MortgagesUndressed

This is the rest of the story to the article I posted on August 11th titled, If You Are A Rip Off Loan Officer”.

Because the borrower was in a bind, had to close the loan within a week, I have waited to finish the article. They asked me too, didn’t want the loan to not close. Doesn’t that tell you a lot?

This true story has a lot of lessons in it, yet it is a hard one for me to write. I hope you can tell I am an upbeat, positive, and full of hope type of guy. That person in me resists writing these types of articles. But at the same time, I began this blog to undress and make transaparent the home loan industry. This me, must write this article for you.

I was pretty upset with this situation August 11th and promised to expose this rip off loan officers name and all. I have all the facts documents and all. I will summarize them for you, you decide: Rip Off or Incompetency? In the end, it was the type of experience that give the mortgage industry a bad name, so does it really matter which it is?

This situation is a purchase. The borrowers were using a 1st and 2nd combination mortgage. They were given a good faith estimate showing they were to bring in $4700.

Five days before closing they received papers from the escrow company requiring $13,000.

Lesson number one: Require your loan officer to look at the papers first. Have them compare them with what they gave you. This would have found $1000 in errors and $1700 in things the loan officer would not have known about.

A big mistake was that the loan officer, I give her credit for it being a mistake, did not provide a good faith estimate for the second mortgage. It had an awful $1700 in fees, mostly to the lender. I dissaprove of charging for the second.

Another omission was an amout for property taxes. The loan officer just wrote TBD. This is a purchase. The amount of taxes were on the MLS listing. TBD is a slothful response and left the borrower with bad data.

The real shame is what the loan officer was trying to make on this transaction, almost $10,000. These borrowers have good credit, just needed a non standard loan, one hard to shop and compare for rates.

Had the loan officer cared about good will over the almighty dollar, had she been diligent and professional, none of this stress and uproar needed to happen. What professionals do, is fix it. Professionals deliver the terms and conditions they disclose in the good faith estimate. They make sure that they see the closing papers before the borrower, they fix their mistakes with a credit.

This mistake got fixed because I interfered. I found out the laws, that two were violated; the no good faith for the second and not disclosing the exact rebate up front. I threatened to turn them over to the state. Despite being told go ahead, they like me over there, a credit was issued for the errors.

Rip off or incompetency, greed or stupidity. You tell me. I won’t make you wait for my opinion - I say all of the above and it still ticks me off.

LarrY Cragun