Loan Think

Lenders see their outfits growing where experts are predicting market decline, despite statistical dissonance. Having a plan to weather the downturn is the key to their growth.

Millennials are on the verge of becoming the largest cohort of homebuyers. If lenders want to gain and retain their trust, they must start by recruiting a younger, more diverse and gender-balanced workforce.

The cost of capital and regulatory compliance has convinced the top four banks that making home loans to American families is not worth the risk.

Despite the outcry prompted by lenders' commercials during Super Bowl 50, customer satisfaction surveys indicate borrowers are more than ready for the ease and convenience of digital options.

The Federal Home Loan Bank system is not a private country club and shouldn't be operating as one. Captive insurance companies represent new potential to expand homeownership opportunities for credit-worthy borrowers.

The Federal Home Loan Bank System was designed to provide liquidity to community lenders and traditional insurers, not to unregulated lenders that circumvent the membership rules.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's indirect response to Quicken Loans' Super Bowl 50 commercial implicitly warns consumers to be wary of technology, which points to a bigger problem: does the CFPB even know what it wants from the mortgage industry?

Housing policy focused on government guarantees and the 30-year mortgage hasn't done much to help low- and middle-income homeowners build wealth.

After years of refi-fueled origination volume, lenders have their hopes pegged to a resurgent purchase market in 2016 and beyond. But it raises an important question: will strategic default rear its head again in the next downturn?

The near future may find more banks ceasing to originate residential mortgages in an effort to stop the slide in stock prices.