Technology

GMAC Residential Funding Corp., Minneapolis, has announced that it has enabled 1st National Bank of Arizona to increase loan production by 50% after six months using a customized version of the GMAC-RFC Assetwise decision engine.Over that period 1st National, a leading alternative-A lender, used the customized system, dubbed Avenue in its private-label version, to increase its loan volume from $200 million to $300 million between March and August 2002. "Our monthly volume has climbed to $300 million, and we expect to exceed $400 million per month in 2003,” said 1st National president Jeff Walton. “Plus, our pull-through rate climbed from about 30% to nearly 48% in the past few months." GMAC-RFC reports similar results with the customized Assetwise system it developed for its wholly owned subsidiary Homecomings Financial, which used its Internet-based Assetwise Direct system to chalk up $5.4 billion in mortgages in the first half of 2002, an 80% increase over the same period in 2001. The company can be found online at http://www.gmacrfc.com.

CapitalThinking, a New York-based application software company, has inked a deal with Fannie Mae under which the latter will use the company's Deal Management Software as the core processing engine for its multibillion-dollar, low income housing equity investments.Fannie Mae is the largest purchaser of low-income housing tax credits in the country, typically through a nationwide network of approved syndicators. Fannie will use the platform to provide a seamless electronic flow of transactional data and documentation from syndicators through the Fannie Mae LIHTC acquisition approval chain. A Web-based software platform, DMS supports a wide range of financial asset underwriting and management activities. The development work required to support Fannie's $6.5 billion LIHTC equity program began last month. CapitalThinking says Phase I will be released in the second quarter of 2003. CapitalThinking can be found online at http://www.capitalthinking.com.

Georgia Senate Majority Leader Mitch Seabaugh has invited Dr. Vincent Terry, president of the National Minority Mortgage Bankers Association, to attend a meeting Dec. 5 with other mortgage industry participants to discuss the Georgia Fair Lending Act.The NMMBA has filed a lawsuit in the state supreme court against Georgia's Department of Banking and Finance and its commissioner, David. G. Sorrell, in an effort to overturn the legislation. The trade group is lobbying its members to file affidavits with the court showing that minority borrowers are being denied credit under the new state law in cases where credit would not have been denied before. The organization's website address is http://www.nmmbainc.org.

In a major strategic bid to offer one-stop shopping, Freddie Mac has announced the launch of LoanProspector.com.The site will enable mortgage lenders and brokers to use the same data submitted to LP to be used to order appraisals, flood determinations, title products, and property surveys. Having done that, mortgage lenders and brokers can use the LoanProspector.com site to check order status in real time and receive reports. As of Dec. 8, all customers using Loan Prospector on the Internet will automatically be directed to the new loanprospector.com website. Freddie Mac characterized the launch of the new site and the inclusion of vendor services as a major strategic commitment to electronic mortgages, not merely a technology upgrade. Over the next two years, Freddie said the website will offer online pricing, electronic closing, and access to secondary market funding services and to the Loan Prospector suite of tools. Freddie Mac can be found online at http://www.freddiemac.com.

NetUpdate, Redmond, Wash., has integrated technology from Sollen Technologies, Dallas, into its newly released Originator Pro Product Eligibility and Pricing Engine, an add-on module for its origination platform.The module passes product and pricing information from a lending institution's secondary marketing department to the point-of-sale, which NetUpdate says will increase profitability and decrease costs. By entering a small set of a borrower's loan information into Originator Pro, a loan officer can immediately access a list of programs from which the borrower is eligible or ineligible based on the entered search criteria. The companies can be found online at http://www.netupdate.com and http://www.sollen.com.

American Home Mortgage Holdings Inc., New York, has signed an exclusive agreement with Forbes.com to launch a co-branded online mortgage channel via American Home?s MortgageSelect.com online lending subsidiary.Under the agreement, MortgageSelect.com will be integrated into Forbes.com?s Mortgage Center, on the site?s Personal Finance channel, and provide a full online mortgage lending service, American Home said. MortgageSelect.com will be the exclusive residential mortgage provider on Forbes.com. This is the latest in a series of strategic partnerships formed by MortgageSelect.com. The companies can be found on the Web at http://www.americanhm.com and http://www.forbes.com.

RealEC Technologies, Santa Ana, Calif., and Myers Internet Inc., San Francisco, have announced an agreement that offers seamless integration for Myers' Internet-connected customers to more than 5,000 service providers who have integrated with the RealEC network platform.Myers' OriginatorNetwork is a back-office portal that offers more than 8,000 mortgage originators website management tools, access to marketing, small business services, and the ability to order settlement services electronically. RealEC is designed to facilitate the origination, servicing, and closing of real estate transactions and to enable real estate practitioners to enhance their businesses. Myers, a provider of Internet infrastructure to the mortgage industry, can be found on the Web at http://www.myersinternet.com, and RealEC can be found at http://www.realec.com.

LandSafe, the Plano, Texas-based technology subsidiary of Countrywide Financial Corp., is combining its ValueFinder and Frauditor products into a single report that it will make available at the same price previously charged for one of the products."As AVMs become increasingly important to the lending community for pre-qualifying, HELOCs, second mortgages, and portfolio valuation, LandSafe is keeping pace with the demand for more complete information delivered at the highest possible speed," said Michael Faine, LandSafe's managing director, president, and chief operating officer. The new product will return the value, the uncertainty factor, and public record information on the property and comparable properties provided by ValueFinder, as well as Frauditor red flags for possible inflated value, property-type mismatch, or seller mismatch. The product is available through the LandSafe website or via direct XML integration with the customer's loan origination system. LandSafe's website address is http://www.landsafe.com.

Veros Software, a provider of predictive technology and advanced analytics based in Irvine, Calif., has released the latest version of its VeroValue automated property valuation system.VeroValue 1.6 provides mortgage lenders with new tools such as home value forecasting, online account management, property fitness scoring, and wireless access, the company said. Home value forecasting is provided through analysis of key economic indicators and residential real estate trends, while property fitness scoring combines analysis of the subject property, neighborhood, market conditions, and both micro- and macro-economic conditions, Veros said. In addition, the new version offers a Correlated Confidence Score based on the accuracy of the valuation estimate, scaled from 1 to 100 for ease of integration into automated underwriting systems, the company said. Veros can be found online at http://www.verovalue.com.

VMP Mortgage Forms, St. Cloud, Minn., has announced that it will provide a new identity verification software program to mortgage lenders to help them prevent fraud, money laundering, and financing for terrorists.The program, IDFlag, enables lenders to perform real-time and batch verification of consumer and business application information by checking customer data against many risk-indicating databases, the company said. "The mortgage industry is looking for a comprehensive, yet easy-to-use solution to help curb fraud losses and comply with the requirements of the USA Patriot Act," said Joanne Gaskin, VMP's marketing director. VMP is a Bankers Systems company, which can be found on the Web at http://www.bankerssystems.com.