NewRez LLC a national-mortgage lender, has deployed a customer acquisition platform designed to boost its lead management process. The aim of implementing the technology was to optimize lead potential and accelerate the origination process. NewRez was formerly known as New Penn Financial.

FinLeads, from the Tavant Velox suite, is a customer engagement and aggregation platform that uses intelligent algorithms to automate, streamline, and personalize the ‘lead to loan’ journey.

“Lack of visibility into the sales pipeline, multiple lead providers, and disparate data sources constrain the organization,” said David Haggert, CMO at NewRez. “This has impacted our top-line revenue and bottom-line operational productivity. We have increased our operational efficiencies and improved our loan officers’ productivity. Onboarding to FinLeads has helped us gain an integrated view of pipelines across our office locations nationwide, enabling us to improve sales productivity and increase per LO application rate by 30 percent in the first three months.”

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The product customizes the customer relationship management platform’s out-of-box capabilities and provides a consolidated 360° view of the customer engagement journey and management of the journey across multiple channels. It helps businesses streamline funnel management and improve operational efficiencies.

“FinLeads allows organizations to engage their prospective customers, enables data-driven decision making, and empowers them with complete control over the customer journey,” said Hassan Rashid, Tavant’s Chief Revenue Officer. “We look forward to our continued partnership with NewRez to optimize their sales and marketing funnel and increase ROI while helping them accelerate their digital journey.”

Property taxes assessed on single-family homes were $304.6 billion in 2018, an increase of 4 percent, compared with $293.4 billion in 2017.

The average property taxes of $3,498 for a single-family home in 2018 was up 3 percent from the average property tax of $3,399 in 2017, and the effective property tax rate of 1.16 percent in 2018 was down from the effective property tax rate of 1.17 percent in 2017, according to the 2018 property tax analysis from Attom Data Services.

The effective tax rate is the average annual property tax is a percentage of the average estimated market value of homes in a geographic area.

[caption id="attachment_11556" align="alignleft" width="398"] Todd Teta[/caption]

"Property taxes levied on homeowners rose again in 2018 across most of the country," said Todd Teta, chief product officer for Attom Data Solutions. "While many states across the country have imposed caps on how much taxes can go up, which probably contributed to a slower increase in 2018 versus 2017. There are still many factors at play that can contribute to local property tax hikes, and without major changes in the way a community runs public services, tax rates must rise to pay for them."

The report analyzed property tax data collected from county tax assessor offices nationwide at the state, metro and county levels along with estimated market values of single-family homes calculated by an automated valuation model.

New Jersey, Illinois, Texas, Vermont, Connecticut post highest property tax rates
States with the highest effective property tax rates were New Jersey (2.25 percent), Illinois (2.22 percent), Texas (2.18 percent), Vermont (2.16 percent), and Connecticut (2.02 percent).

Other states in the top 10 for highest effective property tax rates were New Hampshire (1.99 percent), New York (1.86 percent), Pennsylvania (1.79 percent), Ohio (1.69 percent), and Wisconsin(1.58 percent).

Among 219 metropolitan statistical areas analyzed in the report with a population of at least 200,000, those with the highest effective property tax rates were Binghamton, N.Y. (3.19 percent); Syracuse, N.Y. (2.89 percent); Rochester, N.Y. (2.88 percent); Rockford, Ill. (2.83 percent); and Atlantic City, N.J. (2.74 percent).

Property taxes increase faster than national average in 58 percent of markets:
Out of the 219 metropolitan statistical areas analyzed in the report, 120 (55 percent) reported an increase in average property taxes above the national average of 3 percent:

Los Angeles(5 percent increase), Dallas-Fort Worth (8 percent increase), Washington D.C. (4 percent increase), Atlanta (7 percent increase), and San Francisco (7 percent increase).

Other major markets posting an increase in average-property taxes that was above the national average are Riverside-San Bernardino  (5 percent), Seattle (14 percent), Minneapolis (6 percent), San Diego (5 percent), and Tampa (4 percent).

