TheMReport — News and strategies for the evolving mortgage marketplace.
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M R EP O RT | 5 MTECH Company, allowing us to increase our services for our customers." Pro Teck delivers a variety of services like appraisals, desktop appraisals, BPOs, desktop reviews, AVMs, data/analytics, and hybrid solutions. "Pro Teck's breadth of services strengthens our ability to provide a great customer experience," Stewart's SVP, Aaron Fowler, said. "Our team is excited to work with our new colleagues and eager to begin collaborating with the entire Pro Teck team as we build the premier player in our industry." Tom O'Grady, CEO of Pro Teck Valuation Intelligence, says he is looking forward to joining the Stewart family. "Stewart's commitment to building their appraisal and valu- ation capabilities into a dominant market leader was attractive to us," O'Grady said. "With the strength of Stewart and the synergies with Stewart's existing appraisal and valuation operations, we will be able to bring much greater value and competitive advantage to our clients." Stewart also acquired United States Appraisals in June to help strengthen its mortgage origina- tions offerings. Hubzu Debuts New App for Residential Real Estate Buyers THE ONLINE REAL ESTATE MARKETING AND AUCTION PLATFORM OFFERS NEW MOBILE TECHNOLOGY WITH PERKS FOR BOTH BUYERS AND SELLERS. H ubzu announced the launch of its new mobile app for residential real estate buyers to access on-the- go. Hubzu, which is an online real estate marketing and auc- tion platform, has been used by agents and brokers across the country since 2009. Over the years, it has facilitated over 225,000 home sales with over 4.5 million bids placed nationwide. Hubzu is an asset manage- ment and disposition solution for residential foreclosure, short sale, REO, deed-in-lieu, CWCOT, and retail property auctions. The new app provides tools for buyers to "find, research, and bid on homes in a competitive auction format" for all types of residential real estate. This includes retail, short sales, foreclosures, and REO. "Our app is a must-have for real estate investors," General Manager of Hubzu Michael Jansta said in a press release. "It's the ultimate mobile tool for helping buyers increase their portfolios by leveraging data and technology to discover, research, and acquire properties. It's reflective of our commitment to invest in technol- ogy and continuously improve the Hubzu marketplace." The new app is available for IOS and Android and is designed to help simplify residential real es- tate investing through Hubzu. By using the app, both experienced and new buyers can expand their portfolios, discover unique properties, bid on online auctions, and stay updated with real-time alerts. Each property listing has key details, photos, auction dates, bid prices, estimated rental rates, and more information. Hubzu says it plans to add even more features to the app by the end of the year, which will enable buyers to easily purchase homes at foreclosure sales from anywhere in the world. The app will also "pair directly with the new Hubzu foreclosure app avail- able in October that will provide fully integrated search, research, and bidding capabilities for live on-site foreclosure sales." Roostify Partners with Google Cloud to Offer Mortgage Document AI ROOSTIFY, WHICH OFFERS A TRANSPARENT DIGITAL LENDING PLATFORM, AIMS TO IMPROVE THE OVERALL DIGITAL LENDING PROCESS THROUGH ITS COLLABORATION WITH GOOGLE CLOUD. R oostify announced its new partnership with Google Cloud to help lenders pro- cess mortgage applications faster and more effectively by applying Google Cloud artificial intelli- gence (AI) and machine learning (ML) capabilities. Roostify will integrate Google Cloud's new Lending DocAI solution into its digital lending platform, "leveraging capabilities in AI and ML" to help improve the digital lending experience on multiple fronts. The use of AI and ML will "decrease the time it takes to process documents, in- crease accuracy, and reduce costs." "The home lending industry is still early in transitioning from traditional, manual processes to digitally-enabled and automated processes, and we believe that transformation will happen much more quickly with the power of AI," Roostify Founder and CEO Rajesh Bhat said in a press release, "and if you are going to do AI, you've got to go to Google Cloud." Lenders today rely on manual processes to verify loan files and documents, which can lead to long approval processes for homebuyers, increased costs for lenders, and higher risk for errors. Financial institutions also are con- fronting "shrinking margins and fluctuating origination volumes," and find themselves managing costs while still ensuring loan quality. Roostify aims to address this problem by offering real-time doc- ument capture, classification, data extraction and processing, and automated adjudication solutions powered by sophisticated AI. "These new capabilities include analyzing, categorizing, and extracting data from documents submitted throughout the lending process," helping consumers and loan teams better leverage this data and have a more streamlined experience. Roositfy has captured more than 10 million documents through its Digital Lending Platform since the beginning of 2020 and reports that the monthly averages continue to rise. "We have a lot of experience in terms of building great models, but taking a great model to something that makes a difference in the industry requires working that AI into the workflow that people have today," Rajen Sheth, Vice President of Product Management at Google Cloud AI, said in a press release. "And to do that, we need the right partner, like Roostify, who is already deeply embedded, and together we use AI to super- charge the workflow." "The launch of FHA's first direct automated underwriting system is a huge milestone for the over one million borrowers on average who rely on FHA insurance annually." —Dana Wade, Assistant Secretary for Housing and Federal Housing Commissioner, HUD