Shopping for the BEST DEAL is an art form! Gone are the days of driving to flea markets to scour the booths to find a hidden treasure. Now you can shop online and scour sites to find your perfect buy. Is it the same thing when you are shopping for the best home mortgage interest rate on your loan? Not exactly – lots of old adages here. You get what you pay for. Sometimes the best deals aren’t deals at all. Don’t be a sucka. Time to get your research on and find out how to get the best rate, protect yourself, and score a sweet deal!
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How To Shop For The BEST Mortgage Interest Rate On Your Home Loan
Using An Online Lender Versus A Mortgage Broker To Get The Best Rates
How do you shop for the best mortgage interest rate when you are buying your first home? I hear this question a lot. The answer is a little bit more complex than I wish it were because you are not just buying a simple consumer item. This is a loan for hundreds of thousands of dollars, and it takes more than an app or a few clicks to figure this one out. It’s time to drop the insider secrets on how to shop like a pro.
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How are you my How to Buy a Homies? If you don’t know who I am, follow this show, subscribe and read the first few episodes to get probably way more information than you want to know about me and why I’m doing this show. It’s where I tell you why I’ve got pissed off at the entire real estate industry and started this show.
To all my regular How To Buy a Homies, I’m working hard this holiday season of 2021. If you read regularly, when these come out, I want to make sure that you have plenty of shows to binge for your holiday road trips. It’s a fascinating blog for you, me, bad jokes, and mortgage interest details. It sounds like a party to me. Believe me. There is no party like the one you get when you are making your last rent payment.
The big question is, “Is shopping the best for mortgage interest rate?” Let me break it down for you, like breaking down the bridge and your favorite song. Time for the nitty-gritty, unless you are from the UK, where I figured out that nitty means foolish, so nitty-gritty makes no sense to you. I’m with you, UK peeps. Soccer is football, and aluminum sound is super pitching.
It’s the night before Thanksgiving as I do this, and my family is at home angry at me that I’m not there helping them prepare all the food. The automatic lights went out in my office because nobody with a sound mind was still working but I was in the dark. Let’s get right to it. The simplest way for me to explain this is, in nowadays’ age, with so many different companies right there at your fingertips, you can absolutely shop around for the lowest interest rate. You are probably even going to find lower interest rates than you are going to get with a unicorn. You will find better mortgage interest rates than to get with your unicorn mortgage broker.
The Myth Of The Unicorn
Much like the unicorn myth, it takes some insight and knowledge to see the real magic because there are unicorns out there, then there are horses with a horn that’s super-glued to their head. No matter who you are, even a unicorn mortgage broker, if you are using one of them and you shop them, that’s the first industry insider term of the day. When someone is out looking for the best deal, they are shopping their lender. Even after they have given you a quote, you are going to be out there and might even find a rate, an eighth of a point or a full quarter-point lower than a great unicorn mortgage broker. Here’s how those terms of the points are defined.
I’m going to use that quote because that’s where rates are going in 2021. If you get a 3.5% interest rate quote from a trusted lender, a unicorn, and that rate is based on getting all your income and debt qualifications, you may be able to take that same information to shop around and find a 3.375%. That’s an eighth lower or what they call an eighth of a point lower than the 3.5% or you might even find a quarter-point lower, and that’s going to be shockingly 3.25%. Math majors, that’s what a quarter is.
I know you have been waiting for it. It’s time for my big but. I have a big but. It’s in my genes, literally in the jeans I’m sitting in but I meant genetically. Full disclosure, my big but also comes from my years of soccer, dancing, and some decent junk in the trunk. Let’s get to my big but. If you shop around, you are going to find someone offering you a lower than a lower rate, possibly lower by eighth, or even as much as a quarter-point off of a good unicorn mortgage broker quote. You are going to find it, and it’s probably going to be due to a few things.
One of those things is you are shopping at a different time. It’s the original quote. This is crucial for you to understand. Rates are quoted when someone gives all their information to a lender, a mortgage broker, a bank or a credit union. It only can be quoted to you when you give all the information to them, not to you because you know your information.
It’s only a quote when you get all of it to them, not just a phone call when you verbally give them your information and not when you type some information into an app, a form or a website without giving them all the documentation to back up what you are saying. That’s a full application. Anyone can and will quote you a lower rate based on a form, a phone call or a click on an app. What’s an easy way to check that out is when you get the rate back from them.
[bctt tweet=”A unicorn realtor will give the best advice, whether the realtor or the lender.” username=””]
If they send you anything in writing and check down at the bottom of the fine print, if they send you an email confirmation or anything like that, it’s always going to say, “Subject to asking this buyer to send me all their financial information and then I will guarantee to stand by a real interest rate quote.” That’s the difference between a pre-qualification and a pre-approval.
