Retention Focus Shifts to Home Buyers.

It's estimated that 97% of the time, when an existing homeowner buys a new home, they obtain a mortgage for the purchase from someone other than the firm currently servicing their mortgage, according to Steve Kropper, senior vice president of Equinox Corp. And that abysmal recapture rate is putting a new focus on customer retention.

"That tells me that all the things that lenders do today don't make much difference," Mr. Kropper said in a recent interview.

Mr. Kropper, who founded a firm that helped servicers mine their data for clues about home purchase intentions, has since sold that firm to LendingTree and is now helping Equinox with its tools for portfolio retention.

He says Equinox has built "the next generation of retention technology."

The core of Equinox's technology is a home price service for consumers. As consumers surf for home price details on the site, the technology collects data about how they are using the website. That "click stream" provides a clue to their intentions, Mr. Kropper said.

Pulling credit reports also can provide clues about a customer's likelihood of moving to a new home, he points out. And Equinox also tries to match portfolio addresses with MLS listings, though Mr. Kropper said that lack of cooperation from Realtors and timing issues currently limit the effectiveness of this approach.

"It uses that data to make a judgment about when someone has moved into the buy zone and when they are at risk of leaving a portfolio," he said.