I think the hardest part of the job is educating a customer about procrastination, for some reason there’s a misconception that you don’t need to be organized with your documents and there’s plenty of time to retrieve the informaiton.

After reviewing mortgage rates today, we discuss the industry, they understand the importance of making a decision and how being organized can greatly influence their loan process.

“The rates may be lower, but the closing battle is getter harder”

Here’s another one (at least for me):

SunTrust Mortgage, Inc.
1800 Sutter St Ste 650
Concord, CA 94520

Patagonia Finance
1800 Sutter St Ste 870
Concord, CA 94520

If I stomp three times would my underwriter know I received the conditional loan approval? LOL

Good for you!

BTW: I’ve always loved the Mini. I may have mentioned it before. It’s been a couple of years now but I drove an S around Laguna Seca and all I could say is WOW!

Rhonda – I would love to hang with the family – that would be great dinner conversation. There are multiple versions of “fall out” depending on who you talk to. For the AE’s it might be as simple as looking at a credit report and quoting a rate then not getting the submission. Others, like SunTrust look at the locks. What if you submit but never lock? I remember a long time ago, I had a LO that would take an application (by hand) and then T box it to a lender right away, without ever crunching numbers! Each submission was manually underwritten and declined. George, what was your LTV? “I don’t know the underwriter will tell me.” George, what was the back end ratio? “Won’t the underwriter tell me that?” Guess how long he lasted…

I’m gonna use this argument on all my submission cover letters from now on (with your permission of course), “Hey, if the Rhonda Porter wants a human underwriter to review, so do I.”

As a Seller’s Agent, I ALWAYS pick up the phone and call whomever is on the pre-approval letter. You can find out a lot by knowing what questions to ask.

Diane – You’ve been taking lessons from Tony?

PeterT – It’s all about the bottom line, eh? In a perfect world every lead I talked to would end up as a loan. Every loan I submitted would fund. The mortgage applications are showing as being up this month but then they are also being dismissed as many borrowers are applying to multiple sources. So even the public is killing the Pull Through Rate. Don’t they understand? ; )

Here’s where you will go wrong, computing the income when bonuses, overtime, and commission is involved. Not because of any ineptitude on your part, it’s just that your client knows they made x dollars, they are honest, they really made it. The problem is in how the guidelines say that the income is determined. That’s what skews the numbers.

Full Time Permanent, Part Time Temporary, Part Time Temporary, or even W-2 Commissioned? What about child support income? Social Security? Pensions?

Some things might count as income and others might not. Some for this loan , but not for the next. Your clients might qualify for more because of factors they didn’t consider as income. In the end, it’s not you, the client or the loan officer that determines what counts. It’s the Underwriters and their interpretation of the Guidelines.

If I was a listing agent today and was presented with two identical offers – one with just an AU decision and the other with an AU and a human conditional loan approval, I’d certainly push my sellers towards the stronger of the two – wouldn’t you?

Like you, even if I have a nice AUS, I want the lender’s human underwriter to review it upfront. Especially in this market.