Loansifter, Optimal Blue’s pricing engine for brokers, handles about a million searches a month from roughly 6,000 brokers, he said. Each search pings well over 100 wholesale lenders, and Optimal Blue believes it covers nearly all the large ones.
“All of the wholesale lenders of size are putting their rate sheets onto Loansifter because it’s such a big platform, you sort of have to be on there if you want volume from these brokers,” O’Connell said.
The product mix across all channels has held steady, he said, with investor and debt service coverage ratio (DSCR) loans at 33% of non-QM activity in September, bank statement loans at 30% and other programs at 37%, according to the report. Brokers carry a bigger share of non-QM than retail does, he said, so the growth of the channel is helping drive the category.
“They’re going to go wherever the business is,” O’Connell said.
What is behind the growth
Non-QM’s share of locks is up 478 basis points from a year earlier, and its volume rose 8% in September while total volume fell 2%, according to the report. It was a negligible share in 2021 and 2022, O’Connell said.
