Lesser Lending

Somebody called three lenders, wrote down three rates, and picked the lowest one. Reasonable process. It just doesn't measure what they think it measures.

Nobody can price your loan without knowing what's in it. Credit score and the tier it falls in. Down payment. Whether it's your primary home, a second home, or a rental. Property type, because a condo prices differently than a single family. Loan amount. Lock period. Whether points are baked in. Whether mortgage insurance is part of the structure. Any one of those moves the number.

So a rate given before anybody looked at anything is a guess. It might be a good-faith guess. It's still a guess, and it isn't binding on anyone.

Here's where it gets expensive. You pick the lender with the best guess, get under contract, and find out the real number two weeks later once the file's been looked at. Now you're 20 days from closing and starting over isn't realistic. That isn't an accident. Some shops run on exactly that.

What's real is a Loan Estimate. In writing, based on an actual application, with the fees and the structure on it. That document exists for a reason.

So before you make a decision off a number somebody said out loud, get it in writing. Send it to me and I'll walk you through what's actually in it.

It finally feels like fall out there. Your competition just got smaller.

Everybody waits for spring. Spring is busier, and you're competing with more people for the same houses.

Here's what fall looks like instead. There's listings that went up over the summer are still sitting. Sellers who turned down an offer in July are doing the math on another mortgage payment. A lot of the buyers who were shopping in May got tired and stopped. The people still out looking in October are the serious ones, and there are fewer of them.

That's not a market timing argument. Nobody can tell you where prices or rates go next. It's a leverage argument, and leverage is the part you can actually see right now.

The buyer who's fully documented and ready to move in the next few weeks is negotiating against a much smaller crowd than the one who waits until March.

If you want to be in a house before the holidays, September is the month to get organized.

Work backward. A purchase we can commonly close in about 25 to 30 days when the file supports it. Plus however long it takes to find the house and get an offer accepted. Plus the time it takes to get fully documented up front, which is the part people skip and the part that makes the fast close possible.

Fully documented means income reviewed, assets sourced, credit analyzed, and the file run through underwriting before you're out looking. Not a five minute phone call and a letter.

Buyers who do that write stronger offers, negotiate better terms, and stop guessing about their number.

If September is your month, let's start this week. If it isn't, save this for whenever it is.

A buyer sends me a competing quote with a lower rate. Happens constantly, and it's a reasonable thing to do. First thing I ask for is page two of the Loan Estimate.

Usually the answer is sitting right there. Discount points buried in the pricing, meaning that lower rate was purchased with thousands of the buyer's own dollars. Which is fine, as long as you know that's what you're doing.

What to actually compare:

Points or lender credits built into the rate. Lender fees, and who's covering third party costs. Mortgage insurance structure, if there is any. The lock period, because a 15 day quote isn't a 45 day quote. The program. And whether anybody actually reviewed the file, or whether someone is quoting off a rate sheet and plans to renegotiate once you're under contract and stuck.

I don't lose business over money. If you've got a legitimately better offer, send it and I'll tell you honestly whether it's better. Sometimes it is.

But compare the whole thing, not one number in a screenshot. Send me page two.

Somebody on the internet told you to pay off your collections before you apply. Sometimes that's right. Often it costs you.

Paying a collection can update the date of last activity, and on some scoring models a recently paid collection scores worse than an old one nobody's touched. Your score drops right when you need it.

It also depends entirely on the program. Some loan types require certain collections to be paid. Some let them sit with no effect on your ability to qualify. Some look at the total balance rather than individual accounts. Medical collections get treated differently.

And sometimes the smarter move is negotiating what gets reported before any money changes hands.

The order matters. Get the credit reviewed first, then decide what to pay and when. It costs nothing to ask and it can cost you the approval to guess.

Message me before you pay anything off.

If you receive VA compensation for a service-connected disability, you're generally exempt from the VA funding fee. Any rating. Ten percent counts.

That fee is a percentage of the loan amount and it's usually financed into the loan, which is exactly why people don't notice it. It just quietly rides along for 30 years.

Surviving spouses of veterans who died in service or from a service-connected disability are generally exempt too. So are certain Purple Heart recipients on active duty.

Here's the part most people don't know. If your rating came through after you closed and it was made effective before your closing date, you may be entitled to a refund of the fee you already paid. That's real money, and nobody is going to call you about it.

Your Certificate of Eligibility shows your exemption status. If you're not sure what yours says, send it over and I'll read it with you. Exemption is determined by the VA, not by me.

The most common complaint I hear about other lenders has nothing to do with rate. It's "I had no idea what was happening."

So here's how we run it. You get an update every week you're under contract, whether or not there's news. Silence isn't a status. Milestones get communicated as they happen: appraisal ordered, appraisal received, submitted to underwriting, conditional approval, closing disclosure, clear to close.

Your agent gets the same information, minus anything about your finances that isn't theirs to know.

And when something goes sideways, you hear it from us that day. Bad news doesn't improve with age. It just gets more expensive.

You should never have to text your lender asking whether anything happened this week.

Same house. Same weekend. My buyer wasn't the highest offer and still got the house.

List price was $435,000. We wrote it at $430,000 with $15,000 in seller credit.

First time buyers. VA loan. Zero cash to close due to seller credits. And a monthly payment number they gave me on our first call, based on what they actually wanted to spend, not what they qualified for.

The competing offer was conventional and $5,000 higher in price.

So on paper, the seller took less. They took ours anyway.

Here's what made the difference, and it wasn't the price.

Before we wrote anything, the file was already done. Income reviewed. Assets verified. Credit analyzed. Run through underwriting. Then I called the listing agent myself, told them exactly that, gave them a realistic closing timeline for this specific file, and answered the VA questions before those questions turned into a reason to pick somebody else.

The other lender never called.

Sellers don't want the biggest number. They want the number that actually closes. When one lender has personally reviewed the file and picks up the phone, and the other one sent a PDF without an address, that gap is worth real money. In this case about $20,000 of it.

$0 out of pocket. The payment they asked for. The house they wanted.

*Seller concession limits vary by loan type and transaction, and every file is different. But if you're about to compete on price alone, you're using one term out of several. Again, every deal is different and nothing here is a promise about yours. But if you're about to compete on price alone, there's usually more to work with.