The Pulse of the Industry from Last Week in Boston

Anyone who knows me knows how tough it's been for me to write (or do) anything today off the heels of my beloved Cleveland Indians heartbreaking loss last night to the Chicago Cubs in game seven of what was an incredible and historic World Series. But alas, life goes on.

Last week’s MBA Annual Convention in Boston was an action-packed event. So much is evolving right now in our industry, and big industry conferences always crystallize what is top of mind for lenders. From my perspective, here’s what the buzz and banter was all about last week in Beantown.

Holy Technology Batman! To paraphrase Donald Trump, there were “many, many great companies" in the expo hall. And Joe Lender knew about 10% of them. 

The Digital Mortgage - A lot of these new entrants to the real estate finance space deal in the business of data automation and/or streamlining parts of the mortgage manufacturing process that are still manual to some degree. The collective sense from lenders is clearly one of “yes, I am interested, but where do I start and who do I talk to?” 

Consumer Direct - A lot of lenders talking about starting a consumer direct channel or expanding what they have. While the LO is not going the way of the dinosaur, clearly an increasing number of younger homebuyers could care less about talking to an actual human being as they navigate through the most important financial decision of their life.

Kevin Costner Sightings - Kevin Costner at a mortgage lending conference? Yes! And with a guest appearance at TMC’s reception!

Other Things That Kept Coming Up - In no particular order:

- Fannie Mae “Day 1 Certainty” (when using their technology tools) and Freddie Mac’s similar enhancements to their Loan Advisor suite
- eNotes & eMortgages & eNotarization
- The impact of the PHH/CFPB ruling
- The implementation and impact of the HMDA data collection changes
- Becoming more operationally efficient
- Recruiting strategies for this fall/winter, which lenders see as a big opportunity to get sales talent to move
- The impact of the Presidential election on our industry