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Connecting all Home-Ownership-Related Parties
Baltimore, Maryland-based nonprofit Hope LoanPort (HLP) has made it easier to sell and buy a home for all parties involved. HLP and IndiSoft, a healthcare, legal and real estate technology provider, have partnered to launch the National Homeownership Solutions Platform (NHSP). The NHSP’s goal is to provide a web portal where all the parties in the home buying process can come together in one centralized platform. HLP was the National Mortgage Settlement’s (NMS) model technology platform and has been a real estate industry technology leader.
“This is a game-changing initiative geared toward unifying the efforts of multiple sectors and stakeholders,” said Camillo Melchiorre, president and CEO of HLP. “Too often, past efforts have focused on addressing individual pieces of these complex transactions and, sadly, have left families stranded at different stages in the process. By engaging the advocacy, counseling, servicing and lending and investor communities, we are building a common, unified platform that allows for a clear, seamless path through all phases of the homeownership process.”
NHSP, featuring IndiSoft’s RxOffice, supports pre-purchase, post-purchase, post modification, reverse mortgages, mediation for bankruptcies and foreclosures, all types of loss mitigation and early intervention outreach. Servicers, lenders, investors and case and document management are seamlessly connected to help streamline the process of home-buying and helping make homeownership a reality for everyone.
Melchiorre says, “Think of it as a digital highway that connects stakeholders. It facilitates the movement of data and documents in a standard platform. It really is an industry utility. I call it organic progression. Every year, we add more activities and more clients. We even have foreclosure attorneys using it, we have attorneys representing consumers using it, GSEs using it, and that list keeps growing. At the end of the day, you have this digital highway system. The impact of it is by bringing all these parties together, it makes it a lot easier to do the things we all want to do, which is help people avoid foreclosure.”
Nonprofit housing counselors especially find NHSP useful in an environment of decreased funding and increased need for technology; helping them stay focused on their main priority of assisting people with buying a home and maintaining homeownership. Increased productivity and lower overhead are benefits of NHP’s platform for housing counselors.
“We are actively working with originators both on the wholesale and retail side, and the counseling industry so that there will be a very fluid communication channel for the originators to do a couple of things,” Melchiorre said. “One, where they have consumers that have been rejected for loans – they will push those consumers through Hope LoanPort, and two, designate counselors, and pay those counselors to rehabilitate that consumer. As you can imagine, there are different degrees of rehabilitation. Then that consumer will be able to come back in and be in better shape to get a loan or a pre-purchase counseling certificate.”
A nonprofit housing counseling agency which is registered with HLP, no matter their location, would be connected to any NHSP-registered banks and become available to any NHSP-registered lender.
“It kind of democratizes accessibility to programs, policies that are related to either lending, loss mitigation, or foreclosure avoidance,” Melchiorre said. “All you need is Internet access. By going on our website, you now become part of a very well-built national platform that’s constantly being upgraded. In that way, it gives us accessibility to the smallest group in the world or the biggest group. You can reach anybody anywhere.”
What do you think about digitizing home-buying and home-ownership processes which have been traditionally handled by knowledgeable real estate professionals with similar tools and resources?
Resources:
DSNews. Technology Leaders Launch Homeowner Solutions Platform
National Mortgage Professional. Hope LoanPort Launches New National Homeownership Solutions Platform