– With rising interest rates and a practically non-existent refinance market, current conditions remain uncertain. One area that certainly is making a big comeback: Home Equity Lending. What can title companies do to help their lender clients – and themselves – succeed in the home equity market? In a word: Plenty. –

Many homeowners are seeking to tap into the record-high equity they’ve accumulated – industry estimates point to more than $29 trillion in overall homeowner equity and $11.5 trillion in tappable equity (the amount homeowners can access while still retaining at least 20% equity in their homes). The number of HELOCs have surged since this time last year.

As lenders focus on fulfilling the home equity market demand, title companies are in a unique position to help lenders accelerate their marketing efforts with accurate property-centric data and insights nationwide.

In some cases, fierce competition makes it hard for lenders to stand out unless they are the first and fastest to engage with prospects. In others, homeowners may not even know how much equity they can pull from and just how easy it is to do so: usually quickly, at no cost and often without an appraisal. With the right tools and the right data, title companies can help lenders be informed, educated and aggressive in identifying high-equity/low-risk prospects.

Here are 3 best practices for title companies to help setup their lender partners for home equity marketing success:

1 / Fish where the Fish are

The age-old advice to “fish where the fish are” is spot on for home equity marketing. Unlike prospecting activity for other products, home equity prospects are well-defined with lenders looking for properties within certain equity ranges. But title companies have access to more targeted tools to help their clients identify potential prospects by mortgage type, length of ownership, geographic-footprint, and other nuanced characteristics for maximum ROI. Solutions such as DataTrace® TitleFlex™ lets title companies quickly generate lists for their lender partners with accurate and timely data based on a variety of property-centric search features and suppression filters for targeted prospecting.

For instance, if your lender client wants to focus on a certain geography, either to coincide with their physical branches or to segment a nationwide campaign, TitleFlex makes it easy to do so. Or perhaps the lender wants to target only on customers in higher equity ranges, or loans with specified balance estimates, or even properties built within a certain time period – it’s all possible with TitleFlex. Want to know where to fish? We have lists for that.

2 / Identify prospects with real potential

While many homeowners have a general awareness of how much equity they have in their home, many don’t. And relatively new homeowners may not fully understand HELOCs. Good marketing doesn’t wait for homeowners to decide they are ready to get the cash out of their homes. Rather, they actively identify and engage with likely candidates using data-rich analytics tools to develop customized offers.

Maybe your clients are looking for more advanced, turn-key solutions. DataTrace Advanced Data Solutions (ADS) provides an even deeper dive to uncover data-driven analytics for mining home equity prospects. Working with our advanced data experts provides opportunities to further customize outbound campaigns using a combination of prospect characteristics that specifically fit lender objectives, including automated property valuations, mortgage specifics, homeowner data, document images and loan-to-value calculations. These highly defined prospect lists not only generate more successful results, managing portfolios with ADS can reduce in-house database administration costs and add a layer of expertise with line-by-line dataset guidance that further enhances bottom-line results.      

3 / Focus spend on quality over quantity

Marketers who are simply casting a wide net may find they’re catching a lot of prospects who don’t meet their lending criteria. Perhaps homeowners don’t have enough available equity, or maybe there is a cloud on their title, for example. Title companies can be an invaluable resource for lenders to avoid this costly pitfall. Casting a net too wide not only strains time and money, but it can also damage brand reputation by getting prospects’ hopes up, only to turn them down.

Developing data-sourced solutions that use the most accurate and timely data combined with tools that can generate highly targeted lists will more than pay for itself and, at the same time, introduce valuable cost efficiencies. The magic of great marketing is not only the results it generates, but also the efficient resources required to achieve those results. Anybody can win with unlimited resources, but few have that luxury. That’s why it’s even more critical for title companies to help lenders watch the bottom-line by targeting the right prospects, with the right front-end insights and analytics, and converting them to new customers.

Bolster your lender relationships and bottom-line with impactful home equity lending marketing tools. Explore how.

Check out the DataTrace Home Equity Lending Content Series:

1. Top Ways Title Companies Can Help Lenders Succeed in Home Equity Lending
2. How to Help Your Lender Clients Capitalize on the Home Equity Market
3. The Home Equity Marketing Formula to Fuse Your Lender Relationships: Be Informed, Educated & Aggressive