Fun with numbers for Hump Day! Numbers were behind HP’s decision to leave California for Houston. Thank you to Len T. who sent a great chart of the names of big numbers, suitable for the kids and anyone watching U.S. debt. Thank you to Brian B. for sending along the news that New York City doesn’t, for the first time ever, have a zip code in the Top 10 Most Expensive in the United States. In Hawai’i, affordable housing advocates are cheering the 572 acres going to housing where owners will be restricted to Native Hawaiian households who earn up to 30%, 40%, and 60% of the area median income. (There are 5,100 people on the waiting list for 60 units, some on the list for 30 years!) If you’re a music fan, you can buy M&M’s, uh, Eminem’s, house, for $3.7 million. Lastly, during the housing boom of the early 2000s, the homeownership rate peaked at 69.2%. However, the subsequent “Great Recession” led to an 11-year decline and homeownership bottomed out at a 62.9% share of households during the second quarter of 2016. Since that time, and contrary to many forecasts, homeownership staged a rally, rising to 65.3% just prior to the COVID-19 recession. These gains were driven by younger households. Every industry vet knows, however, that not everyone deserves, or wants, to own their own place.

Lender and Broker Services and Products

Northpointe Bank Correspondent Lending announces the launch of its Expanded Portfolio product suite and enhanced Streamline Jumbo product. Providing low-rate financing above standard conforming loan limits, the Streamline Jumbo features fixed rates, loan amounts up to $3,000,000, loan-to-value up to 85% and no mortgage insurance. The Expanded Portfolio Non-QM programs include Prime Non-Agency, for higher credit borrowers with an eligibility profile that falls just outside of agency or prime jumbo. The Expanded Access and New Start programs help borrowers with seasoned or recent credit events or less than perfect pay history. Northpointe’s alternative documentation solutions include a 12- or 24-month bank statement program with an easy-to-use calculator to determine income. Finally, the Investor Cash Flow program utilizes the property’s rental income for qualification. Northpointe Bank provides tailored solutions to maximize your profitably and help grow your business. View program details for more information or email us at correspondentsales@northpointe.com.

A digital mortgage experience is the hallmark of successful business: keep borrowers happy and informed, organize client data in a centralized database, and ensure your pipeline is always open for new business. Jungo, the Salesforce-based, mortgage optimized CRM, has teamed up with Blend to launch the Jungo + Blend integration! Your clients will love Blend’s effortless application process, and you’ll work more efficiently with a fully integrated CRM. All Blend application data is synced to your CRM, and automated email and text reminders prompt your customers to complete their application. Best of all, you won’t waste any more time logging in and out of various software programs. Jungo will give you your most productive workday, every day, from one login. To learn more, click here.

Millions of borrowers have forbearance plans ready to expire and are at risk of foreclosure. When a retention plan is not an option, Altisource® has launched its Signature Seller Assisted Sale program to help borrowers and servicers avoid foreclosure by assisting in the sale of the home. “The Signature Seller Assisted Sale program is designed to utilize Altisource’s integrated services to assist borrowers in gracefully selling their home when all retention possibilities are exhausted,” said John Vella, Chief Revenue Officer at Altisource. “We feel our combination of services uniquely positions us to offer solutions that no other vendor can provide. In the end, this program can help borrowers, servicers and investors achieve the optimal outcome in these uncertain times.” Read the press release here.

When NAMB says, “NAMB for all,” it’s no joke. NAMB really does go all-in to when it comes to providing members with multiple platforms to help them thrive in their role as mortgage professionals. LendingPad is just one of those platforms and the great news is that it’s included with every NAMB membership. This full-featured, forward-thinking, 100% web-based LOS is designed for all daily origination needs, including borrower engagement, processing, document management and connectivity to your favorite wholesale lenders. In fact, it’s been time-tested by thousands of satisfied brokers and is constantly evolving to offer you the latest technology to help you succeed. In a nutshell, LendingPad streamlines the complex and often segmented origination process by allowing real-time collaboration between borrowers, brokers, lenders, and service providers. Interested? You should be. Take a few minutes to learn about NAMB’s member benefits here.  

The Connexions valuation platform offers ground-breaking accounting services with Connexions Intelligent Accounting. Connexions is backed by a dedicated Finance Team that supports a variety of appraisal management processes through customized accounting services to AMCs and Lenders by offloading accounting tasks such as Appraiser W9 collection, 1099 issuance, tax remittance, and invoice generation and payment, all augmented by detailed reporting. Connexions Intelligent Accounting also supports internal accounting processes with customized reports that seamlessly flow into internal accounting systems, payment collection and management, and tax and payment compliance. These services save Connexions clients hundreds of thousands of dollars a year through reduced internal resource expenditures. Schedule a demo today to see why more AMCs and Lenders are choosing Connexions to manage their valuation processes. 

Take control of your appraisal pipeline (without the headaches). Which appraisal orders are most pressing? Which orders are still waiting for payment? Have yet to be assigned to an appraiser? Require follow up? Before you pull your hair out, check out Reggora, a leading appraisal workflow platform that lets you create custom filters and views of your appraisal pipeline. Reggora is making the appraisal process easier for everyone involved. Learn more here.  

Loan Vision has a new look and to celebrate, they’re releasing new content throughout December and January. From articles on hedging to blogs on tax changes to customer success stories, readers will hear from Loan Vision customers, partners, and experts such as The Profit Doctor Andy Schell and the team at CWDL. To kick it off, the Loan Vision team sat down with Nolan Pearson, CFO at Royal United Mortgage, to discuss how digitizing the majority of their accounting processes with Loan Vision has given them the ability to properly scale their finance department while the company doubled in size. “Not only are we processing double the number of units we were before with the same amount of staff, we’re also able to cut our accounting month-end processes by a day and a half.” You can read more about Royal United’s 4-year journey on Loan Vision here.

