Internet retail giant Amazon.com is exploring the idea of buying a mortgage banking franchise and making a splash in this highly cyclical business. But two huge questions loom: Will it actually happen? And if so, will Amazon disrupt the residential lending landscape the way it has brick-and-mortar retailers at the shopping mall?
One former loanDepot official had this to say about the rumor: “It makes sense. loanDepot has plenty of loan officers handling inbound leads. Amazon could create a ton more and compete with Quicken….”
Movement Mortgage is bypassing the traditional mortgage tech-development process in its quest for a mobile operating system for loan officers. The nonbank retail lender recently launched a crowdsourcing challenge, inviting 10 firms to develop prototypes with the chance to win a $25,000 prize and fully develop the operating system.
Mortgage vendor Mortech recently launched a tool that can help lenders and servicers identify borrowers who are likely to list their homes for sale within the next 90 days. The vendor is owned and operated by Zillow Group, a company best known for its individualized home-price estimates.
Over the years it seems as though commercial banks have basically ceded the multifamily market to nonbanks that use the GSEs as their secondary market takeout…
Officials at the government’s mortgage programs said that major investments in technology will make their programs more efficient and pay for themselves, during a panel session at the Mortgage Bankers Association secondary market conference last week in New York. Michelle Corridon, deputy director in the single-family housing guaranteed loan division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, said her program’s focus now is on infrastructure and innovation. The USDA is instituting a technology fee on every closed loan starting in October, she said. The enhanced online system will include new screens for housing, which now shares a landing page with other rural programs. When it’s complete, the new system will handle the process from guaranty commitment through loan delivery. In another efficiency move, rural housing is “rolling up” processing chores to fewer offices so it doesn’t have ...
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