Skip to main content

Paperless, Not Brainless (Posted December 19, 2016)

Full disclosure: what you’re about to read is a full-blown commercial no lie.  While I’m fairly confident it will be better than 95% of the commercials you’re forced to watch between episodes of your favorite reality show (which is a sort of commercial in and of itself, really), I won’t go so far as to say it’ll be better than some of those you see with Tina Fey or Peyton Manning. 

Coming very soon, we will be offering an option that will provide greater speed, simplicity, and certainty for everyone the real estate agents on both sides of the transaction, the buyer, the seller, the lender, and even the title folks in the buying/selling process.  Here are some key features to whet your appetite:

•  Validation of income, assets, and employment will be done electronically. 
o  Borrowers will be able to save time by using electronic data versus collecting documents such as paystubs, bank statements, and investment account statements.  We’re going to call that the “where did I put that?” feature.
•  Loan application data will be validated up front making the verification of key loan data points easier and faster.
o  This means the originators will have greater confidence at the beginning of the process so they can get it to underwriting more quickly.  We’re going to call that the “let’s kick this up to light speed” feature.

•  It’s estimated that this will eliminate appraisal conditions on 60% of all purchase transactions we’re going to call that the “it’s about time” feature.

I hesitate to call this a “no doc” loan for a number of reasons, chief of which being the torrents of cold sweat that term induces for anyone who was in this business back in 2005-06 and stayed around to see their crippling effects on so many.  With that said, though, there is a certain beautiful simplicity about the “no doc” aspect of this process: we all get the convenience of not having to hunt high and low for a single piece of paper that can make or break the purchase of a $500,000 home, but we have the security of there being someone in the transaction who is going to verify everything electronically on behalf of all parties. 

With that said, I now return you to your regularly scheduled programming of watching whether she says yes to the dress or he’s going to accept help out of his 600-lb life and you know I’m not talking about Tina Fey or Peyton Manning.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Numbers Don't Lie, But Wherein Lies the Truth? (Posted November 21, 2016)

Said with enough conviction, you can make almost anything sound true.   Preface the fabrication with “according to a recent bi-partisan government study,” and you’re three quarters of the way to selling the lie to a lot of people.   Seriously, try this. The next time you’re at a dinner party or having coffee with friends, pepper this little tidbit into the conversation: “I read something really interesting the other day.   According to a recent bi-partisan government study – I think it took them three years to get it all done – middle-aged men who drive either a Toyota Camry or a Honda Odyssey have more testosterone than younger men who drive either a Ford F150 or a Dodge Charger.”   You’ll get some raised eyebrows and looks of mild disbelief, but don’t let that deter you.   Just lift up your hands, palms outward, and say, “I just think it’s interesting, and it makes sense when you think about it” – and then change the subject to something completely u...

Dumb as (or Smart as) a Box of Rocks (Posted June 27, 2016)

Obviously, you all want to know what Brexit means to the economy and the housing market specifically.   So do I!   But since my crystal ball is at the cleaner’s, let’s give the Brits and the European Union a little time to work out the terms of their separation and look at something else.   What’s a “fad ”?   With the help of Google, this is what I got as a definition: “an intense and widely shared enthusiasm for something, especially one that is short-lived and without basis in the object's qualities; a craze.” In April 1975, an advertising executive by the name of Gary Dahl invented the Pet Rock.   The idea came from his sitting in a bar with some friends who were complaining about the cost and time required to take care of various types of pets.   He marketed his “pets” by placing a rock in a box cut and shaped like one you would get at the pet store to carry home a puppy or a kitten.   Along with the box and the rock, a booklet was included...

Left Behind (Posted April 4, 2016)

It’s highly likely that almost every single one of you already read the Yahoo! Finance article about the survey that Chase recently completed.   For the seven people who decided to take a nap under a rock last week, I’m going to share some of the major talking points here – the rest of you can step away and have an ice cream or paint your cat’s toenails.   First off, the survey shows that an ALARMING 68% of Americans are starting the home search on their own (gasp!) with 45% using a computer or laptop (as opposed to some other type of technologically advanced processor like a microwave oven) as the first step in this search and 13% using their mobile devices.   (In other related news from the Department of the Obvious, scientists have found that fish still have no use of a bicycle and looking directly at the sun is inadvisable.)   With numbers like these, we should just throw in the towel and join the circus, right?   Here’s the weird thing: in the ...