MonitorBase: Mortgage Marketing

The one thing MonitorBase users could do today that would double their conversion may come as a surprise: have their team commit to a no-voicemail policy. 

We've all seen mortgage rates come down in the past few months, and that's great.  It's no surprise that refinances are coming out of the woodwork for those with 4.75%+ rates.  The Fed announced a 0.25% rate cut and we all know doesn't mean mortgage rates drop the same..  but there is something exciting that this does for your marketing efforts.  

In a galaxy far, far away ... (camping in the Utah high country desert.)

A band of brothers set off for our annual camping, motorcycle-riding, fly-fishing extravaganza. These are my ‘brothers-in-arms’ ... a few close, life-long friends and a couple of amazing siblings.

The destination, the San Rafael Swell.

This is what summer is made of ... camping with your peeps, and exploring the backcountry.

I’m speeding along a desert ridge with the sun setting on my back, the wind in my face and bugs in my teeth ... surely as a result of grinning from ear-to-ear thinking about the shenanigans and great conversations from the night before.

In between playing in the wilderness, and cooking over a real fire, we all get to catch up with each other.

The night before, my friend Josh was telling us the story of the home they bought. He and his lovely wife Danielle, are self-employed. Josh and his amazing wife Danielle design and build pools with the most amazing water features you have ever seen. Rock-wall waterfalls, rock water slides, grottos, etc.

To call them ‘pool contractors’ would be a gross understatement. This couple can create a tropical paradise in your backyard. They are modern day artisans. Their projects come together in the open air. They require decent weather to be the most productive at their craft. We were lucky he could break-away for some fun.

As the story goes, Josh and Danielle happened upon an amazing piece of real estate they wanted to purchase, they had limited bandwidth to deal with the reality of buying a home during their busy season. Their company does great, and they have plenty of money in the bank. The trouble is, wet concrete won’t wait while you do your taxes, an extension is generally an option for self-employed contractors that are slammed in the spring.

So they opted for an ‘Alternative doc’ loan. They printed up a few months worth of bank statements to prove their income and wrote a check for 20% down.

I’m a nerd. I’m always filtering bits and pieces of these stories through the ‘consumer data filter’ in my head. I’m pretty good at turning it off and enjoying the present, but I’ll always recount the conversations that have relevance to the current market conditions.

He goes on to tell us he’s paying 7.75% on a $520k loan.

This is the world we live in. Josh explained it like this, “Guys, we found our dream house. We had to have it, and we secured a contract for an amazing deal and then the appraisal came in for $100k higher than the offer. We figured we’d get the deal done, and refinance the loan a few months later.” (Nearly a year has passed since.)

Josh and Danielle’s home buying adventure is not a unique case. We see this every day in our data. Tens of thousands of self-employed borrowers are accepting high-interest rate loans, just to ‘get the deal done.’ Some of them could definitely have better terms. Sorting those out is what we like to do.

Deals like these are of particular interest to me because it’s a matter of creating a sustainable mortgage marketing campaigns for our clients.

These are fully qualified loans to self-employed borrowers. They’re not exactly ‘slam dunk deals,’ and for that very reason, they’re getting done for much better margins. These loans can be done at margins that match the typical purchase shop.

If you’re going to invest in any part of your precious operational resources to processing refinance transactions, wouldn’t it make sense to also target a segment of the refi market that won’t evaporate after a 30 basis point swing in the bond market? In Josh’s case as well as tens of thousands just like him, he’s going to be able to get better terms even if bond yields are much higher than they are now.

The other segments are within the Non-QM space. There are tens of thousands of homeowners that did a cash-out refinance. The risk premium for Non-QM cash-out refinance transaction is as high as 75 basis points to the note rate, (compared to a rate/term with the same lender.) In this case, the bond market could worsen, and you could still refinance the Non-QM cash-out transactions a year later.

These are a few examples of refinancing trends that we are seeing that are structural in nature, rather than rate sensitive. Needling these opportunities out can feed a mortgage shop with perpetual refinance business at higher margins than streamlines. Join the discussion with us to dive deeper into these and other trends that we are seeing in the market today.

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.
In the past 30 days, we are seeing a significant increase in mortgage application inquiries.

I just wanted to give a shout-out to our team and all the MonitorBase fans!  It was you that made this distinguished honor possible.  MonitorBase has been selected as one of HousingWire's 2019 class of HW's Tech100 winners! See us in the April 2019 issue of HousingWire Magazine or Click Here.  

The mortgage industry's adoption of SoftPull instant credit check and prescreened email offers incorporated into our core database monitoring system has made this a truly unique value proposition for the mortgage professional.

In the past 30 days, we are seeing a significant increase in mortgage inquiry leads. Inquiry lead alerts are up 30% compared to the past 6 months average.

It is normal to see an increase in mortgage activity in early spring as the home buying season picks up but we are seeing a larger than normal increase and that many of these credit inquiries are being generated from consumers looking to do some type of refinancing.
Keep a close eye on your Inquiry Alerts, there are refinance mortgage lead generation opportunities coming out of the woodwork as well as an increase in new homebuyers.

This is also a good time to update your monitored prospect list if you haven't done so recently.

Related:
Get started with Database Monitoring Alerts
How to upload prospects
How often should I update my monitored database? 

We are seeing a significant increase in Early Payoff (EPO) related activity in our data.  Mortgage credit inquires on recently funded loans (1-12 months) have increased by 65% compared to 6 months ago.  

We've all heard the old sales wisdom: "Success leaves many clues." With trial and error, we often deduce what is successful. Unfortunately, some of us will suffer an empty bank account in the process. In our business as a data and analytics solutions-provider to the mortgage industry, we do a vast amount of research and competitive analytics about the mortgage lead generation process. We witness successes … and failures … on the battlefield every day!

Fishing for deals in a crowded marketplace

It’s mid-winter, as announced by the snow-covered banks of the river, and the crisp scents. The sun just edged over the nearby mountain range to reveal the river’s territorial command. Much life awakens to begin the day’s labors … and lessons. Streaming across the screen of my mind is a view of that shy, alpine tail-water I earlier discovered. What I like to call my, “secret fishing hole.” Not because it’s unknown to other anglers … it is … but because its many opportunities are not known. These are its secrets.

Last week we announced a technology giving mortgage companies and their clients access to an instant credit pre-qualification through a soft credit pull right on their mobile device.