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REAL ESTATE
Mortgage Lenders Haltingly Learn A New Language
Good news for Spanish speakers
Hispanics have grown into a major force in the U.S. housing market, but the mortgage industry hasn’t kept pace with the demographic change, at least when it comes to translating mortgage documents into Spanish.
That’s starting to change, though. Mortgage lender Rate announced Thursday that it has taken more than 10,000 loan applications through its Spanish-language digital platform. Also Thursday, a panel at the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals conference addressed the challenges of making the English-only mortgage sector multilingual.
In addition to Rate, the Chicago-based lender that operates nationally, the bank Truist also has translated mortgage documents into Spanish and recruited bilingual loan officers to work with Hispanic clients.
Rate has a Spanish-language app, and its bilingual employees must pass a language certification, says Arlyn Kalinski, Rate’s senior vice president of fair and equitable lending strategies.
“Explaining APR and escrow is much different from saying hello and goodbye,” Kalinski says.
Kalinski says she realized the importance of bilingual communication when talking to Hispanic…
