In the United States, as the industry dissects the credit news this week, in a month it will be Memorial Day, honoring those who died while serving (not veterans, and not veterans who eventually passed away). Looking at the holiday calendar, Christmas and New Year’s Day holidays considered to be federal holidays in many countries… but not all countries. In fact, those days are not ones that most people observe worldwide! There are 5.5 billion people who live in a country where December 25 is a public holiday, and 4.3 billion people who live in a country where January 1 is. There are a number of other holidays where lots of the world (3 billion or more) get off, including Good Friday, Eid al-Fitr, Eid al-Adha, and the Prophet’s Birthday. There are also a few countries large enough that their regional celebrations make a noticeable dent, such as October 2 in India or the Lunar New Year in many East Asian countries. However, one day beats all of them: May 1, which is Labor Day for 5.8 billion people and is the biggest day off around the world, even if Canada and the U.S. celebrate it in September, and the U.K. just forgoes it entirely.
Saturday Spotlight: NEO Home Loans
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“Redefining Mortgage Lending Through Partnership, Technology, and Scale”
NEO Home Loans was built on a simple belief: the mortgage industry must evolve to better serve both clients and mortgage professionals. For too long, lending has been dominated by outdated systems, transactional relationships, and business models that prioritize short-term volume over long-term value. NEO exists to challenge that norm and establish a more transparent, strategic, and empowering approach to home financing.
At the center of NEO’s philosophy is the idea that a mortgage should be part of a broader financial journey, not a one-time transaction. Every client relationship is guided by a structured process that begins with Discovery, where advisors take time to understand financial goals, income structure, and long-term plans. This insight drives a tailored Strategy designed to bring clarity and confidence to complex financing decisions. Execution is handled with precision through centralized operations and disciplined workflows, ensuring consistency and reliability. Finally, Wealth Maximization anchors the relationship beyond closing, positioning the home as a long-term financial asset rather than a static liability.
Technology plays a critical role in making this model scalable and efficient. NEO Home Loans, powered by Better, leverages advanced automation to remove friction from the loan process while preserving the human element that clients value. Two proprietary tools are central to this effort. Tinman®, an end-to-end loan origination system, automates underwriting for nearly 40 percent of loan files, significantly reducing fulfillment costs and cycle times. Betsy™, an AI loan partner, handles over 125,000 customer interactions each month, eliminating administrative bottlenecks and allowing mortgage advisors to focus on guidance, strategy, and relationships.
Another key differentiator is NEO’s in-house lead generation engine. Unlike traditional models that rely heavily on self-sourced referrals or inconsistent third-party lead sources, NEO delivers thousands of purchase-ready leads each month. These prospects are precision-targeted using AI-driven insights and nurtured through automated workflows, creating a consistent pipeline of high-intent borrowers. This system enables advisors to spend less time prospecting and more time consulting, while maintaining strong margins and predictable growth.
NEO also redefines the relationship between the company and its mortgage advisors. Rather than treating loan officers as employees, NEO operates on a true partnership model. Advisors are viewed as business partners with full transparency into pricing, margins, and revenue. They direct how loans are priced and benefit directly from the success of the organization. Beyond mortgages, advisors can build multiple revenue streams through insurance ownership opportunities creating long-term financial stability and scalability.
Supporting this structure is a culture rooted in leadership, mentorship, and genuine care. NEO invests heavily in developing its people, encouraging collaboration, continuous learning, and shared success. Leaders serve as mentors, helping advisors build sustainable businesses without burnout while maintaining a high standard of service for clients.
As the mortgage landscape continues to shift, NEO Home Loans is not simply adapting. It is setting a new standard. By combining intelligent technology, a scalable lead engine, and a partnership-driven model, NEO is creating a future where mortgage professionals operate as true financial advisors and clients receive guidance that extends far beyond the closing table. Learn more about NEO here.
(For more information on having your firm’s extracurricular activities, employee growth, and your charitable side featured, contact Chrisman LLC’s Anjelica Nixt.)
