Mortgage Referrals
Advice on where to go to get a mortgage. A borrower can always select a loan provider by throwing a dart at the Yellow Pages. A referral is of value if it raises the probability of a good outcome above that from throwing the dart. The four major sources of referrals are real estate sales agents, other borrowers, Internet referral sites, and builders. Real Estate Sales Agents: Home purchasers accept more referrals from real estate sales agents than from all other sources combined. Sales agent referrals generally are to individual loan officers or brokers, as opposed to firms. An agent with great confidence in a loan officer will continue to refer clients even when the loan officer switches firms. Sales agents have the same interest as buyers in completing transactions. Hence, they refer clients to loan providers who can generally be depended upon to close on time. This is the agent's major concern, and it is a concern of borrowers as well. Sales agents have no comparable interest in the mortgage price or whether the borrower is placed in the right kind of mortgage. However, the agent doesn't want the price to be so far out of line or the service provided so abysmal that the borrower throws a fit and blames the agent. Other Borrowers: Referrals from other borrowers are usually based on a single transaction. Internet Referral Sites: These Web sites provide price information for a large number of lenders and mortgage brokers, usually listed by state. They also provide quick entree to the Web sites of each loan provider listed. Builder Referrals: Builder referrals are usually to a lender with whom the builder has a financial arrangement. Hence, they are suspect. In some cases, preferred lenders price loans above the market and kick back some of the excess to the builder. Self-Referrals: Responding to self-referrals (solicitations) usually is a bad idea. Not all lenders who solicit are predators, but all predators solicit.
Popular Mortgage Terms
On an ARM, the assumption that the value of the index to which the interest rate is tied does not change from its initial level. ...
Wondering who is this Fannie Mae person that your real estate agent always mentions when the subject about mortgage is brought up? Fannie Mae is not a person, nor a Woody Allen female ...
Every ARM is tied to an interest rate index. An index has three relevant features:availibility, level, volatility. All the common ARM indexes are readily available from a published source, ...
Same as term Mortgage Company: A mortgage lender that sells all the loans it originates in the secondary market. ...
A lender who delivers loans to another (usually larger) lender against prior price commitments the larger lender has made to the correspondent. Mortgage brokers sometimes evolve into ...
Acceptance of the borrower's loan application. Approval means that the borrower meets the lender's Qualification Requirements and also its Underwriting Requirements. In some cases, ...
A loan with no down payment. ...
An option exercised by the borrower, at the time of the loan application or later, to 'lock in' the rates and points prevailing in the market at that time. When lenders 'lock/' they ...
The monthly index is a ratio of monthly interest costs to total funds, expressed as a percentage. Annualized interest, the numerator, is calculated by multiplying the deposit balances at ...

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