It seems as though the retail mortgage industry has separated itself into four primary platforms. High lead volume, high support staff/technology, w/ low commission like your CashCalls, LoanDepot's and Greenlight/Nationstar call center like platforms. You have your low volume, generate your own leads, low support staff/tech w/ high commissions like brokerages/net branch gigs i.e. Home Funding Corps, AFN's etc. Then you have your brokers ( still ). Good for them...I support the little guys and see them as valuable elements in the food chain!...I say leave-em be.
Oh yeah..almost forgot. Roughly 26% (and declining quick ) of all mortgages close with big-box banks..... bah-hah-hah!...
The day Lagunitas sells brand to Anheuser Bush or MillerCoors, i'm done-zo with their Lil sumthin-sumthin.
The same principal applies with my current firm............................................................. Sorry ya'll.
I digress...
Nowadays, we even have these cool hybrid models where the mid-sized direct lenders strive to be more nimble and pick up clean self -sourced purchase biz but offer a tad bit of lead flow to the MLO at some sort of reduced comp. Aye, a loan is a loan is a loan. Digg it.
Either way, it seems like in this new market you the MLO can earn 100+ bps on 3-4 loans a month while burning your nice leather soled JW Nordstrom-Clackers or go earn 30-35 bps on 6-8 loans a month and stay in a nice climate controlled 6X6 box office. Choose your poison!
It'd be nice if there were a way you can make 80 bps ( cleanly ) on 12-15 company gen loans without 7.5 hour a day talk times. Unless the 10 year bond dips back below 16.51 ( 1/30/2015) , it probably won't happen!
Aside from slight company personality glitches you can rest assured that alllll platforms have processing hurdles and internal drama to deal with. YOU and I both must find a way to get smart and weed out the sketchy loans and keep a high-value pipeline in process at all times to offset changes we can't control. This was especially the case in 2011 and even more important going forward!
How do we do that?...Got me...
In 2012 I took about 260 + loan applications and submitted almost 150 loans to be underwritten. Even after all my scrubbing and filtering, I still lost nearly half of them due to a lack of knowledge about guidelines, investor overlays and stupid other reasons like not reading through my borrower's personal tax returns...alllllll the way!. ( Look for 2106 Non-Reimbursed Employee expenses/ Alimony deductions, Schedule-C losses, [Govies always deduct] fannie and fred, maybe not. Do your homework and read )
For example: Did you know that you cannot add more than 12 years to an existing FHA loan regardless of IF its a streamline or not? I didn't and I lost that deal as an FHA 30 year loan because the guy only had 11 years left on an existing FHA 15 year loan. Well, it was never a deal in the first place but some things you MUST learn on the fly. Hard lesson learned. Maybe I should of called this site "On the fly"...
This, my friends... is what this website is all about.
Learn about and work on real deals in real time so when you set the loan up, you only do it once. We earn most all of our income @ "Congratulations...we can offer you X, Y Z..." etc.... ask good questions, stack the file once and keep it that way!
By nature I am a front-end guy because I love working with and yappin with all sorts of people building financial solutions. But when it's all said and done, you and I have to possess the knowledge as to what happens after we submit the loan and how the underwriters are going to view the loan and what conditions will pop out of the deck when the loan is approved. I call it "underwriter intuition".
If I can go back a few years and become an underwriter for 18-24 mos, I'd be an origination monster. So would you!...
Some underwriters are introverts and don't like "yappin" with people over the phone like US sales people and prefer to be left alone to do their work and go home to their glass of Kettle-Soda ( Relax...I said SOME!! ) hah hah..or bon-bons...
IF we want to be a super-strong front end MLOs, you and I both MUST know what we are planning on doing with the loan before we submit the loan to be processed. Document Income, assets, set and explain borrower expectation(s).
Most of the clean no-look refis' are @ 3.75% or lower on a 30/30 so roll up your sleeves and dig in. It's time we work and find more creative ways to build value for our clients and stay out of our pipelines but mostly stay on the cutting edge of loan origination.... Dig?....
Always, always, always be originating...yapp on!
The Bottom Line:
The sooner YOU and I can be more intuitive, anticipate and diagnose a set of conditions up front, tell the story with all the supporting documents, the faster YOU and I can get loans approved, cleared and funded. You've heard the old saying: "Time is money and money is time..."?...you may want to tattoo that on your wrist and get back to work.
NOTE:
Keep in mind that some of the content you may read may be a guideline that has been updated or is no longer a requirement so chill out and email where you saw a place to edit and I will edit accordingly. I have been building this for 5 plus yrs.
Relax and dig in but before you leave, please leave some seeds of knowledge behind before you leave and email me.
Cheers and welcome!
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