Often, underwriters are faced with a borrower, especially a self-employed borrower, whose income has declined year over year. I wanted to provide a quick review regarding declining income for self-employed borrower(s) specifically for FHA loans. There are a few paths a loan can follow. When income is declining year over year, it affects how the borrower’s income is calculated as…
Modern businesses are fueled by data. Data drives the decision making in every facet of the business cycle. But, data is not always accessible or easy to attain. In the mortgage industry, data is often ‘locked’ away in scanned paper documents or PDF documents. The data exists, but not in a form that is useful. Think of a diamond embedded…
In the first two parts of this series, I discussed the impact of a “purchase market” and “digital” on the fraud. Today, the last in the series, I want to outline some extra’s you can do to protect yourself and your borrowers. What can you do? You need to also ensure that any party with which you do business is…
Yesterday, I discussed the impact of today’s “purchase market” on fraud. Today, I want to explore the impact of digital. Because… It’s a digital world. A few months ago, we learned that one of the nation’s three credit repositories, Equifax, had been hacked. This hack provided the cyber thieves with valuable personal information on about 145 million consumers. The thieves…
Fraud has always been a problem for mortgage lenders, but now it’s starting to really get interesting, and expensive. With the home mortgage market turning from refi’s to purchases, rates rising and a housing shortage along comes an increase in loan defects, fraud, and misrepresentations. In the past, instances of fraud mainly centered on the consumer trying to get away…
Everyone is always looking for some positive signs when it comes to business and the economy; mortgage lenders are no different. So, let’s consider the recent results of the Fannie Home Purchase Sentiment survey as a glass half full. According to the Home Purchase Sentiment Index (HPSI), the net share of consumers who think that “now is a good time…
