A lack of digital offerings has become a major drag on the home-equity market as customers are more likely turning to alternative sources of funding, according to a new study by J.D. Power.

The mortgage market expects output to be flat this year, but digital mortgage lender Better.com said it could double its production to $2.5 billion. “We did about $1.3 billion last year, which is three times what we did in 2017,” the company’s President Jerry Selitto said.

loanDepot this week launched a digital mortgage product, mello smartloan, promising quick turn times for more than half of its loan applicants. The nonbank lender claims borrowers can now close their mortgages in just eight days.

Although employment in the mortgage industry has been fairly robust the past few years, it’s been a dicey proposition for real estate appraisers. According to figures compiled by the Appraisal Institute, a national trade group that represents the sector, there were 82,208 active license holders at last count, down 8.1% from four years earlier.

The majority of lenders now offer a front-end digital mortgage process for borrowers but there is considerable variability in adoption rates for various back-end processes, a survey by Strategic Mortgage Finance Group showed.

A partnership between two companies is making mortgage loan officers more confident of their commissions while working in the field.

One former Fannie Mae executive familiar with Seterus opined that IBM likely received “pennies” compared to what it invested in Seterus...

MBA CEO Bob Broeksmit: “We have made our concerns known to Treasury and request that IRS employees performing this vital work be deemed essential so loan closings can continue without further interruption.”

Fannie and Freddie tossed out the idea of creating their own internal models as impractical...

The seven initial participants in the platform include United Wholesale Mortgage, the nation’s largest table-funder…