Did I Just Hear Those Magic Words, Stated-Stated? by Bill Roberts

This morning I attended the Windsor Capital monthly breakfast. Windsor is the company I originate my loans through.

In days gone by we would have a full room (about 100 LOs) and as many as 25 AEs at our breakfast meeting. Then things got bad and attendance dropped off, both LOs and AEs.

But today looked and felt like the good old days. First the president and CEO of Windsor Capital Mortgage addressed us. He explained that Windsor's health was the result of getting out of mortgage banking early in 2006 and staying with brokering loans where somebody else takes the risk. A good move in retrospect.

After a discussion of what we might expect in the near-term (six months) we had our lender session. Each AE spoke for about 3 or 4 minutes to let us know what was "new" and what their niches are now.

Every lender was up-beat and had a positive message. Several lenders said the magic words "stated stated" or SIVA. Only the guidelines and underwriting criteria had changed, but the product was still here. What are we looking at? Standard offering from a couple years back: 80% LTV, O/O. 620 FICO. No fog on the mirror test. The underwriter might want an LOE regarding employment. Oh, and did I mention conforming loan limits?

All in all, a good meeting. Nice to see everybody back to work. And the future looks promising.