Introduction

Launching a new program in an ever-changing mortgage lending environment can be a challenge. VyStar wanted to launch a program that was beneficial to its members and withstood economic hurdles. To ensure the program’s success, they engaged with Land Gorilla’s program development services to help advise on risk mitigation and best practices for a construction-to-permanent program. Through this service, VyStar found value in relaying their ideas of the program to Land Gorilla’s program development team and discussed key factors such as contingencies and why it is important to include in every construction-to-permanent loan in this current market. It was assuring to VyStar’s team that they had Land Gorilla as a partner during their decision-making process. “Land Gorilla was a great sounding board,” said the AVP of Mortgage Operations. “We had an idea of what we wanted the product to be, and Land Gorilla really took the time to help us set things up before we rolled it out.”

Once launched, VyStar started closing construction-to-permanent loans and the process of managing draws with Land Gorilla software began. One construction team member recognized that “manual draw management has a lot of risk for a lender to not have stops in place to send funds out without proper tracking. How do we know how much money was sent? And if the funds were sent to the right party? It’s important for those building a home to have the information at their fingertips instead of waiting for a callback.” This self-servicing capability for their members and builders is what keeps VyStar competitive amongst larger financial institutions that do not have a construction lending system in place. The construction team highlighted that:

The ability to communicate efficiently with loan stakeholders holds high importance to VyStar. The Land Gorilla Platform offers a messaging tool to communicate with any contacts associated with the loan and a helpful notes feature. VyStar’s construction team found great value to have all communications within the platform. The team member stated, “the ability to communicate and to have all the communications in one place between the builder and the member is huge. Especially if we have a team member out for the week and another team member has to assist with the file and try to figure out what was last discussed. It becomes much more complicated when we’re dealing with email communication. Now one can just pop over to the messages tab and see exactly where the previous team member left off.”

Conclusion