Smartphones will become life coaches in a handful of years,telling millennials when and where to buy homes, mortgage industry tech expert predicts.Getty
Millennials don’t ask your parents how to buy a home.
Ask your smartphone instead.
In a few years, it will be advising you how and when to without you even asking.
That is the prediction from Bill Packer, new chair of RESTECH, a technology think tank cum users’ group at the Mortgage Bankers of America.
Packer says in today’s world a young couple with a three-year-old living in an apartment might awake and decide it is time to buy a home in a good school district and look online for the best options.
But seven years from now, one of their Artificial Intelligence-endowed smartphones could do the waking up knowing they have a young child and accompany advice to buy a house with recommendations of four or five homes based on the preferences the cell has learned about the couple over time.
In addition, the phone would use AI to suggest four or five suitable lenders.
With AI-based, personal data saturated recommendations on when and if to buy a home and other aspects of living, Packer says a smartphone may be destined to be a life coach.
Packer says technology already is continuing on its long path to reduce red tape and record keeping/record producing for home buyers.
While job and income verification are produced automatically for people applying for mortgages (no need to produce pay stubs, W2 forms and tax returns, as in the past), Packer says the web will take away the burden of asset verification (no need to provide bank statements).
He adds appraisal valuation will become automated and the chore of a closing significantly reduced.
“Home buyers will no longer have to sign their names 50 times to 50 different pieces of paper,” he predicts.
Packer is also forecasting technology will make home ownership less desirable for people as it has made car ownership less attractive.
He sees a day where people change residences as quickly as their needs for housing change.
When the word “renting” is mentioned, Packer notes people rarely rent single family homes these days.
Critics have contended technology has made the process of buying a home too easy—that a purchase of that magnitude should require more thought than a rocket blast off.
However, Packer praises the existing and coming technological advances in home buying for significantly improving decision making.
“Thirty years ago, the sole source of mortgage information was your local banker who might not be an expert and might not have your best interest at heart,” says the expert who now heads the Mortgage Bankers Association’s technology arm.
In his day job, the MBA’s RESTECH chair is the executive vice President and chief pperating officer at American Financial Resources, Inc, a relatively small national mortgage lender.