Instant Mortgage Pre-Qualification
Led research and design for a mortgage tool that calculates a customer’s potential home loan, and streamlines our internal sales process.
Overview
The project
We designed a new tool for customers to get pre-qualified for a mortgage in just a few minutes, speeding up the sales process for our agents and the mortgage process for our customers.
My Role
Design lead
Duration
Six months
Release
Feb 2023
Team
Me, PM, 5 engineers
Background
The Orchard sales process
Orchard is a real estate startup that streamlines the home buying and selling process for customers. Orchard qualifies customers for an “equity advance,” essentially a bridge loan, that frees up equity in the customer’s old home, enabling them to buy their new home before listing the old one.
Determining the equity advance
In order to receive their equity advance amount, a customer must submit a loan application to Orchard Mortgage. The application usually takes between 20 and 60 minutes and involves uploading documentation of income, assets, and a hard check of the customer’s credit score (this temporarily lowers a customers’ credit score).
While customers can technically sign documents agreeing to work with Orchard before submitting their loan application, many customers understandably want to learn their equity advance amount before committing to Orchard. Therefore, the typical customer flow was to submit the Orchard Mortgage loan application as a pre-requisite before “booking” with Orchard.
The problem
We heard feedback from both Orchard agents and customers that the process to approve the customer’s equity advance amount was creating unnecessary friction in the pre-booking sales process.
A 20-60 minute application and hard credit check was deterring customers from moving forward with their equity advance, and blocking them from moving forward with Orchard.
The opportunity
We believed pre-qualification, a faster way to deliver the equity advance amount, would provide value to both the customer and business. It could:
Provide value to the customer with much less effort than the previous loan application
Speed up the sales process by simplifying a cumbersome application for customers
What we knew from customer research
We spoke with several internal agents and several customers to gauge whether learning your “buying power” was a compelling value prop to customers and if it could be a useful tool for agents.
We also gathered feedback on their experience with Orchard Mortgage thus far.
This is a frequently asked question?
It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
This is a frequently asked question?
It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
This is a frequently asked question?
It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
This is a frequently asked question?
It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Project scoping and requirements
We leveraged these insights into our requirements and goals for the project