The Mortgage Note’s team has been tracking the housing crunch as low inventory, coupled with high interest rates, creates challenges for homebuyers and mortgage professionals.
Editor Kimberley Haas interviewed industry leaders to learn more about what they are seeing and what products are being offered for this podcast.
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FormFree’s Chief Customer Officer Christy Moss sat down with The Mortgage Note to talk about the company’s Residual Income Knowledge Index,…
By KIMBERLEY HAAS
Leaders at Rocket Pro TPO have announced a new loan level pricing adjustment tool and the executive vice president says it is the result of listening to feedback from their partners.
Mike Fawaz sat down with The Mortgage Note on Monday to talk about Target Profit Control, which eliminates misquoting or loan adjustment oversights by applying systematic profit levels.
Fawaz said that before Target Profit Control, correspondent brokers were tracking files manually.
“Now, you have the ability to set your target profit per loan officer and you no longer have to really go into every single file manually. It’s now set on a loan officer basis,” Fawaz said. “It is an innovative technology. It’s something that is…
The executive vice president of Rocket Pro TPO says a lack of housing inventory has been hurting mortgage professionals, but he is confident broker partners and loan officers have the tools to help homebuyers achieve their goals.
Mike Fawaz recently sat down with Editor Kimberley Haas to talk about this year’s successes and challenges.
Haas: Mike, so it’s great to have you here today as always. What have been some of the successes in this past year working with the Rocket Pro TPO team?
Fawaz: First of all, thanks for having me and I’m excited to have this conversation with you. When I think about the successes of Rocket Pro TPO this year with the broker channel, it’s been a…
By KIMBERLEY HAAS
A Florida mortgage broker challenging United Wholesale Mortgage’s ultimatum agreement wants to include recent disclosures and statements related to the company’s successes to help prove his antitrust claims.
Daniel Okavage of The Okavage Group in St. Augustine is pursuing a federal class-action suit on behalf of all mortgage brokers that work, or have worked, with UWM and sustained damages after the company’s CEO, Mat Ishbia, announced in March of 2021 they could no longer simultaneously do business with Rocket Pro TPO or Fairway Independent Mortgage.
Okavage’s attorney, Robert Goodman, says thousands of brokers were cut off from opportunities to refer customers to the mortgage lender of their choice, resulting in business losses.
Lawyers for UWM have moved…
By KIMBERLEY HAAS
Leaders at Rocket Pro TPO are extending their promotion on 30-year conventional purchase loans at or under $200,000 as they gear up to be more competitive in that market this year.
During an IGNITE: Live! webinar on Monday, Executive Vice President Mike Fawaz announced that they are continuing their 37.5 BPS credit on these loans.
Fawaz said they want to make sure that they listen to their broker partners and their feedback.
“This is something we have been extending every single month since December. And the feedback continues to be incredible and positive and broker partners want it,” Fawaz said.
Fawaz explained the philosophy behind the promotion.
“When you think about it, we are very competitive when…
By KIMBERLEY HAAS
The executive vice president of Rocket Pro TPO told brokers across the country on Monday that they are willing to indemnify those who choose to fight United Wholesale Mortgage’s anti-competition ultimatum.
During a live-streamed Ignite Live event, Mike Fawaz said he believes the ultimatum was one of the worst things to happen to independent mortgage brokers in 50 years.
“The ultimatum uses lawyers and contracts to limit choice – both for the broker and for the clients the broker services,” Fawaz said. “There’s no other way to put it – the ultimatum is immoral, reduces broker incomes, and increases the rates the clients of brokers will pay.”
Fawaz said that they stand behind brokers who want to…
By KIMBERLEY HAAS The new executive vice president of Rocket Pro TPO took to social media on Tuesday to question the actions of United Wholesale Mortgage’s CEO. Mike Fawaz, who served as senior vice president of sales before recently being promoted to EVP, published a piece called “Mortgage Brokers – Still Truly Independent?” on LinkedIn where he said UWM’s President and CEO Mat Ishbia believes they have “pricing power” over brokers. “If he’s right, that presents a very clear danger to America’s mortgage brokers and their clients. One of the most powerful benefits of being a mortgage broker is independence. Independence of choice and real competition is the only effective tool a broker has to ensure someone else doesn’t dictate margin and…
By KIMBERLEY HAAS Leaders at Wells Fargo announced this week that they are reducing their home lending footprint and some people are saying it may be big news in the lending space, but will likely not make much of a difference to the average consumer. It was announced Tuesday that the company, formerly the nation’s largest mortgage lender, is exiting the correspondent lending channel and shrinking its mortgage servicing portfolio. Plans are to focus on serving bank customers and members of minority communities. Lawrence White, a professor of economics at the New York University Leonard N. Stern School of Business, sat down with the Mortgage Note to talk about the news on Wednesday. White said he hopes the move by leaders at…
By KIMBERLEY HAAS A United States district court judge in Michigan has granted in part United Wholesale Mortgage’s motion to dismiss complaints in an ultimatum lawsuit filed by America’s Moneyline. According to court documents, on Dec. 22 Judge Laurie Michelson dismissed fraud and promissory estoppel claims, as well as all but one declaratory-judgment subclaim. Lawyers for America’s Moneyline say that in 2021 leaders at United Wholesale Mortgage issued an ultimatum that forced a number of mortgage brokers, including their client, to choose between doing business with UWM and two of their competitors. AML leaders, relying on alleged promises that UWM would not enforce the ultimatum against it, continued to do business with both UWM and Rocket Pro. After UWM sued…
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…
