MISMO Issues Call for Participants For New Housing Counseling Workgroup

Tara Dunion tdunion@mba.org

Group Will Create Dataset Designed to Facilitate Greater Access to Homeownership

MISMO®, the real estate finance industry standards organization, issued a call for participants for a new development workgroup focused on creating a unified dataset aimed at making the housing counseling process more efficient and effective for borrowers and lenders with the goal of facilitating greater access to homeownership.

The MISMO Housing Counseling DWG seeks participants to join its efforts to develop an industry standard dataset that delivers greater portability of client data and more flexibility in the housing counseling process, including through the exchange of consistent data with originators and servicers.

The dataset aims to benefit the real estate finance ecosystem. It will help borrowers by providing a streamlined origination process and potentially more financing opportunities. It will benefit originators by curating higher quality loan candidates and lower data entry requirements, while creating shorter turnaround times on loan packages. It will benefit servicers by providing better connectivity with counseling organizations to reduce default and foreclosure.

The dataset also will enable coordination of housing counseling data between industry peers and between counseling agencies and lending organizations.

In addition to facilitating greater access to home ownership, this dataset will allow the counseling industry to collect and demonstrate the impact of their work beyond current reporting capabilities.

The Housing Counseling Workgroup will conduct regular meetings via conference call and will meet in person at the upcoming MISMO Fall Summit. This DWG is expected to exist for approximately one year or until it completes its mandate.   Professionals interested in joining the workgroup should email info@MISMO.org and MISMO members can visit the collaboration site that has been established on “MISMO Connect.”

MISMO’s work to solve key business challenges is made possible due to lender support of the MISMO Innovation Investment Fee. For information on MISMO and how to join, go here.