Picking the Right Lender

You may have heard that weirdness prevails in the real estate market these days, and nowhere is that more true than with lenders.  In short, lenders are struggling right now... big time.  In this episode, we discuss some of the major lender fumbles we've seen recently and how you can avoid the nightmare scenarios that have become all too commonplace in real estate transactions because of them.

hello friends this is diana randall bro your local friendly husband and wife realtor team located in prescott arizona she’s depressed pickle lady that’s right i am her sidekick in arms that’s right sidekick have arms i’m not sure i’ll get some water i’ll get some more or at least some tools sidekick but yeah you probably do but tough topic too yeah a tough topic it’s something that um i try and try again some people listen and some people how shall i say i think they know better than mama and that is using an out of state lender so we’ve been having a lot of trouble with lenders um and that’s just i mean the lending process the lending process you know we’re going the whole covet thing and logistic problems and i i don’t know what but we’re finding it very hard to match our buyers with lenders who can close in a timely manner well yeah and this is my biggest pet peeve lately particularly if you use an out of state london oh i have a relationship with them i’ve been with wells fargo for 25 years it doesn’t mean a thing okay you are assuming that when you hand off this loan to somebody to start processing it that you’re going to have your particular banker every step of the way sadly my first month that’s not what happens they’ll have a separate team for that they have a separate team for that so the first person who sells you that loan they’re out of the picture they get their commission and they go off and go sell another loan yeah and then your loan is sold you know it’s passed on to another team and it goes into underwriting well every underwriter they pass on to another person to another person so when you run into a glitch and you call your original person they’re like oh that’s not me anymore now it’s joe and kathy and susie so then you may be hunting down these people who they’ve passed it on to somebody else you never get the same person so consequently um when we have a closing date which by the way is a contractual obligation you’re obligated to close on that date and lenders don’t seem to understand that it’s a contractual obligation and so this is what i tell some of these lenders hello it wasn’t a suggested closing date it’s like underground it’s like under contract this is a legal thing yeah if we’re supposed to close march first you’re supposed to have it all done march first so we’ll get a call from the we’ll get a call from the lender oh good news we got the appraisal scheduled for the fifth like okay we gotta close on the first we’re closing on the first that doesn’t help me yeah so a lot of times you know that’s very frustrating so from the get-go i call these out of state lenders and i say order your appraisal today don’t order it two weeks from now because we’re never going to close on time because a lot this is another thing you should you should know out-of-state lenders have to contact an appraisal uh company of their own in-house and then they that in-house appraisal company says let me get you an appraiser i don’t know who i don’t know anybody in that area but i’ll get one from phoenix what a nightmare because the phoenix appraiser comes up here he looks at it he doesn’t know the press get back i don’t know the market they don’t understand i understand the market to do a decent appraisal that’s correct and i’m sure the same is true you can’t get prescott appraisers and go down right really i mean you gotta know you need to have somebody familiar with it yeah you need to have somebody local who really understands the market understands that that side street is really not a major highway which we’ve gotten that’s not a major highway um so you don’t have to you know detract you know at deduct a hundred thousand dollars that’s not a major yeah we’ve had one it was uh oh well the the comp was uh it’s a good comp but the comp has a view of the golf course and the subject property doesn’t okay the subject property overlooks granite mountain it’s a much better view so you know we try to advise of course we can’t tell you i mean that’s absolutely one hundred percent yeah he should pick the land and you’re right that’s your right to do that but when we gently try to guide you try to find a local lender there’s a reason for that we want you to close on time we don’t want you to arrive in prescott and your house has enclosed and your stuff is in transit in a truck and you have no place to move in yeah and it has happened it has it has happened and then suddenly you’re in a hotel for two weeks while you’re waiting for it to get out of underwriting because they didn’t go into underwriting until five days before your closing date yeah nobody’s going to get you out of underwriting in five days and get the appraisal done in five days it’s just not happening you’ve got sellers that are selling in the seller’s market that may or may not be that’s right uh they may not appreciate your situation yeah they want to close because they’re moving on to their next chapter so when we gently suggest please try a local lender preferably a mortgage banker not a bank like wells fargo or you know one of those uh yeah don’t go with a mortgage broker go with a mortgage lender a mortgage banker they will hold your hand all the way to the end because they don’t get their commission until you close so they are invested they are committed because they would like to get their commission and so keep that in mind it’s not to mind your business or tell you what to do and you know i appreciate you know every