Change It, Accept It, Leave It |
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Thank you for all those who attended our Spring Conference! We had more than 200 attendees, and it was great seeing everyone and reconnecting!
The first speaker at the conference resonated the most for me. Steve Richman started our morning off with a presentation on a cynic's view of motivation, success and happiness. Loan originators and their Realtor partners are stressed out and have uncertainty about the market, but the reality of it is we will be okay! Everyone needs a home, and unless you work at Blockbuster, Fotomart or do everything with VHS tapes, we will be okay! In uncertain times, we should use the acronym, CAL. Can you CHANGE it? If the answer is no, then you have two choices — you can ACCEPT it or LEAVE it/let it go. After realizing this, you can apply the five-minute rule. You can get emotional and “let it go,” accept that you can’t change it, then move on but only for 5 minutes. Do not let situations control your mood or mindset, you need to control them by applying CAL.
Implementing these strategies will help lessen your stress level. Finding out what motivates you is another example of getting through a difficult situation. People will either have internal or external motivators. When times are tough, go to those and lessen the load. This could be through internal factors — achieving goals, competition with yourself or others, fear, etc. — or external factors — receiving appreciation, listening to music, exercise, watching a movie, etc. Whatever it is that guides you through overwhelming, stressful and frustration times, embrace it to cross to the other side of happiness.
When times get tough, the tough gets … organized! It is not 2020 or 2021 when deals were falling in our laps. You need to earn it and even if you earn it, this still may not guarantee you will end up at the closing table. Embrace the times, go old school with getting down to the basics, be happy and do not let the little things that you have no control over rule your day!
Jen Coyle
First Branch Home Loans
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Felisha Junge (Green State Credit Union, North Liberty) received the Credit Union Top Lender award. |
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Jessica Greving (Residential Mortgage Network, Iowa City) received the Mortgage Company Top Lender award. |
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Mortgage Lenders Recognized at Conference |
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The Iowa Mortgage Association recognized nearly 150 Iowa mortgage professionals during the Spring Conference with the annual President's Club and Winner's Circle Production Awards. The awards were presented to loan originators for their outstanding production in 2022. This year’s presentation awarded three top lender awards to a bank, credit union and mortgage company. Special congratulations to these winners.
- Credit Union Top Lender — Felisha Junge, Green State Credit Union, North Liberty
- Bank Top Lender — Gary Presnall, Northwest Bank, Ankeny
- Mortgage Company Top Lender — Jessica Greving, Residential Mortgage Network, Iowa City
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Thanks for Attending the IMA Spring Conference |
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Thanks to everyone who attended the Iowa Mortgage Association Spring Conference this year. More than 200 mortgage professionals attended the event. This year’s conference included sessions with popular speakers talking about creating a message that makes you stand out; what’s new with Fintech apps; how to thrive in a changing mortgage environment; and discovering ways to be a mortgage superstar. Many thanks to the sponsors who helped make this event possible.
Sponsors
Exhibitors
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2022 Bank HMDA Data Available |
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The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has made available Home Mortgage Disclosure Act modified loan application registers for each financial institution that filed HMDA data collected in 2022. The data from the CFPB is modified to protect applicant and borrower privacy. View the 2022 modified HMDA data.
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Are Lenders Liable for Discriminatory Appraisals? |
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The U.S. Justice Department and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau filed a statement of interest to explain the application of the Fair Housing Act and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act to lenders relying on discriminatory home appraisals. The statement of interest was filed in Connolly, et al. v. Lanham, et al., a lawsuit currently pending in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland alleging that an appraiser and a lender violated the FHA and ECOA by lowering the valuation of a home because the owners were Black and by denying a mortgage refinancing application based on that appraisal. The couple sued the appraiser who provided a lower appraisal for the home when the family's photographs were used, as well as the lender that denied their loan application based on that appraisal.
Attorneys for the lender have argued the lender should not be held liable because it was relying on a third-party appraiser. In their court filing, the CPFB and DOJ said that lenders can be held liable under the FHA and ECOA for relying on discriminatory appraisals. The CFPB and DOJ stated the lender “wrongly insists that it could not comply with the FHA and ECOA’s requirements because its hands were tied by other federal laws concerning appraisal independence.” Rather, the CFPB and DOJ argue, lenders are legally obligated not to rely on appraisals that are inaccurate or violate the law. “It is well-established that a lender is liable if it relies on an appraisal that it knows or should know to be discriminatory, and (the) defendant’s arguments to the contrary are ill-founded,” the DOJ and CFPB said.
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CFPB Guidance on Abusive Practices |
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The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued a policy statement that explains the legal prohibition on abusive conduct in consumer financial markets and summarizes over a decade of precedent. In this policy statement, the CFPB sets forth how abusive conduct generally includes (1) obscuring important features of a product or service or (2) leveraging certain circumstances — including gaps in understanding, unequal bargaining power or consumer reliance — to take unreasonable advantage. In particular, the statement describes how the use of dark patterns, set-up-to-fail business models like those observed before the mortgage crisis, profiteering off captive customers, and kickbacks and self-dealing can be abusive. Read the statement.
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Published by Iowa Mortgage Association.
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