Trump, Powell, Warsh…
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One can only imagine what happens in the backrooms of Washington DC. For example, we know that President Trump nominated Kevin Warsh to be the next Federal Reserve Chairman. We know that Warsh’s confirmation was blocked by Senator Thom Tillis due to what the Republican from North Carolina called a “bogus” investigation of current Fed Chair Powell by the Department of Justice. We know that the inspector general for the Federal Reserve has already reviewed the renovation project and found no wrongdoing. And now the investigation continues but has been moved from away from the DOJ and to the IG. “The Inspector General for the Federal Reserve has been asked to scrutinize the building costs overruns, in the billions of dollars, that have been borne by taxpayers,” U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro said in a post on X. “Accordingly, I have directed my office to close our investigation as the IG undertakes this inquiry.”
The life of a notary
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I received this note from a notary, or ex-notary to be precise, in California. “I signed with several agencies and the NNA. I think the area is a little saturated. There’s no way that I’d receive enough assignments at $100+ to be able to do it. I was accepting virtually every job and actually was chosen for about 10 percent of them. I also spoke with a few title companies directly and they all told me ‘We just use the app’ so there was zero chance of direct relationship.
That said, some people did call me as a reliable notary… just not enough. I think the real failure is the legislature for allowing exceptions to the $15/signature/page and letting them low-ball us notaries. Having too many notaries is also a big problem, and with the apps, there’s really no way to stand out. They press a button offering a job and then they see 1,000 people saying, ‘Pick me!!’ and they choose the first one.
And this note:
“I’m registered with several signing agencies, and a member of the National Notary Association, where random title companies can find me. I get most of my assignments by text, a few via email or phone calls. My guideline is to not leave the house for less than $100. Of course, there are exceptions, but that’s my target. My goal is to make at least $500-$600 (gross) a week; some are better, some are worse. I typically sign 5 or 6 transactions per week, which should translate into the income goal.
“I choose transactions based on 1) pay 2) amount of paperwork which is sometimes difficult to gauge 3) distance/travel time: no more than 30 minutes one way. I often counter-offer anywhere from $10-$30 more than the offer. I try to avoid assignments with scans, although that’s not always possible, because it adds time to the transaction.
“So, I’m a PMF who works part-time. Perhaps some try to make a living full-time. I do think I could still fulfill my guidelines and not subject myself to his level of miserableness. When I first started, I was working closer to full-time and grossing about $1000 a week. Not a bad gig, but a little tiring.”
During the COVID pandemic, I received this note from a notary.
“One of the steps in my appointment process is to confirm with the borrower the date, time, and location of signing. After confirming that, I mention that all signers, including those on the note who are not borrowers, need to be there, will need to show driver’s licenses, and will need to wear a mask that covers their nose and mouth.
“Most people answer that last point with ‘no problem,’ or ‘of course.’ However, every once in a while, I get the response that I received this morning: ‘I’m not going to wear a mask in my own home.’ I can point out to the borrower that while it is their own home, it becomes temporarily public when I’m there, and it’s a requirement of their lender. And I ask if they want to cancel the transaction, just to introduce a little panic into their lives. (jab jab) Or I can decline the assignment and let it go to another notary, if I want to forfeit the transaction, including my pay.
“So, what I’m going to do with today’s ‘jerk’ is prepare the package, highlighting where they need to sign, and hand the package to them from my car. He’ll have to come out in the rain to get it from me, and to return it. Too bad, so sad. But according to the title companies and the lenders, that’s perfectly OK.
“Then there’s the open carry issue. I showed up at one home where the husband was wearing a pistol in a holster during the signing. Whatever. What was stranger was that before I got there, he had to run to the bank to get a cashier’s check for cash due. He was wearing the gun when he returned, and I wondered to myself if banks will let folks saunter in, open carrying. Didn’t ask.”
Tracking construction projects, loans, and servicing… tricky?
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Many companies are doing, or have thought about doing, construction financing, with varying degrees of success. I received a note from someone running the mortgage division for a credit union in the Midwest, asking, “Rob, we’ve always used a spreadsheet to track land loans, construction financing, draws, and servicing. But our business has expanded, and a spreadsheet may not be best. Is there better technology for this channel?”
