The average time to close a mortgage has dropped dramatically since 2017

There's been a quiet revolution going on in the mortgage market.

The big picture: In 2017, it took an average of 74 days to close on a mortgage, per LendingTree. In May 2019, the most recent month for which data is available, that number had come down more than 50%, to 36 days. The decline is a function of an increasing number of lenders embracing digitization. The surprise is that it took this long.