during the first half of 2019, it surprised housing industry watchers, many of whom had been predicting that rates would...

Rising Family Income Helped Keep Mortgage Delinquency Rate Low in May

The U.S. mortgage delinquency rate in May continued to hover at the lowest level in more than 20 years. Not one state posted an annual...

Strong Job Market, Low Mortgage Rates Lift Consumer Sentiment Toward Housing

Consumer sentiment toward the housing market improved in July, reaching a score of 93.7 on Fannie Mae’s Home Purchase Sentiment Index (HPSI). That’s an increase...

Bots Helping Lock Desk Teams Complete Their Reviews Faster

After several years of focus on modernizing the borrower experience, the mortgage industry is finally turning its attention to improving the lender experience. We’re starting...

Inventory Problem Persists as Housing Starts Fell Again in June

Housing starts continued to disappoint in June, falling to an adjusted annual rate of 1.253 million, a decrease of 0.9% compared with a revised...

The Nonquantifiable Benefits of Choosing the Right Mortgage Technology

In mortgage lending, the landscape is constantly evolving, and the solutions created for yesterday’s challenges may not be helpful when trying to overcome the...

Black Knight: Prepayment Activity Has More Than Doubled During Past Four Months

Spurred mainly by lower mortgage interest rates, prepayment activity has more than doubled over the past four months to reach the highest level since...

Independents Realizing Stronger Per Mortgage Profit than Large Banks

With shrinking volume and rising production costs, it’s no wonder mortgage lenders are having a miserable time realizing decent profits. According to the Mortgage Bankers...

Mortgage Closing Rate Rises to Highest Level in at Least 16 Months

Despite falling mortgage rates, the refinance share of total mortgage volume fell to 32% of all loans in May, down from 35% in April...

Report Shows Where Closing Costs Are Highest

Where were closing costs highest in 2018? According to ClosingCorp, which collects and analyzes such data, states with the highest average closing costs for the...

Lower Mortgage Rates, Slowing Home Price Gains Boost Affordability

Affordability is improving, due mainly to lower mortgage rates and slowing home price appreciation, according to Black Knight. In March, a month that typically sees...

How Lenders Can Better Reach the Underserved

Has the mortgage industry, in following stricter lending regulations, locked millions of consumers out of the housing marketplace? A study recently released by the Urban...

How Tax Reform Has Impacted the Housing Market

When the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was enacted in 2017, it reduced tax breaks for homeowners. Mainly, it lowered the cap on the mortgage...

What Millennials Fear Most About Homeownership: TCO

Mortgage lenders tend to be overly optimistic about the housing market - and who can blame them? Typically, when economists working in the mortgage industry...

Opposing Forces Keeping Rate of Application Defects in Check

After rising for the previous nine months, the frequency of defects, fraudulence and misrepresentation in the information submitted in mortgage loan applications was flat...

Mortgage QA/QC Tools: Helping Lenders Understand the Borrower’s ‘Story’

Every great story, fiction or non-fiction, has five key elements: characters, setting, plot, conflict, and resolution. Whether one is reading Snow White and the...

Mortgage Bankers Saw Origination Volume, Profits Drop in 2018

Ask any mortgage banker how well they did in terms of origination volume in 2018 and they will likely say it was not the...

Taking the Cross-Sell from ‘Highly Improbable’ to ‘Highly Profitable’

When it comes to mortgage servicing rights (MSRs), the buy/sell decision has rarely been more complex than it is now. Low production volumes continue...

How Improving the Borrower Experience Can Reduce Closing Times

In today’s digital-first world, most mortgage lenders recognize the value of improving digital experiences for consumers. In fact, 84 percent of financial institutions list...