Guild Mortgage announced the immediate availability of its 1% Down Payment Advantage, a new 1% down, 1% one-year lender interest rate buydown home loan program. Traditionally, a 3% downpayment is the minimum required for conventional loans, but according to a statement from the company, “Guild covers the remaining 2% to bring the downpayment to the 3% requirement.” Furthermore, Guild will cover 1% of the interest rate for the first year with a lender-paid temporary buydown, keeping the homebuyer’s monthly payments lower for the first 12 months.

SimpleNexus announced a new integration with Empower, Black Knight’s loan origination system. The bidirectional integration, available to financial institutions that include independent mortgage banks nationwide, dynamically shares loan application data, milestone updates and documents in real time.

Ginnie Mae extended the use of electronic signatures in conjunction with remote online notarization (RON) for all issuers to include circumstances requiring power of attorney. Ginnie has been modernizing its practices regarding e-signatures and RON after initially deciding to adopt the technology in late 2021 for loan modification agreements due to the COVID-19 pandemic.