Reprinted with permission from Mortgage Originator magazine, October 2006.
There are just a few products that have achieved
near cult status in the mortgage industry, and I am
very pleased to finally have the chance to review one of
them—The Mortgage Coach. This mortgage planning
system is used by many of the nation’s top producers as
they work with their clients long term in placing them
in mortgage loan scenarios of all kinds, and showing
the relative merits and long-term implications of these
loan scenarios.
Overview
While many originators may already be familiar with
loan analysis tools, Mortgage Coach goes several steps
further in providing a tightly integrated package of tools
that allow the originator to compare and display these
loan situations and make appropriate comments and rec-
ommendations to the client. Mortgage Coach is loaded
onto a Windows PC as an easy to install application,
available on CD directly from Mortgage Coach, located
in Irvine, Calif. The main panel of the program features
a very intuitive section called Dashboard. The left-hand
side features a series of buttons called Client Database,
Total Cost Analysis, Rate Watch, Equity Reposition, Rent
vs. Loan and Consolidation Analysis. The user would nor-
mally follow a sequence starting with the Client Database
and work his way down the list through the Consolida-
tion Analysis. The originator does not need to rigidly fol-
low this sequence, as a particular client situation might
require only one of these buttons to actually be used.
Total Cost Analysis
This section of Mortgage Coach may be of the most
interest to many users. Up to four loan program scenarios
may be entered and compared, with copying from one
program to the other eliminating retyping. Second mort-
gages, interest only and negative amortization programs
are all easily handled, and a graphical representation is
provided to display the relative merits and cost savings
between the different programs. This section of the pro-
gram is particularly valu