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As the housing market begins moving towards the spring season, purchase loans are expected to replace the significant volume of production from the refinance boom.
Countrywide Home Loans in Calabasas, Calif., has started targeting homebuyers ready to sell their current homes by working with borrower profilers Romania Inc. in Boston.
Countrywide uses Romania's services for customer retention in its Seller's Advantage program created mainly for current Countrywide borrowers.
Seller's Advantage is targeted to a broad audience in the company's servicing portfolio since detecting sellers in a purchase market that usually focuses on first-time homebuyers is a difficult process, according to David Doyle, executive vice president of consumer direct production at Country-- wide.
"The objective of the service is to help [customers] sell and buy more intelligently," Doyle said.
Countrywide realized that the refinance boom would eventually come to an end and decided to focus on capturing more purchase business, according to Bernie Dietz, vice president of business development at Domania.
Part of that strategy is customer retention.
"Retention has remained the hot issue because it is so poor among mortgage companies," Dietz said. "Ninety-three...