Last week, the FHFA announced the new 2021 conforming and high-cost area limits for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the majority of the country. With home prices spiking across the country, these new limits are great news for borrowers. They instantly expand their mortgage financing options within conventional limits and in high-cost areas (HI & AK), without the additional costs of most Jumbo loans. At Stearns Wholesale these new conforming loan limits are now updated in the SNAP platform! Users can now lock these new loan limits while standard lock policies and procedures will apply for any loan-level changes. If you want to learn more about the FHFA Loan Limits for 2021 or partner with Stearns, click here to be contacted. For more details about the changes in your area, click here.

MAXEX's new Investor Express program helps originators expand and grow their non-owner volumes while reducing the complexity of underwriting Jumbo loans. Like the popular Jumbo Express program, Investor Express enables you to underwrite to DU and LPA findings for a range of items (including income and employment for Investor Express). The program is available for loan amounts from $510,401 - $1.5M for transactions that are DU Approve / Ineligible or LPA Accept / Ineligible for loan size only. MAXEX is the first exchange for buying and selling residential loans through a single, trusted clearinghouse. Get fast, consistent liquidity and competitive pricing on Jumbo, Conforming and Non-QM loans from a marketplace of ready-to-buy institutional investors. To learn more about MAXEX, visit us at maxex.com.

Lenders, your business is BOOMING. Your teams are all hands-on deck trying to keep up with the record loan volume. Who is dealing with your Final Documents - the one part of your business that is terribly tedious, time-consuming, and won't go away? Join dozens of lenders nationwide who in the past few months alone have partnered with DocProbe to manage their Trailing Documents. DocProbe becomes an extension of your Post Closing operation and retrieves all documents from the settlement agents. Let DocProbe work on scanning, indexing, and auditing the documents. DocProbe works with the title companies on curing any corrections. DocProbe prepares and ships to your investors or custodians and works on their exceptions reports. All you will need to do is log onto your DocProbe account to view the action, run reports, and feel confident that this small but integral part of your world is streamlined. Amen to that. Email Nick Erlanger or visit us at www.docprobe.net to learn more.

Capital Markets

With the holiday season officially in full swing, and rates expected to be relatively low for a long time, we are hoping to finally put some of the uncertainty of 2020 to rest. Last week saw a third vaccine announcement, providing optimism that the pandemic may eventually be in the rear view. Of course, any efficacy will depend on availability and adoption. President Trump also cleared the way for the transition to president elect Biden (although without a full concession). As both sources of uncertainty persist, consumer confidence as measured by the Conference Board fell from 98.2 to 89.5 in November. The University of Michigan’s measure also fell during the month. While confidence may be down, consumer spending continues to ride the momentum from the early fall, especially spending on goods which have risen above pre-pandemic levels for multiple months. The increase in goods spending has been attributed to the reduction in services spending and poses the question as to how long it will continue. Holiday sales appear off to a good start and services remain under pressure as increasing coronavirus cases limit spending on close-contact services.

Markets received better than expected PMI data and there was hopeful talk of stimulus out of Washington, though stop me when you’ve heard that before. Fed Chairman Powell said that the risk of an insufficient monetary response is greater than the risk of doing too much in his testimony before the Senate Banking Committee. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin also echoed the need for more virus relief. The FDIC’s released a Q3 Bank Earnings Report showed that banks remain resilient and continue to provide strong support for their customers and communities during the pandemic due to solid capital levels and strong risk management measures in place. Net income increased in the quarter. Finally, the MBA’s latest Forbearance and Call Volume Survey revealed that the total number of loans now in forbearance increased 6 bps to 5.54% of servicers’ portfolio volume in the prior week as of November 22. According to MBA’s estimate, 2.8 million homeowners are in forbearance plans.

Looking at today’s economic calendar, mortgage applications decreased 0.6 percent from one week earlier, according to data from the MBA’s Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending November 27, 2020. ADP employment is also out (a bland 307k). The latest Beige Book will be released in the afternoon ahead of the December 16 FOMC announcement. There are a bunch of Fed appearances including Chair Powell (along with Treasury Secretary Mnuchin), New York’s Williams, Vice Chair of Supervision Quarles, and Philadelphia’s Harker. Today’s MBS purchase schedule sees the Desk conducting three operations including two in Class A starting with $3.6 billion UMBS30 1.5% and 2% followed by $1.8 billion GNII 2% and 2.5% and $3.3 billion UMBS30 2% and 2.5%. We begin the day with Agency MBS prices up/better a tick or two and the 10-year yielding .92 after closing yesterday at 0.93% on a slight bounce after yesterday’s sell off.

Employment and Transitions

Evergreen Home Loans™ is a leader in the industry for product depth, including One-Time Close (OTC) construction products. Evergreen offers OTC construction financing for the new construction, remodel and renovation of stick-built homes or the purchase and installation of manufactured homes. Plus, USDA OTC construction financing for stick-built and manufactured homes. This range of OTC construction financing coupled with their in-house construction department means more purchase opportunities and fewer overlays. If you’re a loan officer or branch manager with a strong construction pipeline, Evergreen has the products and tools to help you build more business. Visit the Careers page or contact Chuck Iverson to learn about new opportunities.

Housing Finance Strategies announced that Dana Dillard will join the firm as leader of its diversity and inclusion practice and a principal in its expanding advisory services practice. Congratulations to Dana!