Authorify - Mortgage Lenders (Agent) Preview

A STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE TO FINANCING HOMES

YOUR NAME

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. DISCLAIMER AND/OR LEGAL NOTICES: While all attempts have been made to verify information provided in this publication, neither the Author nor the Publisher assumes any responsibility for errors, inaccuracies, or omissions. Any slights of people or organizations are unintentional. This publication is not intended for use as a source of legal or accounting advice. The Publisher wants to stress that the information contained herein may be subject to varying state and/ or local laws or regulations. The reader of this publication assumes responsibility for the use of these materials and information. Adherence to all applicable laws and regulations, including advertising and all other aspects of doing business in the United States or any other jurisdiction is the sole responsibility of the reader. The Author and publisher assume no responsibility or liability whatsoever on behalf of any reader of these materials. If your property is currently listed with a Realtor, please disregard this notice. It is not our intention to solicit the offerings of other brokers. Printed in the United States of America

Table Of Contents

Introduction

The Easiest Way To Protect Yourself From Bad Lenders

How The Loan Process Works From A To Z 9

Honest Pre-Approvals

Good Lenders Follow A Proven Process To Close On Time Good Lenders Update You Throughout The Process

Good Lenders Can Close Difficult Loans 83

A Summary Of How I Can Make Your Business Easier & More Profitable

A Mortgage Terms Glossary

Foreword

When I first ventured into the real estate industry years ago, I did so with the hopes of helping sellers like you avoid the headaches often associated with the home-selling process. In my years of experience, not only have I helped alleviate the stress of selling for numerous clients, but I’ve also accumulated years of knowledge to help them get more money for their homes in the least amount of time. I decided to share all of my expertise in one place with potential clients. And that’s why you’re receiving this book. I want to help you have the best possible home-selling experience. And by that, I mean I want you to 1. Get the most money possible for your home, 2. Sell in the least amount of time, and 3. Avoid the headaches most commonly associated with the home-selling process. Think of this book as my gift to you. It contains insider advice on the home-selling process to help you achieve your ultimate real estate goals, including: • Secret strategies to sell your home for more money • Marketing techniques employed by top agents • Advice on how to appeal to today’s buyers • And much, much more If, after reading through it, you want to hire me to help you sell your home, I’d be more than happy to meet with you to discuss a specific plan to sell your home. Happy reading!

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About AGENT

AGENT was raised in CITY with X siblings. As a child, AGENT had aspirations of being a OCCUPATION. Never in a million years did he think he’d stumble into the real estate industry, but you can’t always predict where or when you’ll discover what you’re meant to do in life. AGENT was taught at a young age that if you want something in life, you have to work for it. So that’s what he did. And he worked hard. As the years went by, AGENT worked his way from FIRST JOB to LATER JOB, never wavering in his resolve to become the best version of himself with each career move. AGENT got into the real estate industry X years ago when STORY ABOUT HOW YOU GOT INTO REAL ESTATE/WHY. He set out to LIST ASPIRATIONS FROM WHEN YOU STARTED OUT IN REAL ESTATE. As his career advanced, AGENT found his stride working with NICHE MARKET/SPECIFIC MARKET AREA/TYPE. He’s an expert in LIST AREAS OF EXPERTISE/SKILLS THAT SET YOU APART FROM OTHER AGENTS.

Throughout his career, AGENT has earned numerous accolades, including:

• LIST ACCOMPLISHMENTS • LIST SALES STATS ix

• ANY OTHER IMPRESSIVE INFO YOU’D LIKE TO INCLUDE

AGENT aims to provide the highest level of service to his clients and takes deep pride in helping them achieve their real estate goals. AGENT aims to provide the highest level of service to his clients and takes deep pride in helping them achieve their real estate goals.

Testimonials & Reviews for Agent Name

Here’s a list of people whom I have helped buy or sell a home, and what they said about working with me:

Agent-Name had a tough job, but she did it!

We were tough clients! We were moving to City and didn’t have a lot of time to look at houses, having to deal with our employer’s relocation, and all of the other challenges that came along. But, Agent-Name went above and beyond to help us. Even now, one year after the sale closed, I can still call her for business and service recommendations in the area — she knows just about everyone, and is very happy to help.

Agent-Name is the best agent in City!

I’ve used Agent-Name twice so far, and I was impressed both times. I bought my dream home with AGENT a year ago. She worked long and hard to find me the perfect home. And she just recently sold another property of mine. Everything went quickly and smoothly. Both of my real estate deals were done very quickly and professionally. Agent is honestly the BEST in her business. I would highly recommend her.

Agent-Name perseverance got me the house

My experience with Agent-Name during the entire home- buying process, from start to finish, has been nothing short of exceptional. I have a unique work structure, and because of this, it was very difficult to find mortgage lenders that would approve me for a home. I was very frustrated and on the verge of giving up, but Agent-Name insisted that we continue searching. Not only did we find a mortgage lender but also a mortgage that I felt great about. His perseverance is the reason I am now a homeowner. He is professional, punctual, knowledgeable, and very easy to work with. With the highest regard, I will recommend Agent-Name to all my friends and family.

