“Buying a house and getting a mortgage are so confusing. If you bought a house 10 years ago, you’ve forgotten a lot of what you learned. So having this information available is really helpful,” he said, stressing the role his employer played in helping people navigate through the choppy waters of the home buying process.
“We tell them ‘here are the steps for buying a house and here’s what you need to know about getting an FHA loan’, and we do it in a disinterested way where a lender might convey that information in more of a self-serving fashion.”
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Earlier forecasts aside, Lewis said he had learned a lot about the finer details of the mortgage industry during his 20-year long career, noting for instance that the pandemic had had an impact in unexpected ways.
He said: “Average credit scores have gone up, and I don’t think it’s because lenders requirements are stricter. It’s because during the pandemic, the kind of people who applied for mortgages were the folks who didn’t lose income, like physicians.”