by Brian Brady
Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL
Jeff Corbett announced that he launched Ratespeed this week:
What is it? An anonymous, automated, transparent, mortgage program and interest rate pricing pre-qualification Search Engine widget, thingy.
Why is this important? For the first time anyone can transparently access wholesale direct mortgage interest rates and program quotes without having to talk to a licensed mortgage professional first. Yep, this is important to a lot of people.
I”ve been thinking about how to improve a mortgage shopping experience for consumers and am enthralled with both Jeff’s offering and the Zillow Mortgage Marketplace. Both platforms are trying to better display information to consumers about loan terms. Zillow approaches it from a “live market” while Jeff Corbett focuses his efforts on yield spread premium.
I think the answer lies in a combination of a suggestion Todd Carpenter made, about eliminating all yield spread premium disclosure, and the Bank of America No Fee Plus Mortgage. I demonstrated how the No Fee Plus Mortgage was no real bargain today, after I visited my bank.
There is an answer. Isolate one variable; rate. Make loan originators guarantee all third-party fees, as well as their fees, when quoting mortgage terms. ABN-AMRO (now Citigroup) tried this some 3-4 years ago when they offered the “Guaranteed One Fee Mortgage“. When you do a side-by-side comparison with rates and loan programs matched up, you’ll get a true cost of credit if the originator is required to manage the closing costs and disclose them as one fee.
Banks or brokers will only disclose two things to the consumer: rate and one fee. It would be stupendously simple to understand.