We had just begun to recover, as an industry, from the financial crisis. We saw an uptick in the economy and we were beginning to feel better about our futures. Consumer regulations put in place requirements that turned out to be very costly to implement and dramatically increased the time and effort required to obtain a mortgage. These well-meaning regulations were designed to protect consumers from predatory lending and safeguard the mortgage industry from another crash. However, these changes had the unintended consequence of making it harder for some consumers to obtain a mortgage loan. More complex underwriting and disclosure requirements increased the time and cost of mortgage origination dramatically, fortifying the barriers between consumers and homeownership. In a sense, moats had been built around all of the homes, but the occupants were stuck on the wrong side of the water.

After looking carefully at the contemporary mortgage market, its processes, and information systems, we identified unique ways to lower origination costs and lending risk. These solutions substantially mitigated the challenges that faced consumers shopping for homes or looking to refinance. A key to the opportunity we saw was the ability to involve consumers early in the process with easy to use tools that provided complete information and transparency in the process that resulted in improved efficiency. Sharing these tools and information directly with our customers just made sense, and it turns out that better informed customers choose to save money. Our goal was to start moving homes off the market and moving people into their homes in a cost-effective manner from which all parties (buyers, sellers and real estate agents) would benefit.

We started fresh, with a highly experienced management team and began rethinking the entire loan origination process: from application to closing. A new, next generation digital platform drives AmeriHome’s mortgage process. Our sophisticated information management tools allow us to be a direct-to-consumer mortgage lender, which lowers costs by cutting out the middleman and saving valuable time while at the same time enabling us to provide the service levels of a local lender. Our technology also allows us to access a broad service area and customer base, limiting the need for expensive brick and mortar branches on every street corner, further reducing our costs. All of this allows us to save big-time on the cost of operations, and we are able to pass these savings on to our customers.

We see customers facing two big challenges: fear and lack of confidence. This is a result of uncertainty driven by the lack of information and the complexity of the mortgage process, but is intimately related to what we witnessed during the crisis. Consumers are smart, they learn from the past, and they don’t want to be caught in a similar situation many homeowners faced at the time.

A common fear among our customers is making poor financial choices: are they truly able to afford the monthly payment, how long will it take, and they worry about the neighborhood, the schools and their retirement. Although consumers have learned from the mistakes of the past, they still worry if they can make an informed decision. To the consumer’s credit, mortgages can be incredibly complicated; they involve numerous moving parts, several separate decisions, and long-term commitment. AmeriHome is here to help our customers navigate easily and comfortably through this process.

At AmeriHome, we want to be a trusted advisor for consumers and the industry, and we want to provide more than just a mortgage. We envision a mortgage lending model, which not only streamlines the entire process, but also makes our loan officers more available to our customers. We want our customers to feel empowered to make smart financial decisions with our guidance when needed. We believe in relationship lending and strive to make our lender-consumer relationships thrive throughout lifetimes.