The big thing is the time. If you asked someone last week and then this week, rates have changed in that time. Even if you have done a full pre-approval with someone, you are going to get different rates at different times. Rates don’t just change every week. They change multiple times throughout the day. That’s a big reason.
Another reason you might get offered an eighth of a point or a quarter-point lower is because the person that you are talking to that you think is a good, trustworthy individual is not a true unicorn. While they are offering you that lower rate, it might not probably and won’t get you the service that you need to close the loan. If you want to be sure you are getting the most competitive rates for service, go ahead. You can even ask your own unicorn to verify it. Ask your unicorn realtor to verify your unicorn lender or mortgage broker. Have a unicorn verify unicorn. Most of the time, you are going to be able to get a good answer for that from the unicorn realtor.
It’s going to be very difficult for you to verify online a non-preferred mortgage broker or a stranger that you found some other way. It’s tough to get any information that can verify their services, options, productivity while you are just shopping out there to find someone because they are going to give you their rates and a pretty website but who knows beyond that?
When my buyers are shopping and come in and say they’ve got a better rate from someone else, the first thing we’ve got to do is figure out who it’s coming from. I will even have my unicorn lender look up the productivity of that cheaper lender. No big deal. I’m not scared. The mortgage brokers are not scared. There’s nothing to hide here. If they are lower, great. We will take a look at it and see why. If they are lower, good service provider, got good productivity, it looks like they know what they are doing when they are dealing with a purchase buyer or a purchase loan, and do a good job, then my lenders are perfectly fine taking that fact because they know we are not the only ones out here doing a great job.
We believe in us and our business. Sometimes, they are going to research the deal and recommend that this particular buyer does not bring them the business, go ahead and use the other lender and they will lose the deal. Why do they do that? Oftentimes they do that to keep the trust of your unicorn realtor. It doesn’t happen that often but when it does, see how it works. See why there’s a trust developed between the realtor and the lender. The unicorn is going to give the best advice, whether the realtor or the lender. The lender sees that they can’t do as good a job as someone else, then fine. They are going to say, “Go for it.”
That’s why the unicorn bubble works. Do you see why I tell you to find the unicorn realtor first? I know it goes against everything the internet is telling you. They are telling you, “After getting pre-approved, before you waste a realtor’s time.” That’s just what they say but they are telling you that because those lenders out there telling you that they are selling you. The realtors that blow you off before you have a pre-approval for them it’s different. They want a quick sale. They don’t want to deal with you. They don’t want to deal with helping you with the big plan to help you get to where you need to go.
I’m telling you this because there is a better way for you. There’s a way for you to beat this system, and it benefits you. It’s because of that, true unicorns, both realtors and lenders, are cool with it because they want what’s best for you. They aren’t scared for you to research or the competition. We are fine. Your business is of value to a good mortgage broker. Whoever you are talking to, if they value you, they are fine for you to research the competition because they know their track record and history are going to show that you are valued.
It’s cool. It’s no worries. If you don’t know a lot about the other lenders you are talking to, there are no worries if you don’t understand if that rate is better for you. It’s not easy to find. That’s why I’m putting this down on this show, so ask your trusted sources. You can even ask if you’ve got a lender that comes to you from a trusted unicorn, then they are going to tell you. The big reason for this is because it’s better for you to know for sure that if that lower rate lender has the ability to shop for you to find the best banks, have a core of good banks that want to work with them, offer the mortgage broker the best service and the rates.
It’s better for you to know that maybe they are just offering you these great rates because it’s probably from a not as high a quality bank, which could mean problems in your deal, not being able to close the deal but having an awesome rate as my Spanish teacher from high school, Mrs. Blades, would say, “Es muy molde.”
Let’s dig into the question some more. Let’s get into what you are shopping for. I know you are sitting there going, “You told us the name of the show is shopping rates.” First up, slow your roll. I don’t see me listening to you for advice in my ear holes. Secondly, don’t let that little moment of my tough guy. Attitude fool you. I only do this because I seriously am pissed. There are so many people out there trying to scam you, and there’s not enough of us out there keeping it real and telling you how the game is played.
What You’re Shopping For
Let’s talk about what you are shopping for. If you are shopping for a TV or a computer online, you can very easily look at the exact specifications of the product and the price. It’s simple. You just find the vendor who probably has the lowest overhead and can sell it to you for the best retail price. Now you are doing that, you are shopping price but that’s because you are shopping for a pure product that you can compare through the specs.
