Origination

Natural disasters and hidden property defects are about all lenders can count on to constitute a "changed circumstance" delay on the Loan Estimate — but prepare for a case-by-case evaluation, anyway.

The free market wouldn't plop down a trailer park just a few miles from downtown San Jose. At least not today, in a sharply spiking housing market that has made the metropolitan area one of the most expensive in the U.S.

Loan performance has improved since the housing crisis. But credit challenges persist, while higher housing costs combined with a plateau in wages have put increased strain on some borrowers' finances.

Exchange Bank in Santa Rosa, Calif., has hired the president of Sequoia Pacific Mortgage.

Brian Webster, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's mortgage originations program manager who has worked on a number of technology-related policy and research initiatives, is leaving the agency to join Wells Fargo Home Mortgage.

Ten years ago, marketing departments focused mainly on transactions — continuously improving campaign response rates and measuring conversions in terms of dollars generated against dollars spent. Today's marketing departments are primarily focused on listening and engagement. They work to "own" the customer. Their focus is on the user and customer experience across a variety of platforms and media and making it as smooth and intuitive as possible.So, what does the future hold for marketers in the mortgage industry? The "martech revolution" has begun ushering in a digitally-powered age where borrowers are increasingly self-directing their own unique journeys to find the right mortgage company. Companies are doing the same as they seek to align with the right product and service providers to package themselves as an amazing overall experience.This self-directing of the buyer journey is a given outcome of the Information Age. Prospective buyers and users of products and services are much less influenced by your latest marketing campaign. The buyers' journey is no longer directed by you, and now includes a complex mixture of online research (blogs, social media, etc.), peer reviews, website views and comparisons. At the end of the journey, the prospective buyer has developed a sense of trust in one or more companies and then makes a decision.To facilitate these journeys, marketers will need to leverage big data to better understand customers, predict their behaviors (like the need to buy a house) and communicate with them directly. This means marketers will increasingly collect unstructured data from the online activities of the population and then analyze it to execute targeted digital engagement strategies. For example, someone conducting online searches and sharing content about planning a wedding may well indicate the future purchase of a home — which is useful data for any mortgage lender to act upon.Here are four new critical areas of focus for marketers in the mortgage industry:

When he's not co-hosting his talk radio show or helping clients, Residential Home Funding's Marc Demetriou is studying loan program guidelines, a task he credits for helping him become one of the industry's top producing loan officers.

Commercial real estate investment firm Case Real Estate Capital has purchase two nonperforming senior notes for $20.5 million.

A unique public-private program in Dane County, Wis., uses shared-appreciation mortgages to develop new affordable housing units more effectively than other traditional financing options.

Loan-to-value ratios in commercial real estate lending have returned to their levels from the bubble days, Moody's says. Loss-rates look good for now, but trouble could be coming.