Technology Leaders Launch Homeowner Solutions Platform

Hope LoanPort (HLP), a Baltimore, Maryland-based 501c3 technology nonprofit, has just made the process of buying and selling a home easier for everyone involved.

HLP, which was the model technology platform in the National Mortgage Settlement and has long been a real estate industry industry technology leader, has partnered with IndiSoft, a technology provider for healthcare, legal, and real estate industries based in Columbia, Maryland, to launch the National Homeownership Solutions Platform (NHP). The goal of NHP is to bring all the parties in the home purchase process together into one central location, allowing them to communicate with each other online and in real time.

NHP, which features IndiSoft's RxOffice, supports a full range of housing cases and products, including pre-purchase, post-purchase, post modification, early intervention outreach, reverse mortgages, all types of loss mitigation, mediation for both bankruptcies and foreclosures. The technology connects servicers, lenders, and investors and integrates case management and document management systems in order to achieve the goal of streamlining the process and making homeownership a reality for everyone.

"Think of it as a digital highway that connects stakeholders," said Camillo Melchiorre, president and CEO of HLP. "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."

NHP is especially useful to nonprofit housing counselors who face decreased funding and an increased need for technology in order to help them focus on their main goal, which is to help people reach their goal of owning and sustaining a home. For housing counselors, NHP provides technology and tools to raise productivity and lower overhead costs.

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."

As an example of how NHP works, Melchiorre said a nonprofit housing counseling agency located anywhere that registered with HLP online would be connected to big banks everywhere and become available to any lender who is also registered with NHP.

"It kind of democratizes accessibility to programs, policies that are related to either lending, loss mitigation, or foreclosure avoidance," he 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."