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Home finance platform Lower is now the exclusive provider of mortgage fulfillment for iBuyer Opendoor, after a successful pilot of a mortgage app that Lower is also making available to any brand wanting to provide mortgages in-house.
Opendoor revealed last year that it was preparing to launch “a fully digital financing product that can provide a pre-approval in less than 60 seconds” with Lower on board as a “strategic partner.”
Columbus, Ohio-based Lower announced Tuesday that it’s signed Opendoor as the first customer of a new “mortgage as a service” platform that makes it easy for consumer finance, banking and real-estate brands to offer digital-first mortgage products.
Lower’s platform offers white-label options and can be embedded into the partner’s process through application programming interface (API) and no-code solutions, the company said.
Dan Synder
“We’ve taken our years of mortgage experience and processes, and allowed any business to offer mortgage to its customers,” Lower CEO Dan Snyder said, in a statement. “This is a big step for brands that have captive audiences but not the means or experience to offer such products. It allows companies like Opendoor to stay focused on what they do best, while adding a new product that lives up to their brand promise and expand their reach.”
Chelsea Wagner, who joined Lower in 2018 as vice president of lending, will lead the mortgage platform as senior vice president of partnerships.
Chelsea Wagner
“Nearly every proptech and fintech company we talk to has some version of home lending on their roadmap,” Wagner said in a statement. “It’s a natural value add, but until now there wasn’t a solution. Our infrastructure and expertise make us uniquely positioned to accelerate a new mortgage offering. We believe the demand will be high for this product as a new, easily implemented product offering for companies.”
Lower, a family of companies under the umbrella of Lower Holding Co., can provide mortgages to more than 90 percent of U.S. residents through Lower LLC and companies that do business as Homeside Financial, AMSW Lending, Fairfax Mortgage, Key Mortgage Group, Lakeside Mortgage, Oz Lending, Q Home Loans and True Lend.
According to the Nationwide Multistate Licensing System, Lower LLC sponsors 532 mortgage loan originators who work out of 86 branch locations around the country.
Lower also provides real estate brokerage services and homeowners insurance through Lower Realty LLC and Lower Insurance Services LLC.
After partnering with Orchard to provide power buyer services to clients, Lower last year launched its own “Realtor agnostic” cash-offer program, MortgagePass, which allows customers to work with their preferred real estate agents.
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