As the market corrects and mortgage demand sinks, lenders are struggling to market themselves to a shrinking pool of rate-focused borrowers, according to J.D. Power’s latest U.S. Mortgage Origination Satisfaction Study. The study found that as demand hits a 22-year low, mortgage brokers are finding it difficult to stand out from the crowd. Borrowers are choosing lenders based solely on who is offering the lowest rate that day. “The average mortgage customer experience has become increasingly commoditized, with few lenders finding the right formula to build long-term trust and loyalty that truly stands out from the competition,” the report reads. Rocket Mortgage ranked highest for origination satisfaction, followed by Chase, Citi, and Fairway Independent. Overall, lenders were on equal footing…
Rocket Pro TPO’s executive vice president recently turned heads with an opinion piece claiming United Wholesale Mortgage represents a massive threat to America’s mortgage brokers and their future independence. In the piece called “America’s Mortgage Brokers Face an Unprecedented Threat to their Independence,” Austin Niemiec said leaders at UWM have reduced broker optionality by contractually forcing their brokers to choose between Rocket Mortgage and UWM, enforcing that same “ultimatum” contract to eliminate a UWM broker from brokering to Fairway Independent Mortgage, and engaging in a price war to eliminate the competition. “If Mat Ishbia and UWM were truly committed to the real kind of competition that benefits brokers and their clients, he wouldn’t use his lawyers to take away brokers’ options, and he wouldn’t celebrate the demise of other…
Broker confidence fell for the second straight month in February, though brokers are “cautiously optimistic” about the future, according to RISMedia’s February Broker Confidence Index (BCI). The index, which is scaled 1 to 10, fell to 7.5 from January’s 7.9 and December 2021’s 8.2. For the 3,000 brokers surveyed, rising interest rates were not a big cause for concern. They felt that rising rates won’t hurt demand considering current market conditions. Brokers’ biggest worries were inflation and inventory, with a nod to the ongoing crisis in Ukraine. “The continued lack of supply has really created a bubble,” Quincy Smith, a broker with ERA Matt Fischer in Yuma, Arizona, told RISMedia. “With the equity market starting what appears to be a…
Across the country this December, mortgage professionals will be stepping up to help people in need, support community charities, and generally help make the season a little brighter. The Mortgage Note wants to celebrate those efforts by highlighting them in an upcoming edition of our newsletter — and by doing our part to spread holiday cheer. We’ll pick one highlighted charity and make our own $1,000 donation to it. What do you need to do? Just write a brief description of the charitable activity you and/or your co-workers are doing this year—ringing the Salvation Army bell, collecting for Toys for Tots, working at a local food bank, etc.—and email it to: [email protected] Also, include a link to the website of the…
California-based business consulting firm Zventus has announced a new blockchain venture geared towards the financial services industry. The new project is being launched in collaboration with mortgage domain experts, technology partners, and universities to create blockchain technology for the mortgage industry. The “Mortgage Blockchain Lab” will focus on developing new products, services, and solutions to enhance the loan process. The company predicts the results will make mortgage loans more secure, easier to manage, and less expensive, reducing costs for financial services firms by upwards of 50% per loan. A blockchain is a type of distributed database that exclusively stores cryptocurrency transactions that cannot be removed or manipulated. Cryptocurrencies are digital currency systems developed and traded using a variety of computational…
United Wholesale Mortgage CEO Mat Ishbia went on CNBC on Wednesday to assert he is the good guy in the BrokerWars by standing up for brokers and “for what is right.” “I know how different people want to portray it, but the decision was not about doing things exclusively,” Ishbia said on an interview on CNBC. “We basically said ‘Hey mortgage brokers, 12,000 of you guys, if you’re partnering with Rocket, they’re out there doing things – maybe you call it underhandedly, maybe in a gray area, to affect consumers and brokers.’ What we’re saying is, listen I can’t stop them, but if you’re going to work with them, don’t work with us.” UWM announced earlier this month that it will force brokers to…
Like Rocket Mortgage, Fairway Independent Mortgage is reporting increased interest from brokers after United Wholesale Mortgage launched the Broker Wars. HousingWire reported today: Since UWM president and CEO Mat Ishbia appeared on Facebook Live on March 4 and announced that brokers could not work with Fairway and Rocket Mortgage and still do business with UWM, Fairway has seen a dramatic uptick in business, according to its CEO, Steve Jacobson. “We typically had one or two inquiries a week for the broker channel,” said Jacobson, who founded the lender in 1996. “We’re up over 100 inquiries since March 4.” Fairway, which did about $3.5 billion in the wholesale channel in 2020 (compared to about $62 billion in retail), lost roughly 5%…
So, who won the Broker Wars on Day 1? Depends on who you ask. The Issue Earlier this month, United Wholesale Mortgage issued an ultimatum to mortgage brokers across the country: Either sign an agreement that forbids them from doing business with Rocket Mortgage and Fairway Independent Lending or lose the ability to do business with UWM, the largest broker mortgage channel in the country. If a broker signs the agreement with UWM and then originate a loan with Rocket or Fairway, they would be subject to a $50,000 fine. The deadline to sign the agreement was Monday. What Happened Monday? The Detroit News reported Tuesday that roughly 65 percent of 4,600 independent mortgage brokers took UWM’s side in the dispute, signing an agreement…
By Elise Daniel United Wholesale Mortgage reiterated Friday that it will close loans in process with brokers even if they do not sign an agreement to not work with two competitors by Monday’s UWM-imposed deadline. The Mortgage Note raised the issue after obtaining an email from a UWM employee to a broker that appeared to indicate otherwise. “Any loans with Rocket Mortgage must be disclosed on the Addendum if you do choose to accept the terms,” the email said. “The terms are to no longer send business to Rocket Mortgage and to Fairway Independent after you have accepted the addendum. “The 3/15 part is simply the last day to complete the addendum. If it is not completed by 3/15, all loans in…
Rocket Mortgages CEO Jay Farner said Thursday that United Wholesale Mortgage’s ultimatum to brokers doesn’t appear to be working. Farner, appearing on Fox Business News, said that its broker business is up since UWM CEO Mat Ishbia announced last week that it would no longer work with brokers who do business with Rocket and Fairway Independent Mortgages. “We had a situation a week ago or so where one of our competitors went out and said if mortgage brokers – some of the most important people in the country helping people buy homes – if they did business with us and they did business with our competitor, they would be fined more than $50,000 per transaction,” Farner said. The result? “We are…
