Hello, LOs!
Yesterday we reported on residential brokerage Compass and lender Guaranteed Rate partnering up to form a new mortgage lender, known as OriginPoint.
For Compass, the move makes all the sense in the world. Virtually every major residential brokerage out there has an affiliated mortgage company. In fact, two of their biggest rivals have mortgage JVs with Guaranteed Rate – Realogy with Guaranteed Rate Affinity, and @properties with Proper Rate.
Gino Blefari, the CEO of America's largest residential real estate brokerage, Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices, has all but credited the company's mortgage arm, Prosperity Mortgage, with keeping the brokerage in the black, my colleague Matthew Blake reported.
There's money to be made in mortgage, and brokerages have made no secret of their desire to package ancillary services and financial products into the home-buying process for clients. "End-to-end" and such. Compass and Guaranteed Rate say they'll be recruiting loan officers before the launch.
So, LOs, I'm curious – have you lost purchase business due to the rise of the mortgage JVs and/or dedicated lenders owned by brokerages? Are there real estate agents you used to get leads from that now encourage clients to work with a lender that's affiliated with the brokerage?
Of course, RESPA guidelines place a firewall between the purchase of the home and the financing, so I would be surprised if brokerage execs encouraged their agents to outright break the law. But I could also see how it might be more convenient for the agent to simply refer a client to a lender that's paired with their brokerage. Maybe they can better track the progress of the loan because of the integrated tech platform, or they simply have developed a good relationship with the mortgage staffers at the JV?
We're working on a feature story about mortgage JVs, so we'd love to hear from you all. Please reach out anonymously to jkleimann@housingwire.com.
James Kleimann
Managing Editor, HousingWire
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