Improved Borrower Experience for County Selection

Available: 03/29 Beta, 04/26 Prod

Purpose of Update and Benefit (Updated 04/05/22): 

When borrowers are completing the application, their county is currently collected through a field that smart searches Blend’s database of available counties. Sometimes when completing the field, borrowers select the incorrect state associated with the county name, given that multiple states can share the same county name (e.g., El Paso, CO is chosen when really El Paso, TX is desired). When the wrong county is selected, the borrower is automatically unassigned from their LO and they have to either contact the lender to fix or their LO has to reach back out to them and manually re-assign them. This improved borrower experience seeks to reduce frustration for borrowers when selecting their county and applies to the construction loans workflow, short form and the Getting to Know You step of the application process.

Current Behavior: 

During the Getting to Know You step of the application process, borrowers complete fields related to their home search including the county they are searching or have found a home in. As a borrower begins to type the county name, a list of available counties and states are available for selection.

New Behavior

When completing the Getting to Know You section, borrowers will see a new field above the previously available County field. First, borrowers will complete the City/State they are searching for or have found real estate in. The City/State defined in the new field will prefill the County field if the City/State is confined to a single county, but the borrower will still need to select it, thus double checking that it is correct and reducing the instances of incorrect counties dramatically. If the City/State the borrower completed is across more than one county, the county field will include a dropdown of counties tied to that City/State combination. The borrower will need to select the correct county from the dropdown that corresponds to their area. We chose this option because borrowers are generally much more familiar with the city they are searching and this is an industry-wide method used to find the correct county across many other user experiences. 

Known limitations

The API we are using does not recognize some townships as having a county at this time. We are asking this vendor to improve their database, but have also created a fallback paradigm for these rare cases. When no county is found corresponding to the City/State, the borrower is able to choose from any county (and will receive an error if the county is outside the state selected). 

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