Good question. A company that has pretty much set the standard is Built Technologies, headed by Chase Gilbert. “Built” is an “AI-native” real estate finance platform that works with lenders, banks, credit unions, non-bank lenders, and even developers to help them use modern technology to navigate the loan lifecycle. Built looks at single family construction, multi-family, and commercial.
Chase had some thoughts. “Lenders need to collect all the documentation related to a borrower’s credit worthiness, and also the plans, the specs, a copy of the budget, a copy of the contract that you might have with the builder or contractor who’s going to build it. Your staff needs to evaluate the budget, create the budget and a system instead of getting the data out of a PDF or an Excel document, and do planning cost reviews. That is something that Built specializes in, and we can do it in a matter of minutes.
“We do plan and cost reviews where Built can evaluate whether there are sufficient funds to build what they’re building in that area of the country. With construction lending, the real work begins after the loan closes: the drawdown process. The borrower receives a welcome notification from the financial institution which discusses requesting draws throughout the course of construction. That entire drawdown process is something Built does. The inspection vendors that typically go out and look at the job site, all of that is coordinated on our platform. Built uses AI agents to help process draws pursuant to the loan agreement and that particular lender’s policies and procedures.
“Built has become a repository of construction cost data to help our clients. Of course, the data we see is anonymous and we don’t sell it but instead aggregate it geographically to assist our clients in doing a ‘reality check’ on costs and timing. We’re very good at typical draw turn times or inspection turn times, for example. This kind of data is invaluable, especially as we’ve had $2 trillion of construction cost data go through Built since we started the company. There’s a lot of money at stake if you’re a lender: when we started the company 10 years ago, the average construction cost on the platform was $525,000. Now it has ballooned to almost $1.1 million.
“We’ve officially unveiled probably two things that I think are novel and I think very game changing kind of value for the industry. One is what we call our draw agent, an agentic offering that allows clients of ours to have kind of an ‘on ramp’ into using AI to process construction draws, which are notoriously difficult to manage and can be high risk because you want to know every dollar going out the door is in fact going into the asset that is your collateral.
“The other offering is another way we’re using our data since we have so much of it. Built is able to dynamically produce plan and cost reviews where it’s one of our newest products, but when someone submits their budget in, along with their plans and specs at the onset of a new project, we’re able to ping our database and use AI to ultimately generate a nearly real-time plan and cost review that is far more accurate than the way it has historically been done, because we have the latest and greatest data across such a wide range of construction in America.
“Built is focused on collaborating and not trying to replace a company’s POS or LOS or servicing system. We want all relevant third parties to be ‘operating off the same sheet of music.’ If you can do that, you can streamline the process, you can drive a lot of efficiency, you can capture data for better risk management, and you can make the loans more profitable.”
Chase wrapped up with, “The construction process is still insane. There are lenders out there who see how manual, laborious, fraught with error, and inefficient. And after the loan closes, well, it can be a very complex process. I am still staggered that so many companies are handling it manually with all of its complications. It’s costing people more than they realize. There’s so much unnecessary risk that can be eliminated in a smart way.” Thank you, Mr. Gilbert!
Thank you to Southern California’s Brett B. for this set of mortgage loan memes.
Visit www.ChrismanCommentary.com for more information on our industry partners, access archived commentaries, or subscribe to the Daily Mortgage News and Commentary. You can also explore the Chrisman Marketplace, a centralized hub connecting mortgage professionals with trusted vendors and solutions. If you’re interested, check out my periodic blog on the STRATMOR Group website. This month’s piece is titled, “Mortgage Rates Are Not Random.” The Commentary’s podcast is available on all major platforms, including Apple and Spotify.
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(Market data provided in partnership with MBS Live. For free job postings and to view candidate resumes, visit the Chrisman Job Board. This newsletter is intended for sophisticated mortgage professionals only. There are no paid endorsements by me. For the latest mortgage news, visit Mortgage News Daily. For archived commentaries, or to subscribe, go to www.ChrismanCommentary.com. Copyright 2026 Chrisman LLC. All rights reserved. Paid job & product listings do appear. This report or any portion hereof may not be reprinted, sold, or redistributed without the written consent of Rob Chrisman. The views and opinions in this newsletter are mine alone unless otherwise specifically stated herein.)
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