Technology and Real Estate

In the News   Presented by Prairie Title  

March 14, 2017

         

Tech Talk and the Real Estate Business

According to survey results released in December by Fannie Mae, demand for and use of mobile mortgage products almost doubled over the course of 12 months. The survey covered 1,200 consumers who bought homes in the last year and have a mortgage guaranteed by Fannie Mae.

“This is a startlingly large increase reflecting the pervasive and growing use of mobile technology among consumers at all income levels,” wrote Steve Deggendorf, director of market insights research for Fannie Mae. “Although this research focused on low- and moderate-income homebuyers, our prior research suggests the results would be even larger for mobile usage and interest among higher-income consumers.” 

Fannie Mae’s findings help draw a picture of how the real estate market is moving rapidly toward maximum use of technology, often driven by customers.

Recently, loanDepot, which bills itself as “a fast-growing national consumer lender, announced the launch of its end-to-end proprietary digital lending platform as part of an $80 million investment in technology. The platform features three distinct components: a web-based consumer portal, a mobile point of sale system, and a fully digital mortgage loan application. All will be integrated into loanDepot’s web-based loan origination system, which consumers and lenders can use via mobile or desktop devices. 
Development of these types of systems can be both exciting and a bit scary. For all of us, regardless of our specific roles in the industry, survival depends on embracing technology with all its built-in challenges. To put a twist on the old saying from academia: When it comes to technology, we all need to produce or surely we will perish.
What’s your point of view? Call me, email me, or write a comment below.

Other stories we’re following: 

Affordability is main hurdle for aspiring home buyers.

Sales up, consumer sentiment down.

Three factors affecting millennial home ownership – negatively.

Limited inventory, quick sales.

After fumbling around with TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) for too long, attention is finally returning to the fundamental weakness creating and sustaining our current economic woes, mortgages that people cannot afford on homes of insufficient value to provide adequate collateral for those mortgages. The plan that everyone is looking at now is one proposed by FDIC Chairperson, Sheila Bair, to modify non-GSE mortgages that are past due already or projected to become delinquent by the end of 2009. The basics of the proposal call for the government to cover servicing expenses and to share losses if the modified loans subsequently default anyway.
While efforts to address a core vulnerability of the economy must be applauded, this plan like so many others strike me as just another typical bureaucratic response. After all, the goal of any bureaucrat is job security. This is a splendid plan to keep all those operatives in the Treasury Department and FDIC busy for years. There are eligibility requirements to review, tests to be applied, reviews to be conducted, rules to be drafted, standards to be applied, reviewed, revised and then re-applied, re-reviewed, revised again, ... etc., etc., etc.
Why are we not talking about a plan like the one suggested by Drs. Hubbard and Mayer of Columbia Business School as summarized in the October 2d Wall Street Journal (I wrote about it in this blog on October 8)? The elegant simplicity of that plan obviously makes it unworthy of examination. I guess that since the Hubbard and Mayer plan does not involve an army of eager government operatives to administer it can't work. I fear that, despite good intentions, we are on the wrong path again.