Mr. Cooper has helped millions of Americans feel the sense of pride and security that comes with owning their home. Yet, as any experienced homeowner can attest, homeownership isn’t all sunshine and roses. On top of managing maintenance, renovations, property taxes, insurance, and more, there’s a mortgage to worry about. Also, unlike renting a home, owning is an investment, which requires an entirely different mindset. Plus, for most people, their home purchase is the single largest investment they’ll make in their lifetime.
Mr. Cooper is all about making the home buying, refinancing, and selling process easier. And that’s exactly why they’ve recently re-introduced a completely revamped mobile app, designed to take the guesswork out of home financing decisions.
For Mr. Cooper customers who would like to try the app, all you need to do is head to the Google Play Store or Apple App Store. From there, download the Mr. Cooper app and use your existing login info to sign in. If you don’t have an account, you’ll need to create one with Mr. Cooper—every Mr. Cooper mortgage holder can do so.
Before playing around with the app itself, though, it’s a good idea to explore the new (and old) features to understand how to maximize their benefits.
Use Home Intelligence for a Smarter Way to Own Your Home
It wasn’t long ago that all but the most sophisticated homeowners had to rely exclusively on their realtors for information. Estimated home values and local housing market trends were only available on the MLS, which only realtors had access to. Fortunately, advancements in data storage and processing have made it possible for housing data to become publicly available. Yet even this wide availability comes with another problem—how does one cut through the noise of all that data and make decisions?
That’s where the new Mr. Cooper mobile app comes in. Through the new Home Snapshot tool, the app enables users to:
- Monitor their estimated home value.
- Keep tabs on local housing market trends.
- Look up property tax history.
The real power of the Home Snapshot tool is how it sifts through mountains of data to surface the most relevant insights. Through a quick check of the tool, homeowners can get a rough idea of where their home value is and which way the market is headed. That way, they’ll know—at a glance—whether it’s time to think about pulling equity out of their home, refinancing, removing mortgage insurance, and more. And they don’t even have to call their realtor to do it. Though it’s always a good idea to talk to a real estate expert to get some additional context.
But, as the name implies, the Home Snapshot tool doesn’t get down into nitty-gritty details. That’s what Mr. Cooper’s new “Tune-Up” tool is for.
Introducing the “Tune-Up” Tool for Mr. Cooper Mortgages
For many homeowners, the most confusing part of home financing is what to do when things change. At the risk of understatement, the past couple of years present a prime example of when things “change.”
In the one-year period from the second quarter in 2020 to the second quarter in 2021, homeowners accumulated $2.9 trillion in additional equity. In addition to that, the Federal Reserve of the United States cut its interest rate to almost zero in March 2020. That meant a massive crop of homeowners faced a much different scenario than the one they did when they first took out their home loan.
With low interest rates and additional equity, homeowners had several options to weigh. They could consider refinancing to take advantage of lower rates, pull equity out of the appreciation they’d seen, or both. Yet even in less volatile market conditions, financial circumstances often fluctuate which opens up new options. Perhaps a homeowner wants to find a way to lower their payments or reduce their interest expense. In any case, it helps to have a tool that can facilitate an evaluation of various scenarios. The Tune Up tool in the Mr. Cooper app does just that.
Tune Up Tool Use Cases
Using the Tune Up tool, Mr. Cooper mortgage customers can do many things. But here’s a few uses cases where the tool is especially handy:
1. Find out how they can put their equity to work.
Given the massive price appreciation in the real estate market recently, many homeowners have found themselves with mountains of equity. While it’s certainly not required that these homeowners use their equity, it’s worth considering.
For example, suppose a homeowner’s house is worth $300,000 in 2019 and they have a $240,000 Mr. Cooper mortgage. Suppose further that the house appreciates in value to $400,000. Assuming the mortgage balance stayed the same for the sake of simplicity, that price appreciation would give the homeowner another $100,000 in equity. The homeowner could decide to pull the equity out of their home in one of three ways: cash-out refinancing, a home equity loan, or a home equity line of credit. The Tune Up tool helps borrowers evaluate the cost implications of these various options. That way, homeowners can more easily determine if and how they might be able to leverage the equity in their home.
2. Explore their options for owning their home sooner.
Another common scenario that’s important to evaluate is when a borrower is seeking to pay off their mortgage early. As with pulling home equity out, it depends on the borrower’s preferences and financial situation whether paying off a loan early is worthwhile. The Tune Up tool helps borrowers navigate this choice by helping them explore the various options. Generally, options to own a home sooner include increasing regular mortgage payments and/or refinancing to a shorter loan term.
The beauty of the Mr. Cooper mobile mortgage app is that borrowers don’t have to model these scenarios on their own. The intelligence of the app helps lay out the pros and cons of putting more money towards each payment, refinancing to a shorter loan term, or both, no spreadsheet needed.
3. Determine if and how they can lower their payments.
For the vast majority of people, their single largest expense is their housing cost. So anything that can be done to lower that expense, while balancing long-term costs, is worth considering. Yet many homeowners don’t have a detailed understanding of mortgage finance. And they may not realize how strategies for lowering their payments can increase their total interest expense.
The Tune Up tool solves this problem by not just showing homeowners how they can lower their payments. Rather, it offers strategies for reducing payments while also communicating the long-term effects of doing so. As a result, more homeowners can do what’s best for their financial situation and goals. And fewer homeowners will end up surprised at the expense they incur for something they thought would benefit them.
All Your Mortgage Loan Bases: Covered
The Mr. Cooper mortgage holders who relied on the mobile app for managing their mortgage can expect an even better experience with the app update. Like before, users can make payments with a simple swipe, track their FICO score, and keep track of important mortgage documents. The ease of payment and close monitoring of FICO scores is a big plus. But having an easy place to access and store mortgage documents is a game-changer.
After all, buying and selling a home as well as paying off a mortgage often comes with tax implications. Having these documents easily accessible in a mobile app makes it quick and seamless when it’s time to share these sensitive documents with the IRS. Plus, the IRS can ask borrowers for documents proving tax deductions or credits as many as 3 years after the tax return is filed. Having these documents safely stored in a mobile app can save tons of time (and stress) in those situations.
Still, taxes aren’t the only reason it’s great to have easy access to mortgage documentation. Home inspection reports, home warranty documentation, and seller disclosures can all come in handy when you’re planning maintenance or renovations. In fact, these documents can end up saving homeowners lots of money, especially if something’s covered by the home warranty.
Keeping the Dream Alive
For Mr. Cooper, success is when more homeowners can feel more of the pride and security of homeownership and less of the stress. In 2021 and beyond, that means meeting homeowners where they’re comfortable. It also means giving them the tools and information they need to feel empowered and make confident decisions. In a nutshell, that’s what the newly revamped, redesigned, and retooled Mr. Cooper Mobile App is all about.