Very attentive to concerns, details, and negotiations

Agent-Name helped me find a house by literally picking it out for me. Every house I wanted to go to, I got there and didn’t love it. Agent-Name was busy taking note of the likes and dislikes I was stating and said “I have a house that you’re going to love”.... AND I DID! I went back 4 or 5 times to show other members of my family, and she accommodated me without complaint. I was a first-time homebuyer, and she walked me through the steps of everything, gave me advice, and constantly followed up to make sure I was doing OK. With her help, I was able to close on the house early, right before I started my new job. I would recommend Agent-Name to EVERYONE, buying or selling. Agent-Name made it so so easy. She guided us through the entire process. She recommended great people to work with

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every step of the way. She was available 24/7 to answer any questions we may have had. With her high standards, expertise in the industry, and patience, we would recommend her as a Realtor to anyone looking! She was amazing!

Agent-Name even advised me on how to prepare my house

Agent-Name was a gem. In addition to being highly knowledgeable about the real estate market, with many years of experience, he is a consummate professional. He was extremely easy to work with, gave me very good advice about preparing my house for sale and was very responsive during the entire process of receiving offers, selling and closing. I would work with him again in a heartbeat. He’s that good.

Agent-Name is the first agent I would call

Agent-Name and his team were able to rapidly list, show and sell my property. Being an expert in real estate, he was spot on in his pricing of my property and getting this deal completed. Overall, I highly recommend him and his team. If I want to buy real estate, AGENT would be the first person I’d call.

Agent-Name got us an offer in three days!

Agent-Name was the consummate professional during our stressful and difficult process. In the midst of juggling a ‘failed’ marketing effort with another agent, she presented a

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well thought out plan and strategy to sell our home in short order. We needed to move quickly due to a growing family and another baby on the way. She helped alleviate that pressure by securing an acceptable offer with 3 days of listing. We put pressure on her, and she delivered. We couldn’t thank her enough.

Agent-Name kept us calm throughout the process!

Agent-Name always made herself available to answer questions. She worked hard to sell our home and find the best fit for our new home. She and her team worked with us through the entire process and kept us calm when we got anxious.

I am 100 percent satisfied!!

Agent-Name is professional and knowledgeable about everything. She is also always available. I would definitely recommend her to anyone. Very smooth transaction from start to finish. I felt confident with her experience.

Agent-Name found us our dream home

Agent-Name was very efficient and helped us find our dream home within a few short months. She was able to negotiate the price that we wanted for the house. Overall, I would look for her again to help us look for a house if need be in the future. Thank you so much!

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Efficient communication and service

Agent-Name and his staff were very helpful in selling our condo. They kept me informed frequently with email, sending reports on showings, offers, and feedback from potential buyers. We are very satisfied.

Agent-Name will get your house sold fast!

Agent-Name is great and has the expertise to get your house sold. The communications throughout our sale (from beginning to end) has been outstanding. Agent-Name understands the stress involved in selling your house, and she updated our family consistently! This made us feel we were in good hands. I have worked with numerous agents, and I highly recommend her to represent you when it comes time to sell your home.

Excellent experience topped with a personal touch

Excellent experience all around, not only knowledgeable but Agent-Name and team have a very personal touch I felt like family throughout the entire process. He always took his time; we never felt rushed or like “just a number.” I sold my home and bought with him. We had lots of questions he gladly answered them with no problem and guided us through the entire process, eliminating lots of stress. I truly appreciate that and would recommend him and his team to family and friends.

CHAPTER 1 Introduction

It’s tough being a real estate agent. You have numerous deadlines to keep, clients to keep happy, homes to show, and leads to chase. Often it can feel like one thing going wrong could cause the house of cards to come tumbling down all over you. Sometimes that “one thing” that goes wrong is your mortgage lender. And when that goes wrong, it’s as useful to you as a leaf blower is to that house of cards you’ve been building. Have you ever been called by a loan officer the day before a closing because they need “just one more thing” before they can finalize the loan? And that “one thing” is currently on a moving truck with the rest of your client’s worldly possessions? Have you ever been told that a loan is as good as done, only to find out later that there are glaring errors in the paperwork which are now preventing the loan from going through? Any real estate agent who’s been in the business for enough time has had these problems. Maybe more than once. Maybe even worse ones that I can’t fathom because my imagination is not twisted enough. For example, let me tell you a story about a real estate agent who had worked diligently to obtain a desirable listing. He worked incredibly hard on behalf of his clients to stage and show the

home, find a buyer, and negotiate a great deal.

The listing itself had come to the selling agent by referral of a former client, which meant even more leads might have grown out of this one.

As you may have guessed, “might have” is the operative phrase here. The buyer’s lender blew it.

The buyer was getting a loan to buy the house. The closing was set for the end of the month. Everything seemed to be going fine.

The real estate agent ordered a survey of the home, just like he’d done for every other client who needed a home survey. Everything was on track.

Or so it seemed.

The loan program the buyer was using had a specific, non- standard survey requirement. A few days before closing, the lender surprised the real estate agent with this somehow- forgotten information. As a result, the real estate agent had to reorder the entire survey. The survey company had to go back out to the house (at an additional cost of $150) and do everything over again. The survey ended up pushing back the closing by 10 whole days.

