“When things get tough, you need every little advantage”

“We want to position ourselves on the channel that we think is going to best serve a consumer and have the best chance to grow overall market share,” he added.

He stressed the move would give originators greater choice when it came to pricing, while maintaining the firm’s support of the broker channel. “They can say, ‘if this lender is not serving my customer, I can decide to send it to this lender’ and that can be because of price, experience, product, whatever. With retail, you don’t have that.”

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With margins compressing and refinance loan volume plummeting by more than 70% in the last year, Shoemaker is convinced Homepoint has made the right choices, while recognizing that the “big moves”, primarily intended to maintain the firm’s market share, had “created some noise in the market”.

Looking ahead, establishing closer relationships with real estate agents (because of their influence on borrowers), readily embracing ARMs during the current tough cycle and readily accepting that a recession may well “happen much sooner”, are among Shoemaker’s top tips for originators.