297.
Week 297 in Detroit. Welcome to 2022 and for some parts of the country, that’s all about the weather. I had some fun with “editions” over the last few weeks. Look back at 2021 edition. Look ahead to 2022 edition. Random edition last week. This week I am being a little more patient with an idea I introduced over 6 months ago.
This week I spoke on a panel titled “The Future of the Real Estate Transaction” and decided to pick one area from the discussion to write about.
How would I put mortgage “out of business”?
Why would someone almost 10 years working at mortgage companies want to spend Saturday writing about putting mortgage companies out of business?
I have long believed it’s a great spark for innovation.
My team used this concept to spark innovation within Rocket Mortgage. Let’s think of the next great idea before anyone else.
I don’t know who is responsible for socializing this concept. I found it attributed to Richard Branson. I’m sure it was many other CEOs and entrepreneur-founders and innovators as well. Author Lisa Bodell wrote Kill The Company based on this reasoning.
Here’s what she says, “Kill the Company [allows you to] pretend that you are your number-one competitor. You have three minutes: How will you put yourself out of business? Especially with executives, it gets their war mentality on. They are given permission to really look at what’s wrong, and then ideally, find out where they are really weak. What can you do about it? Who can you partner with? Even better, how can you then turn that back onto your competitors? It’s just a neat way [to look] at what your weaknesses are, but you give it a gaming mentality.”
In the spirit of innovation and improvement, I want to put mortgage companies out of business so we can implement new ideas for homeownership, access to credit and product development.
The two immediate ways to threaten mortgage companies would be to make the home purchase happen without requiring financing or to provide approved financing proactively without requiring a traditional mortgage application. Easier home purchase. Easier credit underwriting.
