Hello, LOs!

In late December, my wife’s company announced that its leadership team was formulating a plan for workers to return to the office in 2021. Details of the plan were to be shared in the first quarter. 

The company has said little since, noting only last week that they expect to phase in some employees around September. Beyond that, no one knows if everyone will be forced to go back five days a week, two or three days a week, or if a hybrid model with hot desks will be implemented. Or even if there is the possibility that certain departments can remain at home permanently. The point is, workers have been in a holding pattern – putting off home purchases, for example – while management figures out the next step on an undefined timeline.

This appears to be pretty normal. Over the past week, myself and Senior Mortgage Reporter Georgia Kromrei have asked LOs, lending executives and recruiters in the industry to share what their firms are planning to do regarding a return to the office. By the sound of it, many don’t really know yet. And those that do are eyeing a partial employee return in the fall.

Sources said that several of the country’s biggest lenders expect to bring back key departments to the office in the fall, once vaccines are documented and certain pandemic-based restrictions are lifted or relaxed. This is most prevalent at firms with heavy physical retail footprints and those with direct-to-consumer call center models.

But others plan to allow some or all of their LOs, underwriters and processors to work from home indefinitely. 

For a decent number of lenders, the return to office life is a real conundrum. To meet capacity constraints, lenders hired workers from all over the country. Most never went to the lender’s physical office.

“In late 2020, competition for talent was so intense, that companies would have been crazy not to say people could work remotely,” said Mike Cummins, CEO of Percy. 

It’s hard to put the toothpaste back in the tube.

“Companies that have said people can be permanently remote have stuck by that – with some exceptions, like if someone is really close to an office,” said another source in the mortgage recruiting industry.

According to Cummins, lender strategies for returning to the office “definitely varies client to client.” Some clients are already going to the office, others are staying remote, he told HousingWire.

“I don’t think there’s a clear path where everybody wants to go back to the office,” added Cesar Hernandez, who runs mortgage industry recruiting company Agility360. “There's some belief that, whatever their policy was during this period it’s going to change sometime before the end of the year. But nobody's rushing to get their operations back in house.”

Hernandez said the rank-and-file staffers appear to be rather content working from home. It's the mid-level managers who feel they can be more effective with people in front of them.

LOs, let’s hear from you – what is your lender/brokerage shop planning to do about the return to the office? Do you wish to return to the office? Full time? A few days a week? Never? Let me know! Please reach out by emailing me at jkleimann@housingwire.com. Your anonymity will be protected.   

Odds & Ends:

*The mortgage industry is abuzz about the rumor that Lone Star Funds is in talks to sell Caliber Home Loans to publicly traded mortgage REIT New Residential Investment Corp. Caliber, New Rez and Lone Star did not respond to requests for comment. Caliber, a top-10 multichannel lender, has been on the block since it missed the IPO window last year, several sources told HousingWire.

*Gridiron Capital announced today that it had acquired Class Valuation. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Class is a major player in the appraisal/valuation space. It also has close connections to United Wholesale Mortgage. Its former CEO is none other than Alex Elezaj, chief strategy officer at UWM.

*Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on Thursday both issued notices that any loans purchased after July 1 must meet the CFPB's revised QM rule. The rule change, made in December, eliminates the 43% DTI threshold and replaces it with a price-based threshold tied to the prime rate and loan's percentage rate.

Alright, that’s it from me. Hope you all have a great weekend!

James Kleimann

Managing Editor, HousingWire