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[ad_1] The real estate and title markets are dealing with lower volumes right now, which means increased competition and pressure for businesses to stay profitable. However, it’s also a good time to invest in digital transformation. HousingWire recently spoke with Michael Valdes, president and founder of Axis Technical Group, about investing in automation technologies as a way to prepare for the next boom cycle. HousingWire: Why is now a good time to invest in new automation technologies for real estate and title? Michael Valdes:  It is well known that the real estate industry is cyclical with periods of “feast or famine.” We just finished a big feast. Recent Fed actions and concerns over a possible recession have put the brakes on transaction volume. This will create challenges for some companies. Focus has shifted to cost containment. Interestingly, a contrarian perspective might be a better option. This is especially the case if your long-term strategy is growth. Now is an ideal time to invest in automation systems and digital workflows. To start, time and resources are more readily available. New systems are easier to test, implement and optimize with lower transaction volume. And the opportunity cost of losing new business is much lower. Those with the insight to do this type of investment now will be in a far stronger position to take advantage of the next boom cycle. Higher transaction volume will then be better managed. New efficiency gains can defer or even avoid potential future resource constraints. Combined, these factors can have a really big impact on future profit potential for firms with this insight. HW: What are the benefits of these automation strategies? MV:  A comprehensive automation strategy offers many advantages. This is especially the case when an industry is in a digital transformation, such as what we are all experiencing in the real estate and title insurance industries. We saw a lot of change over the past two years. Many of these changes will remain. As successful companies such as Google and Apple have shown us, everyone wins when a complex process is simplified or automated. Employees are better utilized by spending their time where judgment is needed. An automation strategy can not only streamline repetitive processes to save time and money, but it can also unlock new business scalability options to respond faster to change. Automation can ease the visibility of business transactions and provide new insights for process improvement. When combined, these factors can have a dramatic impact on employee productivity and morale, and customer satisfaction. HW: What automation options exist? MV:  Many parts of a business can be automated. Any repetitive or higher volume actions that are performed are an ideal candidate for automation. Examples include customer inquiries, qualification and review processes, and any other process involved in data acquisition. A common theme is that the “inputs” for a process need to be digitized. For example, the title insurance industry still relies on paper-based documents and manual review processes. To effectively automate this process, systems will need to be implemented that can more effectively perform document management and data extraction to acceptable levels. The transition may need to be gradual to provide sufficient time to be part of your automation strategy. The important thing is to start planning now. HW: How is Axis Technical Group poised to help decision-makers set up a more data-driven, automated infrastructure? MV: Technology plays a critical role in driving innovation. Artificial intelligence and machine learning are two great examples. These technologies are now unlocking superior automation performance. Specifically, data extraction processes can be “learned” quickly whereby the intelligence gathered by AI-driven algorithms can collect data with greater accuracy and context. This innovative approach extracts unstructured data with context – intelligence that can be used to accelerate the performance of any automated business process. Axis Technical Group has built an AI-driven data extraction engine specifically tailored to the title insurance industry. This solution, available as a managed service, can deliver superior performance and play a critical role in a company’s overall automation strategy. Our professional services team has successfully implemented this new solution at several locations. The results continue to surprise our clients, which has created many new opportunities for other performance and scalability improvement programs. Learn more about this managed service offering at: https://axistechnical.com/services/axis-smart-data-extraction/. The post Is now a good time to invest in real estate automation technologies? appeared first on HousingWire. [ad_2] Source link

