Ellie Mae shows recent conversion rates on new applications at 47%.
That's a weighted average of 56% purchase application to closing, and 42% refinance application to closing.
Your Conversion Rate is one of the most important numbers to track as a loan officer.
We'll share with you the other key number on our weekly FREE Webinar today 4/19/2012.
Like to attend? -- register now and we'll see you at 2pm.
Your sandbox has changed. You no longer live in a local economy, but a global economy.
There's no hiding, anything happening on a world wide scale will and does impact you on a daily basis - as such I recommend you expand your horizons to really look at the larger trends as you consider how you'll engage in your local market.
For example:
The average first time homebuyer is now 31.6 years old, instead of 27.3 years old - reflecting a need for great financial maturity. 65% of Americans feel now is a good time to buy a new home. These are important considerations when you think about marketing to first time homebuyers.
Read on to learn more... by downloading the report:
Download Mortgage Finance Commentary April 2011
Summary:
Click image for larger view:
We had a wonderful webcast yesterday with Jim Milano of the famed Weiner Brodsky Sidman Kider law firm in Washington. He provided one of the clearest interpretations of the impacts of the regulatory reform on both the mortgage lender and broker, and distilled them into 3 key areas of focus.
He asked us not to record the call, so the audio is not available to those that did not attend the live event, but he was open to sharing his outline. You can download it using the link above.
If your company is looking for help crafting, or tweaking a plan to meet the new Anti-Steering provisions, Jim can be reached at milano@wbsk.com or 202.628.2000. If you have question about the new changes, feel free to email me, or comment here on the blog and we'll do our best to respond.
We've modified our Borrow Smart to be one of the first presentation and sales tools to fully comply with the new SAFE Harbor provisions. Check it out at: http://www.borrowsmartanalysis.com.
I'm a font junkie, and find them to be very helpful in presentations, etc. I recently stumbled upon this gift from Google. Hundreds of high quality FREE fonts.
http://www.google.com/webfonts
"Our homes have changed over the last 70 years, including homes size, building technology, family size, and a rise in standard of living. As people’s income increased over the 20th century they bought bigger and better homes. This caused the median home value to go up even when taking into account the effect of inflation. In addition, housing costs include both land and the house; where building space in limited (i.e. cities) land will increase in value with population growth." Catherine -Visualizing Economics:
This is another interesting look at how we 'value' the house. Remember, I say the house is where you live, the home is the experience you have living in the house. Home is emotional, while house is more logical.
Over time the real median (or midpoint) value of the home has been increasing - thus it can be said that while the house (if viewed like a stock) has not gone up in value over time relative to inflation (the Shiller approach); the overall % of our wealth that we invest in the home is increasing. The median amount of money we invest in the home gets larger each year, even when families are getting smaller.
Here's an image from a recent speech I gave in FL. The image came from the Mortgage Bankers Association 2010 actual closed loan volume, and the 2011 and 2012 projected volume.
You'll notice that the total volume (the blue bars) is going down.
That said, the number of remaining loan officers has so dramatically decreased that the overall relative volume is not going to feel that much different. If business drops by 35%, but there are 35% fewer professionals competing for that same business you won't feel a 35% drop in income.
Key Question: How do you increase your income on a relative basis?
If you look at the columns, the only rows that are rising (the red bars) are Purchase related volume. If you want to see a positive lift in your standard of living, you must transition to purchase business NOW! If you do that, and others do not, then you will reap a higher percentage of a growing business channel and see a real relative personal increase in your income in 2011 and 2012 specifically.
If I were full time originating now, I'd be doing weekly educational presentations inside Realtor offices, one per week should do it.
Review their paper on shadow inventory: Download Shadow_Inventory_March_2011
CoreLogic says New Jersey, Illinois and Maryland have the highest levels of distressed homes that are not yet listed for sale --- the shadow inventory.
"In January the nationwide shadow inventory of delinquent loans and reposssessed homes not on the market stood at nine months' worth of supply, or 1.8 million homes, the data company said Wednesday. While that was a slight drop from 2 million homes in the shadow inventory a year earlier, the situation remains grim, said Mark Fleming, CoreLogic's chief economist."
this financial crisis is forcing State and local agencies to make some difficult decisions. If things remain challenging for much longer, there's a real risk that they'll have to lay off Jose.
Possibly running out of ammunition (cash flow), the consumer seems to have moved back from an aggressive stance toward debt repayment and has begun using more credit again.
From our read, the consumer hasn't lost their appetite right now to repay their debt, they just are running out of ways to do it - with prices increasing and real wages decreasing, there's only so much left over to pay down debt. If their lifestyle today doesn't change to keep pace with the realiities of higher prices, then they'll start using tomorrow's earnings today (aka - Credit Cards) and other borrowing to keep that lifestyle they are simply unwilling to let go of.
Another way to look at it. Debt as a percentage of income has been going down, but we're getting to a floor here where we would expect that to start rising again.
Increasing Your Standard of Living Daily!
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