60 days and counting
Credit unions and mortgage lenders are experiencing surging loan volumes and delays in loan processing. The GSE’s have tightened their income and asset expiration allowances to 60 days from 90 days. This has resulted in increased touches between lenders and borrowers further delaying the processing time.
In a perfect world, a borrower provides all documentation at the beginning of the loan process, the appraisal is ordered at the same time and this would not be an issue; but we live in the real world and this is not typical.
Some proactive steps that are taken with clients to avoid downstream issues are to pay close attention to the SSR. A risk score on the higher end should prompt a closer review by your AMC partner. There are several scenarios that could have resulted in a higher risk score and preemptive address by your appraisal partner can help mitigate this risk.
Some things to consider when you review the SSR warnings and scores are what does and doesn’t warrant additional appraiser feedback. Unfortunately, this is a case by case determination and a blanket approach cannot be taken. An experienced reviewer should take the warnings in both SSRs and weigh them against each other to hierarchically assign importance or the necessity to review. This determines which warning should be addressed by the appraiser and which warning can simply be notated for the underwriter. Keep in mind you simply cannot copy and paste all warning from the SSR to the appraiser which was address in Lender Letter (LL-2015-02).