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[ad_1] new jobs hiring, housing jobs, recruiting for mortgage industry Based on the headlines, one might assume the mortgage business is a complete disaster. Origination volume is down about 50% from last year, thousands of layoffs are reported each week, and gloomy prognosticators say recession will make for a long winter. Some mortgage companies will merge to stay afloat, and many others will go under. But despite the worst business climate in over a decade, there are mortgage companies hiring workers and thinking opportunistically about the cycle. Purchase-focused lenders that didn’t balloon in size to capture refinancing business during the boom, in particular, are looking to hire loan officers. And mortgage brokerages, which don’t have the burden of high overhead, are heavily recruiting retail LOs whose pipelines have thinned in recent months. Though purchase volume across the industry is down from 2020 and 2021, it’s among the only source of business out there for lenders. And it’s still very much a relationship-driven business: borrowers want to speak to local loan officers when starting the process of getting a loan, which is why firms are hiring LOs, recruiters and mortgage lending executives said. Even traditional depository lenders are keen to bring aboard LOs from coast to coast. A quick scan of job boards shows depositories such as U.S. Bank, Citi and Bank of America looking to expand the ranks of LOs.  WesBanco Bank, the second-largest bank headquartered in West Virginia, plans to hire at about a dozen loan originators in 20 major markets this year. Founded in 1870, the bank has about 65 LOs. It has patiently prepared for a downturn and didn’t layoff a single employee in the past two years, said Rick Trew, vice president and regional sales manager at WesBanco.  “We didn’t go out and hire everybody we possibly could,” Trew said. “We maintained our stability during the last several years, that’s what set us apart.”  With over 200 branches in West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania Kentucky, Tennessee and Indiana, Trew said the bank is focused on purchase and the construction business.  Join us! Recruiting battles for LOs remain fierce, mortgage executives and LOs told HousingWire. Though signing bonuses aren’t as generous as they were during the boom, many LOs making a move are receiving better compensation at their new firm. But it could take a few months to land, especially doing outbound recruiting. “Our industry knows that the process of going into a marketplace trying to find experienced originators is a very competitive and somewhat of a lengthy process,” Paul Buege, CEO of Inlanta Mortgage, told HousingWire.  Several large mortgage brokerages see the market-wide volatility as a recruiting tool. Mike Kortas-led NEXA Mortgage, a high-volume brokerage, is looking to grow to 2,000 brokers by the end of the year, pitching what he called the best pricing in the industry and 100% splits.  And Anthony Casa-helmed UMortgage, headquartered in Philadelphia, is recruiting from large retail lenders across the country. He’s also bringing in brokers. Sean Grapevine, who led ATL Mortgage in Georgia, recently joined UMortgage. Casa plans to also hire for data, IT, operations and HR roles. Smaller operations are also looking to fill their ranks, including Motto Mortgage and Grow Mortgage.  Motto, which added 60 franchises in 2022, is looking for seven business development consultants who will be tasked with selling franchises of Motto. Real estate firm RE/MAX acquired Motto Mortgage in 2016 to create a “one-stop-shop” in which homebuyers can work with both a real estate agent to find a home and a Motto Mortgage loan originator to secure financing. “As rates have gone up and the refi volume have gone down, they (rates) pushed origination back to purchase money,” said Bob Butterfield, vice president of franchise sales at Motto Mortgage. “Purchase applications are where brokerages really shine in the first place.” “The broker channel is growing so quickly [that] we can’t hire fast enough,” said Russell Petty, owner of Grow Mortgage, which has offices in the Carolinas, Florida and Indiana. Faster return times, often same-day underwriting approvals, and less overhead are all factors that drive lower rates and business to Grow, Petty said.  He plans to hire up to 20 brokers by the end of the year, including junior LOs. wemlo, a platform connecting mortgage brokers and loan originators to a processing network, is looking to expand. The firm is looking to hire account executives to sell the firm’s processing software. Demand for wemlo is being driven by brokerages that don’t have in-house processors, Butterfield said. The number of brokerages submitting loans to wemlo for processing rose 74% in the second quarter of 2022 from the same period last year, the company said. Acquired by real estate firm RE/MAX and Motto Mortgage in 2020 after two firms struggled to hire experienced processors, wemlo added three account executives with experience at wholesale lenders this year.  “Interest rates have knocked out homebuyers but we still have more qualified buyers who saved up a lot of money and have been trying to get into the market,” Buege said. “As we see a cooling in the housing market, it’s almost bringing a balance back. We look at the market as the glass is half full.” Tough time for operations staff It’s a better job market for LOs than processors and underwriters as they are the “revenue generators,” said Mandy Garfield, head of talent acquisition at independent mortgage bank Norcom Mortgage, which is looking for LOs in multiple markets.  “During the heavy refi years, companies really bulked up with processors, underwriters and support staff,” Garfield said. “When the refis went away… [that] is why you are seeing a lot of these layoffs. In order for a company to grow, loan originators are the ones bringing in the loans and revenue to the mortgage company.” It’s an extremely competitive job market for operations professionals. Over a dozen out-of-work operations workers told HousingWire they’ve applied to hundreds of jobs, and rarely receive more than a few interviews for positions they’re highly qualified

