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security measures, the various participants only see the loan information that is pertinent to their specific task. Providing integrated document delivery and the ability to accept eDisclosures, the eFolder provides the first of many stepping stones along the path to the eMortgage. “Leveraging Xerox Mortgage Services’ BlitzDocs, our clients can drive down costs and improve quality and compliance capabilities,” said MortgageFlex Systems Inc. Chief Executive Officer Lester Dominick. “We are very selective in choosing our business partners and Xerox met all our criteria for providing a high quality product with outstanding support while maintaining the highest level of integrity. We are certain that this partnership will add significant value for our clients.”
Wingspan Announces New Short Sale Management Program Wingspan Portfolio Advisors has announced the formation of the Wingspan Real Estate Network (WREN) for the purpose of offering an accelerated short sale management service to real estate professionals, lenders and
mortgage servicers. Wingspan has been providing a significantly faster short sale management service to primary servicers, investors and other mortgage stakeholders for the past year, and is now leveraging its capabilities to broaden the offering directly to the national real estate community. “The main gap has historically been the Realtor’s ability to navigate a complex process with numerous stakeholders while also obtaining timely decisions on short sale offers,” said Steven Horne, Wingspan’s founder and chief executive officer. “At Wingspan, we deal with servicers’ problem loans every minute of every day, and we speak their language. Marrying those skill sets with borrower-facing real estate expertise means that WREN can effect positive change: eliminating errors and faster short sales that work for all parties.” Horne has assembled a team of experts to form WREN. To develop the operations side of the business, Horne named Chris Plummer, an industry expert who has focused on corporate relocation, financial services and new business creation, as managing director for WREN. Plummer works closely with Wingspan executives E.J. Kite, senior vice president of information man-
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expert in your market. A wonderful example of someone who has done brilliantly in raising the integrity of our industry through social media is Mark Madsen with his mortgage video and blogging community geared to the consumer, MortgageDaily.tv. Many mortgage loan originators have done an outstanding job under his guidance to brand themselves in their local markets. One example of an LO who has successfully branded herself as a K expert with the help of social media in her local market through MortgageDaily.tv is Wendy Werdmuller from First Priority Financial in California. I located Wendy online with the simple search phrase, “Alameda County CA 203k” which quickly brought up several of her articles on MortgageDaily.tv. I then searched adding her name to a new search with “Wendy Werdmuller Alameda County CA 203k;” she was referenced in nine of the 10 Google entries listed. If I was a buyer looking for a mortgage professional who is an expert in the field of 203K, this would be a nobrainer. For LOs who are reading this and thinking, “Wow, that sounds easy,” you are partially right. Though each individual blog entry may be pretty easy, it is the diligence mentioned above that
“One must possess the diligence to brand oneself as ‘The Local Expert for 203 K Rehabilitation Loans.’ You can know the guidelines forwards and backwards, but if people do not know who you are, you won’t get any loans!”
builds the online equity, i.e., making blogging a daily habit. And of course, it’s not just writing blog entries, but learning and applying proper blogging skills, i.e., not just doing it, but doing it right. If after careful and honest consideration you still believe that this is the niche for you, then grab your pencil and paper (or, your laptop) and start writing your plan to become the K expert in your local market. Go FHA! Jeff Mifsud is founder of Michigan-based Mortgage Seminars LLC, a former FHA underwriter with 15-plus years of experience originating FHA loans, an FHA expert for LoanToolbox.com and creator of The FHA Originator, a monthly FHA newsletter. Jeff may be reached by phone at (248) 403-8181 or visit www.MortgageSeminars.com.
agement, and Robert Shiller, vice president of enhanced servicing solutions, on WREN’s daily operations and services development. “The idea behind WREN is bringing in real estate expertise and leveraging Wingspan Portfolio Advisors’ impressive capabilities to create a service platform where short sales happen with speed and ease,” said Plummer. WREN speeds the process by facilitating the short sale process from end-to-end for real estate professionals, negotiating offers with all parties, and using Wingspan’s servicing contacts and experience to clear a path to closing around the usual obstacles. By providing more transparency and facilitating the end-to-end process on behalf of the real estate professional, WREN’s executives expect their results will be about two to three times more efficient and successful than the national average for short sales.
Default Resource Announces the Launch of New Homeownership Outreach Program Default Resource, one of the nation’s foremost providers of default management, valuation and loss mitigation services, has launched a new homeownership outreach program geared to helping troubled borrowers stay in their homes while assisting servicers in their loss mitigation efforts. The dynamic program includes initial borrower outreach, door-knocking and in-person initiation of the loan resolution or short sale process. The service is fully compliant with the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) and may be privately labeled to ensure protection of existing borrower relationships. “Leveraging our nationwide network of qualified and highly trained personnel, our homeownership outreach program was designed to maximize borrower contact and facilitate asset resolution while simultaneously enhancing the relationship between our clients and their customers,” said James H. Zeldin, executive vice president of Default Resource. “By utilizing both our diverse vendor network and our cooperative business model, our clients experience lower losses and greater homeowner retention.”
IDS Adds LO Compensation Compliance Disclosure to Its Docs In response to the changes to loan originator (LO) compensation issued by the Federal Reserve Board (FRB), International Document Services (IDS), a mortgage document preparation vendor, has provided its wholesale customers with a Broker Anti-Steering Loan Option Disclosure within in the idsDoc system so that brokers can certify that they have provided the borrower with the necessary information to achieve safe harbor under the changes to Regulation Z 226.36(e).
The Broker Anti-Steering Loan Option is now required when the loan officer receives the application and before the issuance of the Good Faith Estimate (GFE) or Truth-in-Lending (TIL) disclosure, as the loan information contained in these documents is document-specific. The new form does not include the necessary information for the applicant/borrower that provides safe harbor under Regulation Z 226.36(e). It merely provides documentation that the information was presented to the borrower, as the changes do not specify a particular format (verbal, written, etc.) in which the information must be presented. IDS gives clients the options of customizing their Broker Anti-Steering Loan Option Disclosure, which allows them to set-up the types of document packages in which they would like the disclosure to appear every time. Users also have the option to set-up clientspecific fields so they receive the disclosure on a loan-by-loan basis. “The LO compensation changes have been hotly contested, to say the least, and many people are still trying to wrap their heads around what this will mean for the wholesale market at large, as well as their individual businesses,” said International Document Services (IDS) President Curt Doman. “We wanted to make compliance with the changes as seamless as possible from the docs side by providing our customers an easy-tounderstand form that meets their individual needs.” The FRB’s LO compensation rule prohibits payments to loan originators, which includes mortgage brokers and loan officers, based on the terms or conditions of the transaction other than the amount of credit extended. The rule also prohibits any person other than the consumer from paying compensation to a loan originator in a transaction where the consumer pays the loan originator directly and it prohibits originators from steering consumers to consummate a loan not in their best interest based on the face that the loan originator will receive greater compensation for such loans.
Loan Officer Reporting Tool from Advantage Systems Provides LOs Access to Performance Data Advantage Systems Inc., a provider of accounting and contract management tools for the mortgage and real estate industries, has announced the launch of its Loan Officer Reporting Tool as a module within the Accounting for Mortgage Bankers (AMB) accounting system. The Loan Officer Reporting Tool builds on the capabilities of the Webbased Branch Reporting Module, drilling down further to give loan officers access to real-time loan-level data for each loan they have funded. By providing loan officers with detailed information regarding each of their loans and personal performance,