“Is it the right time? Will it ever be the right time?” First Community Credit Union in Chesterfield, Missouri wrestled with this question for many years before deciding to take matters into their own hands. They created a full-service real estate company to streamline the homebuying process and connect members with a local a real estate agent.
We’ve written in-depth about The Community Reinvestment Act or CRA, which mandates that financial institutions serve their community with equality. Unfortunately, discrimination is far too common in the home-buying market, as many real estate agents discourage home purchases in disinvested communities. Many times this practice leaves borrowers of color and/or those living in low-to-moderate (LMI) income neighborhoods without the ability or desire to purchase a home. (Read more here.)
Overview:
Many people think the best way to grow their business is to hire more Mortgage Loan Officers to develop relationships with real estate agents to start bringing more customers through the door. Others wait too long and suffer from disorganization and missed opportunities. That’s why we’ve put together this comprehensive guide so you don’t miss out on any lending opportunities. A quick hint? Not all of it comes down to adding more people. You can leverage your current workforce more efficiently. Take these factors into consideration so you can make a more informed decision about how to effectively win more mortgage business.
First Mid Bancshares recently announced they would be acquiring the St. Louis-based Jefferson Bank in a merger. Since the announcement, First Mid, which is based in Mattoon, Illinois, has been under fire from a number of consumer advocacy groups for not lending to majority-Black neighborhoods.
“Charlotte is one of the largest financial hubs. And there’s many banks, credit unions, mortgage companies that are based out of there. Our goal is to get hooked up with some of the big national banks and take this nationally as quickly as possible.” CEO Mark Gorman says RevTech has a focus on fintech, and has the connections that he’s looking for. HomeTraq offers home buyers the ability to get an agent to open up a house they want to see without commitment or being automatically put on that agent’s call list. The St. Louis startup distributes its platform through banks, credit unions and mortgage companies to help them retain customers.
For lenders, the problem of mortgage retention has been a long-time tolerated issue, despite the gravity of lenders only capturing less than 0.5% of the mortgage opportunities from their own customer base each year. Solving this challenge efficiently and effectively has been seemingly impossible—until the founders of HomeTraq aligned with the top lenders in the country.
