De-stressing the Mortgage Experience with the MPF Program

De-stressing the Mortgage Experience with the MPF Program

by Jeff Smith, SVP Lending, and Lejla Sehovic, Residential Real Estate Lending Manager, NorthCountry Federal Credit Union

Buying a home is a dream for many of our members, but it can also be incredibly stressful. By providing a smoother mortgage experience, we can ease that stress and free members to enjoy seeing their dream of homeownership come true. That’s the kind of member experience our credit union strives for, and we’ve been able to deliver it by partnering with the Federal Home Loan Banks’ Mortgage Partnership Finance® (MPF) Program.

Taking Charge of the Underwriting Process

NorthCountry Federal Credit Union serves roughly 70,000 members in Vermont, New Hampshire, and New York. We have a longstanding relationship with FHLBank Boston, but we only began delivering loans into the MPF Traditional products in 2018.

Before then, we kept loans on our portfolio or sold them to investors. But we found that leaving the underwriting to investors resulted in inconsistent communication and unreliable timeframes. Even after we’d satisfied an investor’s requirements and told the member we were clear to close, the investor might add new conditions at any point up until closing. Loans would frequently close later than scheduled, which was frustrating for us, but the impact on members was the real problem. Timing matters when you’re moving: You’re shutting off your phone and utilities, coordinating with the moving company, starting your kids in a new school system. Delaying the closing date—even by just a day or two—multiplies those stresses.

Participating in the MPF Program allowed us to bring our underwriting in-house, so we could set (and keep) closing dates ourselves and communicate directly with borrowers and their attorneys. Today, we consistently hear from attorneys that our team is easy to work with and our closing packages are straightforward.

More Competitive Rates

NorthCountry’s mission is “to make dreams come true for all by offering personalized financial solutions.” Because the MPF Traditional products don’t charge loan-level price adjustments, we’ve been able to make the dream of homeownership more accessible to our members by offering more competitive rates. And through FHLBank Boston, we can pair those rates with grant programs that provide down-payment and closing cost assistance to bring homeownership within the reach of even more members, helping them give their families a place to grow and thrive.

Easier on Members, Easier on Staff

The MPF Program has made the mortgage process less stressful for our staff as well. With easy access to the MPF Service Center, our FHLBank, and the servicer, we get answers to our questions in a matter of minutes.

With the MPF Program, NorthCountry has the control, the rates, and the relationships we need to deliver the kind of high-quality member experience that sets a credit union apart. If you’d like to deliver that kind of service, it’s a worthwhile investment of your time to reach out to the MPF Program and see what it can offer your credit union.