This morning my husband and I enjoyed a tasty brunch at West 5 in West Seattle. I love their breakfast hash! When our waitress brought us our check she asked me if I was “that mortgage blogger”. Yep… that’s me. She then went on to say how much she and her husband enjoyed my blog and that it was a great resource for when the refinanced.
A bittersweet compliment. Of course I would have loved to help them with their refinance. I thanked her for her compliments.
My husband couldn’t resist calling her back when she walked by to ask why she didn’t contact me for her refi. She had asked for a referral from a trusted friend. I applaud this. That’s much better than calling a mortgage originator who has had to resort to mailing to strangers or clicking on some flashy ad on the internet (that’s probably just a lead generator).
With that said, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to take this opportunity to remind my readers that I’m not just a mortgage blogger, what pays my bills is successfully closing mortgage loans on homes located in Washington state. I’m happy to provide you with a detailed mortgage rate quote or help you with your home purchase or refinance.
My commercial break is over 🙂 stay tuned… tomorrow I’ll be posting this week’s scheduled economic indicators.
Rhonda,
Good piece. I would only take you up on the claim that getting a referral from a trusted friend is necessarily better than other methods. That the friend likes the professional doesn’t mean the professional is good!
But you hit on a very good point. Finding a professional over the Internet is not necessarily good either. In the agent area there are some agents active on the Internet which are quite frankly horrible agents, but non-agents wouldn’t realize that because they don’t have the information necessary to analyze the validity of agent’s positions. The same is undoubtedly true in the loan origination field.
In the past I’ve said the best way to get a loan originator is to ask for a referral from an agent, and the best way to get an agent is to ask for a referral from a loan originator. In both cases the one professional is going to know another professional that is very competent. That though creates a chicken and egg situation. Unfortunately this is an area with no great solution.
Kary L. Krismer
John L. Scott/KMS Renton
Hi Kary,
Thanks for your comment. 🙂
Getting a referral from a real estate agent for a loan officer isn’t a safe bet either IMO. Today, many real estate companies own or have interest in mortgage companies. These companies push their agents to use their mortgage company (or title/escrow company, if that have an ownership or affiliate relationship). A LO who works for one these companies has more of an interest to serve the real estate agent than look out for the buyer/borrower. The same is true IMO with LO’s who work for builders. The LO is going to look out for their gravy train.
I think many agents/LO’s are not able to put their personal interest aside to serve the buyer/borrower’s best interest.
Many borrowers select LO’s by who’s quoting the lowest rate at that moment, which can also be a mistake. Any LO can quote a low rate – and unless that rate is locked, it’s just a quote and will change. Plus, if the LO does not have the skills needed to smoothly navigate the transaction to closing, it can be a huge fail.
Good point about the in-house lender. I’ve run into that problem at least once in the past. I’ve not been seeing that many agents using in-house lenders lately, but I would agree that’s something that should concern a buyer if that’s where the agent is referring them.
Typically I’ll ask the buyer’s agent where the lender came from–was it a referral of the agent or someone the buyer found on their own. The answer I’m hoping for is a referral of the agent, but if it’s an in-house lender that answer probably won’t mean much. They may be using that lender for reasons other than quality of service!