Media & Press Releases

The Dawn of a New Era: Mortgage 2.0

Following the crash and burn of the early Internet age, the term Web 2.0 was coined to indicate a perceived second generation of web-based communities and hosted services – social network sites, wikies, etc. – that aimed to facilitate creativity, collaboration and sharing between users.  It wasn’t that the Internet changed….it was our way of using it that had changed.

In this Mortgage 2.0 world we can utilize technology to work for us by capturing more business by extending our reach and delivering rapid responses with accurate pricing that ultimately leads to closing more deals.

Like Web 2.0, the heart of the Mortgage 2.0 transformation needs to be collaboration and integration.  We need to bridge the different areas of our industry so that we can more openly and seamlessly work together.  Now more than ever ours is a service industry and to truly differentiate ourselves we need to deliver unmatched services. Most originators don’t even realize that 80% of their business is gained or lost before they even get the loan application.

If you can get your Internet, home phone, satellite TV and cell phone through one provider on one bill at home, why can’t you bundle your mortgage processes?

Bundled services bridge the many tools of our industry and allow us to be competitive in today’s tight market without breaking the bank. Managing costs is a primary concern of anyone in this industry, and if we can do it without losing any of our processes – better yet, if we can do it while building upon our existing service – it becomes a no-brainer.

It’s time to simplify.  There is no reason why we can’t bridge all aspects of our work with a single tool that offers a multitude of solutions.  Instead of looking for the quick fix, we need to think about how we can build an adaptive technology into our processes so that when the “next big thing” comes around we already have the capacity to handle it.

Through a single portal we should be able to manage our website, communicate with Realtors, title, escrow and our clients.  We should be able to sort and prioritize our leads.  We should be able to finesse our clients’ credit, deliver an online loan application, and close the deal with one tool. We need to make it easy for our team and for our clients to access their loan.  We need to bridge relationships instead of hindering them.

With our feet now firmly planted in 2008, it is clear that the mortgage industry is still in the throws of an identity crisis.  The loan closures we used to take for granted continue to dry up.  Prospective clients are harder to qualify.  People are holding onto their homes longer than they might otherwise as they wait out the downturn. 

With Generation Xers becoming the new emerging customer demographic of home buyers, means we need to shift our focus from how we have been doing business to how our customers want to do business with us. Part of the success of Web 2.0 was due to two fundamental ideas: anonymity and collaboration. Both of which are the core of Generation X values and will transfer over to their mortgage buying experience.

So if we can’t change what we need to do, we must start looking at how we do it if we are to survive this transformation.  Just as the online world underwent a revolution in the early part of this century, the mortgage industry is living a similar shift.

Today truly is opportunity day.

Layne E. Sapp l Founder & CEO