Purpose
The Home Counselor tool has
one simple goal, to automate the population of providers on the Home Counseling
Provider List in Encompass. Once activated, this tool will automatically fill
in the providers within 3,000 miles of the primary borrower’s current residence when it is entered or changed. This expedites the loan process by automating
what previously required manual entry or at the very least, manually accessing Encompass’s
tool to download the list.
Activation
1. Installation of
the Home Counselor tool is done through the PowerTool Console under the Expert
tier, ensure that the Home Counselor tool is licensed through PowerTools before
continuing.
2. Once the tool is
activated, it will automatically run and
requires no configuration or user interaction.
Instructions for Use
1. The Home
Counselor Tool automatically fills in the Home Counseling Provider list based on the Primary Borrower’s Current Address. If the borrower's current address is set to Foreign Address ( Field [FR0129] is checked), the tool will search based on the subject property address.
2. If the list does
not populate agencies immediately after filling in the address, it will be
populated a short period afterwards as users work in the loan.
3. The settings are
currently preconfigured for the standard provider types, within 500 miles. This
matches with Encompass’s default search criteria. If a list of 10 agencies is not found, the Tool will begin to widen the search area by 50 miles and continue until the required list of agencies is populated.
4. This tool
leverages the same HUD-provided APIs that both the CFPB and Encompass use, so
the data returned will be the same and up to date.
5. The Tool populates two custom fields upon completion.
[CX.HC.IMPORT.STATUS] Housing Counselor Import Status will be set to either "Pass" of "Fail"
[CX.HC.IMPORT.DATE] Housing Counselor Import Date will indicate the date that the tool was last run.
These fields can be used in Pipeline Views, Reports, or added to custom forms.
Where/What/How does this plugin query agencies?
This plugin queries the following services:
FHW - Fair Housing Pre-Purchase Education Workshops
FBC - Financial Management/Budget Counseling
FBW - Financial, Budgeting, and Credit Repair Workshops
HIC - Home Improvement and Rehabilitation Counseling
DFC - Mortgage Delinquency and Default Resolution Counseling
NDW - Non-Delinquency Post Purchase Workshops
PPC - Pre-purchase Counseling
PPW - Pre-purchase Homebuyer Education Workshops
DFW - Resolving/Preventing Mortgage Delinquency Workshops
This language queries the following languages:
English and Spanish.
The plugin is receiving data from the same source as Encompass and consumerfinance.gov, which is directly from the HUD API located at:
This plugin uses the "Search by Location" HUD API, using the geocoordinates of the borrower's present address in Encompass (fields FR0104, FR0106, FR0107, FR0108).
This plugin pulls data dynamically by distance. It starts at a distance of 500 miles from the borrower's present address and pulls all agencies in that area. If there are less than 10 agencies found, it will increase the distance by 50 miles and try again. It will keep repeating this in increments of 50 miles up to 3,000 miles until the API returns at least 10 agencies. At that point, it will stop and process that as the agency list.
Encompass Dependencies:
This product installs the following to encompass:
Plugins
LTK-HousingCounselorPlugin.dll
Custom Fields
CX.HC.IMPORT.STATUS Housing Counselor Import Status
CX.HC.IMPORT.DATE Housing Counselor Import Date