This past year we've done our best to wrap our heads and arms around the available product in the market place and at this point in time I'd have to say, without a doubt, we're writing the right loans for the right kind of borrowers.

You and your affinity partners should be proud of every single loan closing you have today. Not only because you closed that sucker but because at this point with the boxes for lending being so tight there really should not be ANYTHING to be said poorly about our origination channel or the services we are all providing for our customers.

Borrowers are being vetted to the Nth degree and anyone that is able to obtain a home loan today should know they are in a privileged group of consumers.

Picking Your Partners:

That said; all of you were making sure you had partnered with the highest and best sources for your lending/funding needs and thankfully you've chosen me to be one of those sources. The Foundation of my business is based accuracy, consistency and speed to close. That last one being the hardest part.

Our Realtor partners and buyer customers spend months and months looking for the perfect home (typically in highly impacted market price points) and suddenly after having a pre-qualified buyer file on your desk for 5 months all parties want to close inside of 21 days.

21 DAYS??? In this market? With these lending criteria? With HVCC in place it was pure luck if you got your conventional appraisal back inside of 7 calendar days and your funding source didn't hit you up for a field review or additional comps or other appraisal corrections which could add an additional 3-10 business days to your collateral conditions.

So, in some cases we worked with the seller and the buyer and obtained FHA financing instead: choose your own appraiser, have the work down inside of 3 days, your lender (ME :-)) was able to u/w and approved in 24-48 hours and we're were closing (on a well oiled timeline with all parties doing the lifting) inside of 2 weeks - every time! I have a number of customers where this was our basic mode of operation. At times it was stressful but in the end ALL parties were happy.

FHA HVCC & GFE2010 add days to transaction time

FHA and GFE2010 have put a stop to these time frames now. All of your funding sources are taking from 2-7 days to just get the loan to underwriting. Every single aspect of your GFE2010 and Initial Fee Work Sheet or Loan Fee Sheet is being scrutinized and corrections are being required.

FHA has implemented HVCC process as well. Now we don't even have a speed option for our business. It's all hitting the same process inhibitors, across the board. Your Realtor partners need to understand, that unless they want to get to be 5 years older with every transaction that a 45 day escrow is the best possible closing time frame. 30 days is pushing the outside limits as HVCC and FHA repairs could delay a transaction by a minimum of 5-10 business days.

Present this information to all of your industry partners and prepare them for the processes you are going through so that they aren't shocked when you tell them it will take more time than last year to close their escrow.

Please DO NOT hesitate to call me with any questions.