In the end, no one was happy with how the sale turned out.

Even though this situation was the fault of the lender, not the

agent, the agent’s reputation was still damaged. He did not get client referrals from the seller. Whatever business that may have come from that relationship was soured and gone. Has this (or something similar) happened to you? Have you lost time, lost money, or had your reputation tarnished because a lender did or did not do something that affected your sale? Well, this book is written by a lender — me — who understands the frustrations that real estate agents have with people in my profession.

THIS BOOK CAN HELP YOU.

I can help you. I have intimate knowledge in the ways to defend yourself from bad lenders. Not only that, but I’ll teach you how to obtain (and keep!) the good ones. This book will help you cut through the B.S. surrounding the lending game. Contained in these pages is concrete, fact-based advice that will help you stop worrying about whether or not your lender is going to drop the ball, and instead focus more on doing what you actually do for a living: sell homes. I’m going to peel back the curtain and give you the tools that will help you never have to worry about something happening to you like what happened to that other real estate agent. I’ve also added some useful reference content: a glossary of mortgage industry terms, a sample Good Faith Estimate (loan estimate), and other helpful information.

This book can — and will — help you.

CHAPTER 2 The Easiest Way to Protect Yourself from Bad Lenders The best tool anyone has in life is knowledge. Whether you’re a real estate agent, a welder, a pilot, or an actor, the more knowledge you have about your industry the more successful you will be in that industry. As a real estate agent, it’s not enough to simply know how to sell a home. If all you had to do to be a successful agent was walk people through a house and get them to sign a piece of paper indicating their interest in purchasing it, anyone could be a real estate agent. As I’m sure you already know, that’s not all there is to being a great agent. You have to know how to chase leads, know how to read a market, know how to close a deal, and know how to promote yourself. Likewise, a great agent knows how the mortgage lending industry works. As we learned in this book’s introduction, the mortgage lending process may seem like it’s out of your wheelhouse — but it’s not. What happens in the lending phase also affects you and your standing as an agent. With that in mind, the more you know about mortgage lending, the better you’ll be at spotting the problems before they get out of hand. 5

Once you are educated on how the loan process works, when a lender tells you, “Everything is okay. The loan is on track. We’re golden.” You can ask, “What does that really mean?” Mortgage lenders brushing off an agent’s inquiries is a thing that happens frequently. You’ve worked hard to make a deal work. You’ve engaged with the lender and done all that is asked for. You call for status and the lender tells you, “Yes, everything’s on track; all is fine.” But it really isn’t. The lender has not completed everything that needs to be done to make the sale a success. They are behind and you don’t know it. Without direct communication from them on their progress, how could you know? Furthermore, how would you know where the loan stands if you don’t even know how the loan process works in the first place? You could ask some questions, but how would you understand the answers? How would you even know what questions to ask?

Knowledge is the difference between being entirely dependent on another and having some control of the situation.

In response to an “everything is on track” statement from a lender, the educated real estate agent can respond with, “Okay, that’s great. Does that mean the loan is completely approved, and all the conditions have been met? Which conditions have been met, and which have not? Exactly what does ‘on track’ mean?”

Ask just that. Then shut up and wait. John Doe Lender will

stutter, stammer, and not know what to say. Once the lender realizes that you know how the game works, the jig is up. They are left with no choice but to come clean and tell you exactly how things are really going. Maybe you’ll discover that the loan really is on track. Maybe you’ll discover that things are a complete mess. But either way, you’ll get the real answer and not just a patronizing brush-off. If you know the road, you can’t be sent down the wrong one. If you know the scam, you can’t be scammed. With knowledge, you can’t be misled. Ask the lender, “What step are we on? What is left undone? Where are we at? What does ‘on track’ mean?” However, there’s no point in asking those questions if you don’t know what the answers mean. If the lender responds with a bunch of industry acronyms and lender jargon that is foreign to you, their answers simply won’t make sense. In this case, it’s not enough to simply demand more details if the details are simply gobbledygook as far as you’re concerned. The next chapter is going to delve into how the loan process works so you can understand the different steps and moving parts. That way, when you’re talking or dealing with lenders as the listing agent or as the buyer’s agent, the lender will see that you are knowledgeable in the details and know what you’re talking about. If they see that you know your stuff, they are not going to make up stories to cover shoddy work. They will be more apt to give you honest answers and tell you exactly what’s happening with the loan.

An educated consumer is always the best consumer. If you’re an educated consumer, you can obtain better results and you can make better decisions for yourself. Education will give you an upper hand when you’re dealing with lenders. It makes the process easier because you know what’s going on. You know what’s happening. You understand the terminology and what things mean. No one can get by with an “Oh, everything’s okay,” toss-off statement and expect you to go away. You’re going to ask for specifics. Here’s the bottom line: if there are problems, you need to be prepared so you can make better decisions — and help your clients make better decisions, too. You need to be there for your clients to give them advice on whether they should move forward with a transaction, whether or not they should move forward with that particular lender, and what’s going to be the best outcome for them during the lending process.

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