A New Focus On Speedy Closings

There’s a new emphasis on closing mortgages in short timeframes with one lender promising to put a thousand bucks in a customer’s pocket if it dallies in the approval process. The current average for mortgage closings is 45 days. Another lender says it will seal the deal in only eight days.

Chase Home Lending is now claiming it can whittle the wait time down to 21 days or else it will pay applicants $1,000. Of course, there is a laundry list of qualifications, and the clock starts ticking once the completed application is submitted, according to a HousingWire article.

Another lender loanDepot, though, promises to make Chase Home Lending look like it’s standing still. It announced yesterday the mello smartloan. The company calls it a first-of-its-kind end-to-end digital home loan that--in just seven minutes--can identify significant time- and cost-savings and enable customers to close in as few as eight days.

In a statement, loanDepot said it invested more than $80 million in the proprietary technology that powers the mello smartloan. The company projects that up to 55 percent of new loanDepot applicants will ultimately be eligible for this innovative digital home mortgage experience, and many of those same customers will also enjoy more favorable loan pricing due to the lower overhead costs.