[ad_1] As strange as it may sound, earning financial freedom is a lot easier for certain people than claiming that freedom once they have earned it. And if the following statement rings true to you, you may be suffering from this same hardship: “I think I’m close to having enough money to jump into early retirement, but not quite.  So I’m just working one more year and starting one more side hustle and buckling down extra hard to be more certain.” It sounds rational, right? After all, you can never be too careful, as the saying goes.  But the problem is that these people keep repeating the mantra regardless of how much money they have, and regardless of their actual living expenses. No matter how bright their financial picture is, they always find a way to undervalue their savings and overestimate their future expenses, just in case of the unexpected. And by tilting the balance ever further in the direction of “safety”, they forget about what should be on the other side of the scale, which is “making the most of your finite time on this lovely planet.” This happens way more than you might think. Every week, it’s in my email inbox and my in-person conversations with people I meet. This fear is even prevalent among some of my real-life friends, so let’s look at a couple of thinly disguised examples from that group to see some of the symptoms (and a possible cure for) this famed affliction of One More Year Syndrome. Alina’s Anemic Withdrawal Rate Alina is a currently-single doctor in a stressful but well paid area of practice, age 50 with one grown child. She has about $2 million in investments, and currently spends about $50,000 per year, a level which includes pretty much everything that is important to her.  According to The 4% Rule, Alina’s nest egg will provide a pretty reliable income of roughly $80,000 per year for the rest of her life. Or to put it another way, her planned spending of $50k is only a 2.5% withdrawal rate from that 2 million. Since 4% is reasonably safe, 2.5% is a preposterously safe withdrawal rate. But wait! There’s more. In the interest of being conservative, Alina has deliberately ignored several other key pieces of her own financial future: All future social security income (over $2000 per month for the last 2-3 decades of your life)  A highly likely inheritance from her parents who, while wise and vibrant and still doing great, are in their early 80s.  And she’s also assuming that she will never couple up with another partner someday and share household expenses, despite the fact that she’s an attractive and sociable person with many options in this department. Her response to this feeling of extra caution? Just crank it out for another year or three in the furnace of the operating room, and hold off on any luxuries to save up another few hundred thousand, just in case.  Dave’s Deceptively Bright Future My other friend Dave is ten years younger, with a lower income but equally scrappy and very entrepreneurial. He has been a star performer in a very underpaid full-time job for over fifteen years. His total annual spending – including a mortgage on a $430,000 house here in Longmont – is only about $45,000 per year. Although Dave lives in high-cost Colorado, he has carefully accumulated eight rental apartments back in his hometown (a midsized city in Ohio), which very conservatively deliver $2800 per month of net cashflow, while also increasing his wealth by a further $3000 every month through principal payoff and appreciation. He also has a couple of side jobs, helping various members of our local HQ Coworking space with their businesses, which bring in a further $1000 per month.  And then the kicker: Over the past seven months, Dave and I teamed up to renovate the main floor of that somewhat costly new house into a very high-end Airbnb rental. We recently pressed the button to make this place go live, and it became an immediate success with virtually no vacancy, now bringing in another $5000 per month (!?), while still leaving him with his finished walkout lower-level apartment as a place to live.  So, Dave is living in his own basement collecting $5000 every month, while spending only $2000 on the mortgage. In other words, he is living for free and getting paid an additional $3000 for the chore of owning this house, a trick formally known as  the “Mustachian Inversion” If you add all this up, he has a total business income of $8800 per month ($105,600 per year!), which absolutely dwarfs his $45,000 spending even without taking into account the salary from that crappy full-time job which he has been wanting to quit for so long.  When you add in the additional $3000 per month of mortgage principal payoff and appreciation of the rentals, my friend’s side hustles are netting him $140,000 every year. And his bank accounts reflect this: there are sizable cash reserves and maintenance and contingency funds for every rental unit, plus a well-funded personal 401k plan and every other bit of responsible financial preparation you can imagine. You may be slightly jealous of Dave because he is all set to kick back and enjoy the proceeds of all this hard work for life. He could cut his income in half and his wealth would still increase rapidly forever. But remember, on top of all this he still has that full time job which is demanding about 10 hours of his time every day, with several hours of Zoom meetings packed in throughout, eliminating the possibility of slacking.  Dave is a great sport and puts on a brave face, but all of us in the local friends group can tell that he is nearly buckling under the stress of this shitty, stressful job, especially combined with his overflowing salad bowl of side hustles.  “Dave, you stubborn dumbass, you need

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