Brooke Wolford
By Brooke Wolford
As a real estate agent, I sometimes feel as if it’s all about me. This is my business, my success, and my livelihood. For me, after several years I have tried to focus on my “team.” I have a terrific team of people who I work with.
My “team,” consists of a loan officer, closer, inspector, insurance agent, and handyman.
I try to bring this team to my clients. I do this because I know my team is the best at what they do. This will ultimately allow my clients to have the best experience ever.
My brokerage also has its own team. This is a great thing, however, it’s not necessarily the best thing for all of my clients.
In my closing days, I couldn’t understand why agents did not use the affiliated companies. In most cases, the agents did have a good outcome. But now that I am on the other side, and I see why it wasn’t always the best situation. Continue reading »
Nobu Hata
By Nobu Hata
With the down market and the inevitable mass exodus of “those” loan officers, you’d think we could rest easy knowing that the loan officers left would be – for lack of a better word – decent.
Holy Hannah, would we be wrong.
In the last couple weeks, I’ve had various buyers shop their loan around, including those using FHA. What I thought were set guidelines and fees isn’t what it seems. One particular buyer of mine asked for Good Faith Estimates based on the same home, price and mock closing date, from each of the loan officers he’d met with who’d pulled his credit, on my recommendation. Lo and behold, one origination fee was $1,100 more than the other. The rest of the meeting was an eye-opening study of mortgage v. mortgage.
Now, I’m not going to get into specifics of big bank versus broker, nor the merits and drawbacks of each. But what I will say is that there’s no better time to brush up on the new GFEs and fees associated with them. Fees and guidelines for all types of loan products are changing at a lightning pace, and while it’s largely up to our clients to perform their due diligence, it’s up to us to impart some insight. Continue reading »
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