Most files that do not close are a structure problem, not a borrower problem.
A rate sheet answers one question. The transaction asks nine. Metrecx works the other eight alongside the loan officer, so that more of what is already passing through your hands turns into closed business.
What this actually is
Metrecx is a transaction engineering partner for licensed mortgage professionals. It looks at the whole acquisition, price, costs, concessions, capital, qualification, property and offer strategy, rather than at the note rate on its own, and it works around the mortgage process you already run instead of replacing it.
The licensed lender keeps control of qualification, pricing, underwriting, disclosures, approval and how a loan program is interpreted. That is not a courtesy. It is the only arrangement that is lawful, and it is the arrangement that makes the rest of this useful to you.
Nothing here is a lending product. Metrecx does not take applications for loans and does not make loan offers.
Where it shows up in production
Win the borrower
Improve the payment, the cash position or the financing proposition where a program permits it, so you are competing on something other than rate, fees and service.
Win the property
Improve the seller facing economics of an offer. Preapproval to contract is where most of the attrition happens, and it is rarely about the borrower.
Win the file
Compare rate, cash to close, mortgage insurance, product, property and offer strategy side by side rather than one at a time, and model the two or three that survive.
Win the future
Where traditional execution is not available today, the borrower works toward readiness on a documented structure and you keep the relationship, rather than losing them to a nurture campaign and whoever calls them next.
The nine lenses
Every live file gets read through the same nine questions. Most of the value is in the ones nobody has time to ask.
- Rate and payment
- What structure creates the best sustainable payment? Permanent and temporary buydowns, points, lender credits, term selection, adjustable rate comparison.
- Cash to close
- How much buyer capital can be preserved without weakening the transaction? Concessions, gifts, assistance programs, secondary financing, private capital, premium pricing.
- Mortgage insurance
- Which structure produces the lowest total cost? Monthly, single, split and lender paid, and the conventional against government comparison that goes with it.
- Product
- Which program actually fits this borrower and this property, including the affordable and portfolio options that get skipped when a file is busy.
- Qualification
- Have all the legitimate qualifying tools been considered? Co-borrowers, non-occupant borrowers, boarder, rental and accessory unit income, departing residence treatment.
- Property
- Can financing solve a condition or property type problem? Renovation and construction products, manufactured housing, condominiums, two to four units.
- Offer
- Can the financing structure improve what the seller nets, or the certainty the seller is being asked to accept?
- Alternative
- If conventional execution is not available right now, what documented structure is, and is it suitable for this particular buyer?
- Post close
- How does this borrower reduce financing cost and build equity after closing? Curtailment, recast, mortgage insurance removal, and the triggers worth watching.
How a file moves
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1
Intake
Borrower, property, goals, liquidity, timeline, current preapproval, and the specific thing that is in the way.
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2
Base case
Your actual pricing and your actual underwriting path. Everything is measured against that, not against a generic market rate.
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3
Nine lenses
Run the matrix. Eliminate anything ineligible, unavailable, overly complex or inconsistent with what the borrower said they wanted.
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4
Model
Two to four viable structures, side by side, with assumptions written down.
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5
Lender validation
You confirm every lender dependent term, contribution, product treatment and disclosure before it is shown to anybody. Nothing goes to a borrower as fact until you have said it is one.
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6
Seller side
Coordinate offer strategy with the buyer's own real estate agent, including appraisal risk, closing timing and contingency structure.
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7
Present
The borrower gets written comparisons with the tradeoffs and the risks on the same page as the savings.
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8
Document and track
Record which structure was chosen and why, then track the post closing milestones that become your next conversation with that borrower.
What Metrecx will not do
Quote your pricing for you
Every rate, payment, saving and cash to close figure is illustrative until you have confirmed it in writing. Nothing reaches a borrower as a number you did not give.
Promise a refinance
Nobody is told that a future refinance is available, priced or guaranteed, because nobody knows that.
Treat payment relief as qualification relief
A temporary buydown is a payment, not an approval. Qualification is generally on the full note payment unless your program says otherwise in writing.
Work around credit policy
Undisclosed contributions, side payments, silent seconds and off closing assistance are not structures. They are the thing that ends careers, and they are refused.
Compete for your approvable files
A borrower who fits your program should get your program. It is cheaper for them and better for you, and pretending otherwise would be obvious inside a month.
Pay for referrals
Not in any form that would implicate RESPA. If your compliance function wants that in writing before anything moves, that is the correct instinct.
What we keep on file about you
Working this way only helps if the structures proposed are ones you can actually close. So each partner gets a profile that is kept current and is read before anything is modelled.
- Products
- Core, affordable, government and portfolio. What you write and what you decline to write.
- Specialties
- Renovation, manufactured, accessory units, two to four units, construction.
- Pricing tools
- Buydowns, credits, extended locks, float downs.
- Overlays
- Credit score, debt to income, reserves, self employment, recent credit events. The overlays are usually the reason a clean file still does not fit.
- Operations
- Underwriting speed, approvals before a property is identified, appraisal turn times, manual underwriting.
- Concession treatment
- How you and your investors read interested party contributions, buydowns, credits and subordinate financing. Two lenders reading the same rule differently is the most common reason a structure dies late.
The honest limits
Not every file has a structure. Some situations need time and nothing else, and the useful answer there is to say so rather than move a borrower into something that does not help them.
The alternative structures are not all alike. Some transfer title to the buyer at closing and some do not, and that difference is disclosed to the buyer in writing before they commit. If you send someone, you should know the difference exists.
And there is a real timing constraint worth knowing: where a Metrecx acquisition structure is used, Metrecx has to be involved before the offer is submitted, because Metrecx may be the purchasing party. A borrower already under contract has fewer options than one who called first.
Program rules and lender overlays change. Anything on this page is a starting point for a conversation with your own product and underwriting desks, not a substitute for them.