Redstone aims to ease non-QM lending

But he acknowledges that while such loans can be more cumbersome than Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae loans, “…there’s very little technology that’s actually been building to actually scale the business,” he said. “Our position is that by aggressively building technology that is helpful to make it streamlined and more automated like a conventional loan, in the long run, that and great customer service while you’re building that is really how you’re going to build long-term success. That’s what we’ve set out to do, and that’s what we’ve been doing.”

A number of launches speak to that quest. “We’ve already launched a new TPO portal that was entirely custom built,” Wolfe said. “It’s the most advanced in the non-QM space by far. We are rolling out automated fees for brokers this year so they’ll be able to make their own disclosures just like they would in a conventional loan. That puts a lot more control into the broker’s hands.”

Read next: Intimidated by non-QM? Here’s how you can overcome that and boost your business

Also planned for launch is a “white label” tool related to automated underwriting for investment property loans, Wolfe said. “You would have heard of it as DSCR loans. We’re building an automated tool that makes the cost of underwriting tremendously cheaper and simpler for both broker and borrower to understand what their status is and what’s going on. But most importantly for our correspondent lenders, this is going to be a white label tool so it’s a tool we can roll out to them both on the correspondent side and wholesale channel where they will be able to take an application in, process it, underwrite it all within a white label tool for them so they get to look like they have great technology and make it easier for their borrowers to underwrite these loans.”

Wolfe had presciently anticipated the rise of the non-QM market even before the current shape of the mortgage market. In January 2021, Wolfe participated in the virtual Information Management Network Non-QM Forum where panelists predicted that technological innovation will be a critical driver stimulating the non-QM market in the coming years.