ECL Software Blog

Which Local Markets Are Poised for Growth?

Freddie Mac’s Multi-Indicator Market Index shows improvement in over half of states

The latest edition of the Freddie Mac Multi-Indicator Market Index(MiMi)describes a housing market that is in continued recovery, though growth is occurring at a slightly slower rate compared to last month. The big picture looks promising with over half of the states in the union, as well as over half of America’s top 50 metro areas, showing continued improvement. In addition, 11 states (plus DC) and four metro areas are now considered stable markets. This time last year, we only had seven stable states and zero stable metro areas.

The Freddie Mac Multi-Indicator Market Index is based on a number of factors, including:

• Home purchase applications
• Home purchasing power (based on housing prices, mortgage rates, and income)
• Rate of on time mortgage payments
• Local unemployment rates

The ideal goal for a market is to achieve a stable MiMi rating, as this reflects a market that is neither too weak to generate sufficient demand or too overactive to be sustainable.

Looking at MiMi can help lenders make decisions as to which local markets look ripe with opportunity. For example, this latest edition of Mimi points out the following areas:

• Top five stable states: North Dakota, Wyoming, DC, Alaska, and Louisiana
• Top 4 stable metro areas: San Antonio, Houston, New Orleans, and Austin
• Top 5 most improving states: South Carolina, Louisiana, Ohio, Tennessee, and Nevada
• Top 5 most improving metro areas: Charlotte, Columbus, Nashville, New Orleans, and Las Vegas

Seize Opportunities with ECL’s Fund Control Software

Knowing where opportunities are located is of course only the first part of the process of improving your loan portfolio. You also have to efficiently manage and administer the loans in order to complete a project successfully. ECL’s fund control software suite can help. It contains tools for every activity you can think of, including:

• Managing contacts
• Creating communications from templates
• Creating and tracking budgets, vouchers, draw requests, and transfer forms
• Tracking construction progress
• Creating disbursement checks to contractors and outside institutions
• Recording borrower paydowns
• Managing revolving lines of credit
• Custom reporting
• Portfolio stress testing

Best of all, our software can be customized to the way you do business. There are about 800 settings that can be switched on or off to help make the software suit your unique needs. We’ll help you configure the software so that it supports and facilitates rather than complicates your workflow.