You will all relate to this…unfortunately.
I received a call recently from a distressed realtor. She had just found out that the buyer she had shown every condo in Marlton NJ under $200k to (currently about 60 units on the MLS, eeek!) was now being told the pre-approval was “not valid.” I was relieved to find out...
that it wasn’t a pre-approval from my office, and she was just trying to find out if there was a loan out there for her buyer. Unfortunatly, there wasn’t, but I learned/realized a few things that day.
Below are 3 fast and easy things every realtor must know about a buyer with a Pre-Approval;
Realtors don’t call us to talk about the pre-approval! …But we want you to!
It’s staggering to me that we issue about 15 pre-approvals a week, and rarely do we get a call from a realtor until after they have found a home. Wouldn’t it be better to find out bad news before you wear out your shoes showing homes to your buyers? Even if it seems like you are working with a well qualified buyer, a quick phone call can go a long way to finding out what you are really working with.
Loan Officers can not tell you what a paystub says…But they can tell you if they have one!
Is a pre-approval really worth anything if the loan officer hasn’t received anything from the buyer to confirm they qualify for a loan? In my office, it is a sin to send out a pre-approval without first gathering the paperwork necessary to all but close the loan. That’s right; before you even see the pre-approval we have almost everything we need to close the loan. That only seems logical to me, unfortunately in our industry that’s a rare policy. Call up the next 5 loan officers listed on the pre-approvals your buyers bring you, and you will be horrified how few actually have ANYTHING other than a credit report from the buyer.
Ask what the pre-approval is based on!
About 85% of the loans available to homebuyers today require a computerized underwrite. The realtor I was talking about earlier; her buyer had not actually been run through the underwriting system, a broker had ass-u-me’d that the buyer would qualify. Get your buyers to request copies of the “Automated Underwriting Findings.” If the broker won’t provide them, then it’s because either; a) they haven’t run them…and the buyer should find someone else to work with, or b) they couldn’t get approved…and it’s time to get filled in on the Loan Officers strategy for making sure you don’t show 60 condo’s to this buyer and end up with nothing.
If you have a pre-approval from Eagle Nationwide on your desk, then you probably already know that you can call anytime and find out exactly what we have on file for your home buyer. You also know that your customer probably already has a copy of the automated underwriting findings. If you don’t have a pre-approval on your desk from Eagle Nationwide…well, maybe you should.
--Keith
http://www.eaglenationwide.com
**If you know someone else who would benefit from these updates, please pass this link on to them http://www.realestatemortgagenews.com
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