Five Star Conference

Our Fidelity Phoenix team attended The Five Star Conference in Dallas last week. Highlights included a variety of high profile speakers, lots of informative meetings and the happy hour cigar lounge hosted by Fidelity Phoenix.

Melissa Shapiro, AVP/Director of Sales for Fidelity Phoenix attended the conference and provides a recap:

Overall general consensus of big servicers and banks is that inventory is being released now and will continuously grow over the next few months. The past 18 months has been a series of stop and go due to government involvement and regulations like HAFA and HAMP, the class action lawsuits against the banks with ROBO signings and MERS and the banks freezing all activity in order to look at their processes under a microscope to mitigate future risk. Homeowners who have stopped paying their mortgage has now had ample time to be given every opportunity to save their house with loan mod, SS, deed in lieu and government assistance programs. The sand has finally run out and the banks are filing foreclosure proceedings. Bank of America has started first and already in the Western States, including AZ has doubled in foreclosing filings.

An entire breakout session was dedicated to non traditional ways of liquidating REO’s with non profits and bulk sales. And below are some of the main takeaways from the conference:

· Asset management companies are revamping their existing preferred agent list based on expired information.

· Update your applications and resume’s regularly.

· BPO’s are extremely important. The highest isn’t necessarily the best, accuracy is what gets you the best scorecards.

· When applying to outsourcers/banks, send a recent copy of your score card to get noticed.

· Short sales are becoming more aggressive and easier to get through. The banks would rather liquidate through a SS than an REO. Better overall PR and always is a cost savings.