The refi and home equity window is open: is your lending operation ready?
With homeowners looking to refinance or tap into equity, speed and a friction-free origination process are key to winning their business.
- Capitalize on Opportunity: Tap into millions of homeowners ready to act on refinance and home equity options
- Remove Bottlenecks: Eliminate slow, manual fee calculations and title ordering that delay closings.
- Accelerate Deals: Discover how the Cotality Quote-to-Order (QTO) workflow helps lenders move faster and more accurately from quote to close.
Why operational speed is the deciding factor for borrowers
After several years of historically low origination volume, refinance and home equity lending are gaining significant momentum. In a recent survey, one-third of homeowners said they are either currently refinancing or likely to refinance within the next two years. Of the homeowners considering a refinance, 75% had rates above 5%, while nearly half had rates above 6%. That leaves many borrowers within range of meaningful savings should rates decline even modestly. At the same time, home values have remained elevated, leaving 86 million homeowners with tappable equity—an average of $277,000 per household.
For lenders, this represents a massive origination opportunity, but it’s reserved for those who can move fast enough to capture it.
How Cotality's Quote-to-Order (QTO) Workflow Eliminates Friction
In a refinance or home equity transaction, the borrower’s mindset is fundamentally different than in a purchase. They already own the home. They are not emotionally invested in a protracted closing timeline the way a new buyer is. Their primary motivation is to access a better rate or cash, and if your process feels slow, unclear, or full of friction, they will not hesitate to go elsewhere.
The lenders who are winning in this environment share one common trait: they have invested in workflow technology that automates the manual steps that slow down every transaction. Fee calculations that used to take hours now happen in seconds. Title orders that once required endless back-and-forth with vendors are placed and tracked seamlessly within the same system where the loan lives.
Cotality built its Quote-to-Order (QTO) Experience specifically for the demands of refinance and home equity transactions. It integrates directly within leading LOS platforms like Encompass to connect every step, from the initial quote to the final title order. This is how lenders eliminate the friction:
SmartFees delivers real-time, lender-rule-compliant fee calculations, ensuring the Loan Estimate is accurate from day one and the Closing Disclosure matches at the finish line.
Property Tax Data Products provides highly accurate tax data for virtually every U.S. property, giving underwriters the confidence to make faster decisions without chasing down county records.
Title Order Management automates the entire ordering process and centralizes vendor communication, drastically reducing the back-and-forth that can add days to a refi timeline.
Prepare Your Lending Operations Before the Market Shifts
Rate environments can shift without warning, and competition for home equity business is intensifying as both bank and non-bank lenders build out their HELOC capabilities. Lenders that establish fast, accurate, low-friction origination workflows now will be best positioned to capture a disproportionate share of volume when the market fully accelerates. Cotality’s Quote-to-Order Experience provides the operational infrastructure to make that possible.