Hawaii, Alabama, Colorado, Nevada, Utah post lowest property tax rates
States with the lowest effective property tax rates were Hawaii (0.37 percent), Alabama (0.48 percent), Colorado (0.51 percent), Nevada (0.57 percent), and Utah (0.57 percent).

Other states in the top 10 for lowest-effective property tax rates were West Virginia (0.58 percent), Delaware (0.61 percent), Arizona (0.64 percent), Tennessee (0.65 percent), and Wyoming (0.66 percent).

Among the 219 metro areas analyzed for the report, those with the lowest effective property tax rates were Laredo, Texas (0.35 percent); Honolulu (0.36 percent); Montgomery, Ala. (0.37 percent); Tuscaloosa, Ala. (0.39 percent); and Colorado Springs, Colo. (0.42 percent).

Among 1,408 U.S. counties with at least 10,000 single family homes, those with the highest-average property taxes on single-family homes were largely located in the greater New York metro area, led by Westchester County, N.Y. ($17,392); Rockland County, N.Y. ($12,925); Marin County, Calif. ($12,242); Essex County, N.J. ($12,161); and Bergen County, N.J. ($11,771).

 A federal criminal indictment charged four people with public corruption and bribery, for an alleged conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bribery.  According to the indictment, the aim was to bombard the state’s top insurance commissioner with gifts—in exchange for preferential business treatment.

North Carolina state GOP chairman Robin Hayes and Greg Lindberg, founder of Eli Global LLC and the owner of Global Bankers Insurance Group were charged with bribery and conspiracy. Also indicted were John D. Gray, a consultant for Lindberg and an Eli Global executive John V. Palermo. Haye, who has resigned as party chairman, is also charged with three counts of making false statements to the FBI.

The criminal indictment alleges that in January 2018, the elected Commissioner of Insurance of the North Carolina Department of Insurance reported concerns to federal law enforcement about political contributions and other requests made by Lindberg and Gray and agreed to cooperate with the federal investigation that was initiated.

According to allegations in the indictment, between April 2017 to August 2018, Lindberg, Gray, Palermo and Hayes devised a scheme to defraud and deprive the citizens of North Carolina of the honest services of the Commissioner, an elected state official, through bribery.

The defendants engaged in a bribery scheme involving independent expenditure accounts and improper campaign contributions for the purpose of causing the commissioner to take official action favorable to Lindberg’s company, Global Bankers Insurance Group.

As the indictment alleges, the defendants gave, offered, and promised the commissioner millions of dollars in campaign contributions and other things of value in exchange for the removal of North Carolina Department of Insurance’s Senior Deputy Commissioner. The employee was unnamed in the indictment but is responsible for overseeing regulation and the periodic examination of Global Bankers Insurance Group.

Several meetings among Lindberg, Gray, Palermo and the commissioner were held to devise a plan on how to funnel campaign contributions to the commissioner anonymously.

To conceal the bribery scheme, Palermo allegedly set up, at the direction of Lindberg, two corporate entities to form an independent expenditure committee with the purpose of supporting the commissioner’s re-election campaign and funded the entities with $1.5 million as promised to the commissioner.

Also, at Lindberg and Gray’s direction, Hayes allegedly transferred $250,000 that Lindberg had contributed to a North Carolina Republican state party of which Hayes was chairman, to the commissioner’s re-election campaign.

On or about Aug. 28, 2018, FBI agents interviewed Hayes about his involvement with and knowledge of the alleged improper campaign contributions.  During the interview, Hayes allegedly lied to FBI agents about directing funds, at Lindberg’s request, from Lindberg’s campaign contribution to the North Carolina state political party to the commissioner’s re-election campaign; about having any discussions with the commissioner about Lindberg or Gray; and about discussing with the commissioner personnel issues related to his office.