As a frequent poster to Active Rain, a real estate service professionals community, I found it to be a wonderful place to receive ‘industry insider’ knowledge and opinion by making identical but delayed posts on the blog board.
28 Posts Later: Solid relationships discovered, comments were articulate and informing, I was singin in the rain, daily…
Then came number 29 or The Mortgage Industries Internal Civil War and all hell broke loose….
Oh my God, what have I DONE!!! Monsters!
There was an ‘air’ about the comments right off the bat, you could almost hear the chest thumping, the type you hear from a heavy beating fist or heart. Then the mob began to materialize, with a Don and his favorite sons, although they turned out to be little more than schoolyard bullies. While I thought the post to be provocative, the comment thread that ensued teetered between nasty and funny.
Members (from the mortgage industry) started demanding my ‘full name and address’, digging stuff up about me from all corners of the the web, even Myspace.com, in feeble attempt to shut my opinion down by attacking my character, questioning my experience, and slinging some serious sh*t. They were ‘demanding answers’ to which I obliged. You may read them here if you like, I wont bother with a separate post since its mostly review.
The whole experience caused me to sling out a quick list of questions for mortgage brokers and bankers to answer, since I was demanded to do the same, it seemed fair. Although there have been no takers yet…? Odd….
Here they are (ill probably refine them as time goes on):
- Do you disclose YSP and all other costs up front, in dollars?
- Do you tell your clients how much, in dollars, you are charging/making for your services up front?
- Do you offer YSP as an option to finance closing costs?
- If you charge YSP, do you inform every borrower that they qualified for a lower rate or that they are being used to pay you?
- Do you inform clients that YSP’s are theirs, NOT yours?
- Do you think your clients don’t care about such ‘trivial’ matters? Have you ever asked them?
- Do you continue to float rates when a client thinks they are locked?
- Do you disclose all Lender paid incentives, i.e. full package submission, purchase bonuses, specific program bonuses, better pricing from a different lender even after you have ’sold’ the initial deal?
- If there are any changes to the costs of the loan or rate, do you re-disclose them on the GFE and give your clients at least 72hrs to digest the changes.
- Do you think that because you are a banker, ‘You don’t have to’ talk about these issues? Is that how you lay it out for your clients?
- Do you up-charge for 3rd party services?
- If your clients dig out their loan docs…are they going to be pleased or pissed?
The pioneers are always the guys with the arrows in their backs.
Transparency is a dirty word to those guys, Jeff. It seems to be a dirty word in a lot of businesses.
It’s like peeling back the layers of an onion. It makes some people cry.
Some of these boiler-room mortgage outfits should be shut down. They live to max-out each deal with no consideration for the borrower… or repeat business, for that matter.
For the record, I am not against anyone charging whatever fees they want - as long as all those fees are disclosed upfront - and not reasonably deviated from at closing.
Thanks Doug…Your last paragraph sums it up well. :)
There shouldn’t be anything a good broker/banker has to hide….
When I have a little more time I’ll have to read the thread referenced above in it’s entirety. Appears to be an interesting read.
I’m going to just assume some people are a bit upset about the possibility of eventually having to explain to their loyal customers, friends and family why they charged exactly what they charged.
In the short time I’ve been in the business, I have yet to meet one person who would feel comfortable fully disclosing the EXACT dollar figure they or their company were paid for servicing a loan.
In a short time, you have become very wise….
I was out of town at the NAR conference and missed most of the “fireworks” but heard a lot about it from others down there, the word spreads fast. I guess there are some subjects that people are pretty touchy about. Creating debate on blogs is healthy, it allows people to hash out issues in a public environment but this one seemed to be turning to personal attacks on character rather than debating issues.
Agreed Matt…Thx for stopping by!
Matt:
I think a few things happened on the “civil war” blog on Active Rain:
1- Jeff made some blanket statements that did offend some sensible and ethical brokers.
2- Jeff was “cagey” in his responses; this inflamed the emotions of the originators ( me included)
3- Mortgage veterans have had a long history of dealing with “fly by night lenders” and “unlicensed promoters”, especially these past 4-5 years.
Matt, I am not sure that the attacks were “personal” but there was a question of Jeff’s credibility at one point in my mind; I think he has addressed that issue well.
I think we are all pretty clear on what xbroker is and how it hopes to achieve its mission. I think the issue of ttransparency is one that is long overdue. I think I might differ in his thoughts on correspondent lending but I doubt Jeff Corbett is going to lose sleep over this ttechnical disagreement; nor am I.
I have had some very good dialogue with Jeff that was upfront and devoid of emotion and ego. It can be found here:
http://activerain.com/blogsview/21467/The-Marquis-of-Queensbury