Story

Watched a broker cross four of six rate sheets off in front of me

I've been planning a first purchase for about two years and doing all of it on my laptop. Rate tables, forums, a spreadsheet with tabs I don't open anymore. Last month I finally went and sat down with a broker in a strip center next to a nail salon, mostly because a coworker said he was fast.

Dale had a printer going behind him the whole time. He put six lender sheets on the table, wrote my numbers at the top of each one in pencil, and started crossing them off while I watched. One was out because of the owner-occupancy ratio in the condo building I was looking at. One was out because I changed industries fourteen months ago and their rule on that is stricter than the agency rule underneath it. One priced well until he got to the escrow waiver fee. He crossed off four and turned the last two around and said these are the two that will actually close for you.

Twenty minutes. I had spent four months getting less than that.

The thing I keep thinking about is what he said at the end, which was that the sheets change tomorrow morning and I shouldn't fall in love with a number on paper. He wasn't selling me anything at that point. He just wanted me to come back with a signed contract instead of a screenshot.

First time the financing part of this felt like something a person does rather than a form on a website.

9 replies

devon_pierce Get yoursPRO5

Did he charge you anything for the twenty minutes? I've been afraid to walk into one of these because I assumed the meter starts the second you sit down.

joe_delgado5AP4CPRO6

Mine does the same thing on the investor side except half the crossing off is about the property, not me. Condition, unit count, whether it's currently rented and to whom. Watching somebody eliminate four lenders in ten minutes is the single most useful thing I've paid for in this business, and I didn't pay for it directly.

gregpowell66AG4BPRO8

The industry-change rule is the one that got me too, except mine was going 1099. Two lenders wanted two full years of it and one wanted one year plus the prior W-2 in the same line of work. Nobody advertises that anywhere. You find out when somebody with the pencil tells you.

chriswalton8CC1CPRO8

The crossing off is the product, quill. Everything else is paperwork anybody can push. He knows which four don't work before he picks up the phone, and that knowledge is the whole reason he has a strip center office.

monica_tran3SF4CPRO6

The printer running behind him was doing work too, and after five years in a service business I'll tell you that matters. People believe the thing they can see happening.

dpatel_reCS4A

Worth understanding what you actually saw. Underneath most conventional loans there's a set of agency guidelines, and then individual lenders layer their own stricter rules on top, which is what people mean by overlays. Same borrower, same file, different answers. That's the entire reason a broker beats going to one bank. Confirm any specific rule in writing with whoever's actually funding, because those overlays get changed by memo without notice.

nataliehsuSO1BPRO7

I've been trying to figure out where I fit in real estate for about a year and this thread is the first thing that made a role sound like a real job instead of a title.

wendy_park48CapitalPRO7

Did he show you how he gets paid on each of those six? There's a difference between the lender paying him out of the rate and you paying him at the table, and it changes what the two survivors actually cost you over the hold. Ask him to lay both out side by side before you sign anything. If he gets weird about it, that tells you something.

sonia_alvarez Get yoursPRO6

I sat behind a broker for two days last year because I wanted to see the lending side up close. The crossing off looks like intuition and it's memorized rules, maybe two hundred of them, and about a fifth of them are stale at any given moment. That's why he checks. fathom is right that you should make him show the comp both ways.