Hello, LOs!
Amid news that the Federal Housing Finance Agency will greenlight desktop appraisals — remedying a bottleneck for closing loans — was a kernel of insight from Fannie Mae's director of collateral policy, Lyle Radke.
At the Mortgage Bankers Association expo in San Diego, Radke said that Fannie Mae has been drilling down into its trove of appraisal data. The mortgage giant expected to find a correlation between an appraiser's expertise and the quality of their report, and assumed that a trainee's work might not be as good as that of someone more veteran. Nope.
"What we found is that there is virtually no difference," Radke said. "They score almost exactly the same in terms of collateral risk, and in terms of internal [quality control], trainees actually score a little better than non-trainee."
What about loan officers? There is some evidence that experience is more of a determinant for LOs. The MBA has documented that with a transition to a purchase market comes LO turnover. With refinances waning, less-experienced LOs without strong relationships with real estate agents could falter.
"We aren't saving lives in our profession, but what we do is complicated," one California mortgage broker told me.
"In my view, it takes experience to understand that the little things in a home loan transaction can become big problems if they aren't handled in a timely and professional manner. Buyers need to be educated about what to expect in the process, and promises need to be kept. Refinances are very different from purchase transactions, especially in the competitive environment we see in the current real estate market."
LOs, what difference does experience make? Are younger colleagues — maybe ones who excelled at refis, or expected the past 18 months to become a new normal — now struggling? Send a note to gkromrei@housingwire.com
Georgia Kromrei
Senior Mortgage Reporter, HousingWire
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