person i know who thought they had a great relationship finds out maybe not so much yeah and just to be clear most of the clients that we deal with um they are of retirement age yes and uh they’ve region reached a certain level of success most of them do have personal bankers yes so we’re not oh you know i have a personal banker your other clients probably didn’t know they all have a personal thing and it’s not the personal banker’s fault yeah they’re it’s just their process when you’re with the national bank they set you up they do the initial paperwork and then their process is to pass it on to the other parties and it’s not that they’re bad people yeah or you know well they’re dealing with their process it’s a very it’s a very tough situation at this at this particular moment uh some areas like the california banks are really struggling the northeast banks are really struggling uh we had a we had a broker in the midwest so we figured oh that’s okay she sourced it to a bank in california that was a disaster it’s it’s uh it’s a bad situation right now we try to ride shotgun with the lenders for our transactions for our buyers we don’t know all the ins and outs we’re not lenders we’re not right now we don’t do that for a living i mean we try uh the local people we use here they know how to run rough shot they know how to do it they know how to get it done and it’s best to absolutely let them do that you know your bank may or may not respond to a stupid realtor from prescott arizona yeah i can call my local lender and say hey we gotta is there hold up can you tell me what’s going on what can we help to facilitate so we can close on time and i can get that person right away we can communicate clearly effectively and get the job done whereas if it’s an out of state lender they don’t know me from a hole in the ground and they’re like oh i don’t do that anymore it’s passed on to this person and they can’t really we don’t have that kind of relationship so keep that in mind it’s not to mind your business it’s not to tell you what to do it’s just if you have a particular date in mind that you want to close you want to close and uh local lenders are the way to do it they really try hard and they try to make it happen they know the right and they know the ropes and they also know local appraisers that they can get in and get it done so i’d all share this recently we just had one and we were supposed to close on a friday and they called the day before and said can’t close on friday because that is actually lincoln’s birthday not president’s day the 21st lincoln’s real birthday was february 18th so in california we celebrate uh lincoln’s birthday so we can’t send out any wires yes evidently they only figured this out the the day before the day before on the 17th uh i don’t know if that was really the story or not that declared the holidays so it’s weird things like that weird things out of state lenders will have weird rules i don’t know california’s rule about lincoln’s birthday but apparently on february 18th they don’t send out wires in the state of california and they’re allowed to do that so yeah every day i learned something new and another good example is uh ordering out the appraisals it is a matter of course that uh lenders will order out the appraisal kind of when it’s clear that the home’s gonna inspect yep you know that it’s gonna get get past the inspection period that’s when they’ll do it too late you can’t do that now you can you got to order it right away and if you if that means the lender is going to have to eat the appraisal fee yeah that’s just the cost of it but here’s the thing they don’t eat the appraisal fee they passed on to you they said oh we can’t get the appraiser out so i hope you don’t mind instead of paying six or seven hundred dollars for your appraisal you now have to pay the expedited fee yeah twelve hundred dollars fifteen [Music] they can get it done overnight yeah but you’re gonna pay extra for that so try to go local we have everything local in-house we can get it done it’s nice and smooth and you know typically we close on time about 98 of the time uh out of state um it’s been i can’t promise you it’s been rough lately it’s been rough that’s all we can do is just tell you our experiences with this in the end the your lender choice that you that’s your choice 100 it’s your choice whoever you choose we will do our best to make sure that you close on time uh but we just wanted to share some of our experiences with you some other considerations you may want to yeah just be aware you may not necessarily close on time if you’re going out of state we can do as much as we can try may not happen for you we sure will try i love to nag it’s my favorite thing to do i call every day hey it’s the pickle lady again heard anything yeah heard anything heard anything remember the closing date is not a suggested date yeah we want to close on this day we’ve been struggling with this for the last several months so yeah so we want to share and you should know too because you know we don’t always buy houses every other year sometimes it’s been 20 years and you kind of forget so this is our knowledge we want to share with you absolutely take take away from it whatever you wish but we hope you listen to us [Laughter] more information you can check us out at pickle411.com that is our information site whether you are buy or seller somewhere in between information about lenders and all that kind of stuff about real estate i also got best restaurants to go to and press get things done i’ll love it i’ll live all of it’s there all of it we love to talk about a whole bunch of stuff yeah not all of it’s complaining about linda no that’s right very strong very small just a small percentage all right my friends you guys have a great evening and thanks for listening hope we taught you something new take care bye