In the face of serious nationwide concern regarding lender practices I have yet to see one of the best resources available to borrowers: your real estate agent. Why? Agents don’t loans. No, but they know good people that do.
All quality lenders rely on real estate agents for referral business. Good agents are very careful about whom they refer their business to. If a lender doesn’t treat the real estate agent’s client right, two things happen:
1. the agent is unlikely to receive repeat or referral business from the client that is treated poorly by the lender and;
2. the agent will no longer refer business to that lender.
Thus it stands to reason that good agents associate with good lenders. If they both do their jobs well it is win-win-win for the agent, the lender, and the client.
Many lenders have focused on refinance business with the recent climate of low rates. Notice how many of these lenders go out of business when rates increase. They fail because they didn’t take the time to foster long term relationships with real estate agents. They also cannot charge as much when a smart agent is watching how the loan goes together. Lending slows down for the lenders that work with agents when rates increase. But there are always homes being bought and sold. For the lenders that pursue only the refi market they are out of luck, and out of business, when rates increase.
The Seattle Times real estate section had a good article about predatory lending in it’s Saturday edition this past weekend. There are some good tips there to help you know what to look for. But you could just as easily call your agent for a quality referral.
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