Mortgage adds and phone calls. Has it gotten to be too much & who do we TRUST
By luvdadove
@luvdadove (11)
United States
March 7, 2007 1:41pm CST
Every single day on my way to and from work radio adds for mortgage company's. Phone calls at my house. Mail at my home every single week. Has anyone tried to refinance there house lately? With all this advertisement who do we trust? I have a great broker in Illinois that handles all of my familys home loans. I'm sick of these snake oil sales people promising things they can't deliver. I really need some feed back. Do any of these company's deliver and our you sick of the false advertisement.
1 response
@cyclonewriter (2168)
• United States
7 Mar 07
A big push right now is interest only mortgages with very low payments. You may have seen or heard $250,000 for just $585 a month. Though it is a legit offer, there is a lot of fine print. Some have a husge ballon payment in the end or increase the payment over time. Others take 50 years or more to pay off. My advice is to stick with traditional companies who have a long record of service, such as your local bank or some of the more famous companies like Eloan. Stay away from mortgage brokers because they normally are acting as a middle man for a fee for something you can do yourself. Thsy do not lend money, they set you up with a lender. My husband used one before we were married and they set him up with his own bank and it cost $3000 extra fee.
If all else fails, go by the old saying, "if it's too good to be true then run like heck!"
@ZenDove (698)
• United States
8 Mar 07
sorry to butt in, but I just had to say that I would be lost without my mortgage broker. Maybe you have the savvy to track down the best loan package from the many lenders out there and maybe you have the know-how to fulfill all the requirements and stipulations in just a few days time - I sure don't. The broker I have not only finds the best loan, he also does credit counseling. My credit score has gone up 80 points in the last year. I don't think Countrywide or Eloan is going to work with you personally AFTER they are done with you.
This is my understanding of how it works: independent brokers have a much larger database of lenders to work with. Traditional companies, like Countrywide, sometimes have less than a dozen lenders that they use - "tradtional companies" don't necessarily lend their own money,either. They shop loans around just like brokers do, and they just don't have as many options as a broker has. Most of those lenders want to give loans to people with good credit. Once you get turned down by their handful of lenders, that's it. There's nothing more they can do for you. Well, for a mortgage broker, he's only just getting started. He can shop that loan around for you and find you a lender with qualifications that you meet and a program that you can live with. Sure, they charge fees, don't you think that banks charge fees and big companies charge fees? They are just better at "hiding" their fees in a lot of fine print. But in Illinois, there is a law that stops broker's fees from getting too high, so we have some protection from snake oil salesmen. Every salesman is a middleman. And every industry needs a middleman, on some level. As a consumer, you go with your instincts - "Is this guy working for me, or just himself" "Is he being informative or slick?" It wouldn't matter if that salesman was selling you a car or a cheeseburger, these are the questions you would ask yourself.
My broker calls 2 or 3 times a year to make sure that we are sticking to the "good credit" plan he helped us to work out and that we're happy with our progress. There is no money in those phone calls because he doesn't get paid by the hour. Anyway, just wanted to offer a different experience.
