Challenges with Direct Lending Banks
A few weeks ago, one of our Realtors frantically called because the purchase of her listing blew up after 30+ days in escrow. The buyer’s lender, a direct-lending “bank,” had pre-approved the buyer. But at the 11th hour, the lender/bank denied the loan because the buyer had too little savings and late payments after a bankruptcy that was discharged only 2 years ago. Because the buyer’s lender was a single-source bank, the buyer had no other options.
The Mortgage Broker Advantage
We, however, immediately “shopped” the transaction to at least 15 of our lending sources and identified the one source that gave us the strongest “yes.” We closed the transaction 3 weeks later. We could not have closed this transaction if we did not have so many lending sources.
We also have numerous friends in the industry who are tied to other single-source mortgage banks. They complain constantly that their lenders/employers push rates way up whenever they get too busy to control volume. In contrast, whenever one of our lending sources gets too busy, we put our transactions up for bid to the lender with the lowest rates. As a result, our rates are always the lowest.
In summary – the “broker option” offers far more flexibility and much lower rates, among many other advantages.
