HERNDON, Va. – CU Realty of VA, MD, DC LLC can never be accused of getting off to a slow start. In its first three months of business, CUR LLC generated $7 million in real estate transactions, secured more than $4 million in mortgages, and paid more than $73,000 in member rebates. Nearly 2,700 members through the participating 12 credit union investors, have registered for the services through the CUSO. CUR LLC – a chapter of parent company CU Realty of Tempe, Ariz.- is a full service CUSO that was launched in February by 12 charter investors – Agriculture FCU, Apple FCU, Bank-Fund Staff FCU, Fairfax County FCU, HEW FCU, Justice FCU, NASA FCU, Newport News Shipbuilding Employees', Northwest FCU, State Department FCU, and Tower FCU, along with the CU-owned Credit Union Mortgage Association. The program is designed to help members through the entire home buying and selling process including giving them free access to real estate decision tools such as neighborhood demographics and MLS listing. In addition, members have the opportunity to receive up to a 1% rebate on the sale and purchase prices of their homes when they use a real estate agent from a pre-approved network. These agents represent the member throughout the buy/sell transaction and work directly with CUR LLC participants to assist the member and direct mortgage loans back to the credit union. CUR LLC President Colleen Daly, mortgage manager for Northwest FCU said, "The initial results have exceeded our expectations." That assessment, she explained, is based on feedback CUR LLC received from CU Realty national. "They told us they were stunned by the numbers and they hadn't seen other chapters of the parent CU Realty company get the same results in the same amount of time in terms of the number of members registering," said Daly. She even got calls from other CU Realty CUSOs inquiring about CUR LLC's results. In addition to CUR LLC, CU Realty has live CUSOs in five other states – California, Arizona, Colorado, Ohio and New York. It also has signed contracts in various stages of implementation in six states. Daly said the metropolitan Washington area is a "very hot" home buying spot now and that has a lot to do with the CUSO's high volume of activity. In addition, Northwest FCU which has seen some of the highest volume of activity of the 12 CU investors – it's already closed 16 contracts and has another 12 in the pipeline ready to close as a result of CUR LLC – sent out 6,000 `elerts' – announcements the CU sends out whenever it launches a new product or service – to its members the day CUR LLC was announced. One hundred members signed on to the CU Realty program that first day. CUR LLC has relations with 35 real estate agents who get their member leads from CU Realty. Daly explained that the participating credit unions can't force a member to get a loan from the credit union because that would be in violation of RESPA regulations, however the agents do notify the credit unions that "Member John Smith was here" so the CUs can follow up with the member on their mortgage loan. Daly said about 85-90% of the loans are coming back to the credit unions and added that the loans they're losing are mostly builder incentive loans "which are always hard to compete with." Looking ahead to the rest of the year, Daly doesn't anticipate business volume will decline much although there will probably be a slight seasonal slow down. Many of the members using the CU Realty service are doing a lot of new construction deals that should be finalized by the end of the year, she said, and help shore up the numbers. -

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