I mentioned this before when you are shopping loan or if you are a first-time homebuyer, you are not just shopping rates. This is absolutely, positively, totally for real. One of the biggest mistakes that I see first-time buyers make, especially in this age of rocket mortgage, friends don’t let friends use the rocket or other online lenders. You are not shopping for a tangible, pure product. You are shopping for two huge factors.
The first factor is service to help gather all your financial information and figure out the best long-term goal for you and your family, for whatever your long-term goals are to help you find the best ways to get there, loan products and rates for your big picture plans. The other way is a monkey could do it. That’s degrading to monkeys. A trained Platypus can input your numbers and give you a rate.
Secondly, the big factor is that you are shopping. That’s service again, and this time, the service we are shopping for is the ability to close the loan, so you don’t miss out on your offer on a home. Since 2018, it’s been going on like this and probably keeps going like this. In this market, it’s super competitive. When that’s going on, time is money, and missing out on a home that you put an offer on can cost you tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending on how long it takes for you to make up for it. You can find that lender with a great rate and get that great rate but can you get the deal?
You need to find the lender that’s going to help you get the deal, the one with the reputation and the tricks to help these purchased buyers. That’s what you are and help you close the deal by using the best banks and lending institutions that do such an amazing job that they are going to crush each deal with the least amount of hassle. If your big, bad, super awesome mortgage broker does lots of deals with the big, bad, super awesome bank, that bank is going to give a volume discount and low rate, which means you are going to get a low rate from an awesome bank and get amazeballs service.
Is it going to be the lowest rate in the universe? No. You can go out there and shop for it. You are going to find some fly-by-night somebody that’s going to have something lower but the deal is the rate you are going to get from the amazeballs bank with the amazeballs mortgage broker. That’s going to be service and the ability to close, which by the way, it’s important when you are in a deal, you want to close on it. It’s going to be so worth it for the minor difference in rate.
When you are shopping your rates, is it worth it to use a trusted unicorn mortgage broker who charges an eighth to a quarter-point more than the bargain-basement lenders out there? A loan is not a TV. It’s a service product. That’s what you are shopping for. By simply punching your information into a form that the other lender has who’s offering you the lower rate, you might see a better rate but you are not getting a better deal.
In fact, you might lose the deal of buying the house, and that’s the whole point. That’s going to cost you way more in the long run because it’s not a product that’s apples to apples. Do you use the best people to find the other best people, the banks, to get you the best rate, not the one necessarily offering the lowest rate?
[bctt tweet=”Even the most ethical and professional mortgage brokers out there still want to make some money on a deal, and they want to offer you a fair price to pay for that service.” username=””]
The key there is those other banks and other lenders might be offering a rate. We are not talking about closing. You should shop for the best service to help you get the best loan rate available to you that has the highest probability of closing on your offer. Let me get deep into the weeds now and explain how this works when people are trying to sell you a loan.
These are salespeople trying to make a living. Even the most ethical and professional mortgage brokers out there still actually want to make some money on a deal, and they want to offer you a fair price to pay for that service. Here’s more on the insider industry secret on what you are paying for and what type of service you get for what you pay. It’s time for you to learn the rules of the game and take advantage for youself.
At the end of 2021, there are a ton of lenders out there freaking out because suddenly, they don’t have a lot of business. I know it’s weird. Why don’t they have a lot of businesses? There are a bunch of homes being sold. Lending on homes is a two-platform business. There are two ways for them to make money. The first platform is what we are talking about. It’s helping people purchase homes. That’s what you want.
The other platform is helping people refinance on home loans. This is a big part of the loan industry. Refinancing a house means they’ve got a loan at 4.5% or 4%, and they see rates at 3%, so they call up a lender, and then they refinancing a 3% loan. That means they are going to save a lot of money on their monthly payment. Everyone is trying to lower their monthly payment. Lots of lenders got most of their business in 2021 playing on that platform and working in the refinance game.
That’s because, as I said before the show, on January 16, 2021, at the beginning of the year, mortgage interest rates hit the lowest point in history. Lots of lenders saw a golden opportunity. They put their time, effort, and energy into refinancing. I’m guessing everybody out there has got a higher rate than the lowest rate ever. If it’s at the bottom, everyone else is higher, and they are going to save money with a lower rate, so let me go after that. It sounds like they are doing right for their customers. A few years ago, they helped somebody buy a home, and now they are going to give him a better deal. That’s what it sounds like but that’s not the real insider story, people.
The real story is that many lenders went after anyone with a higher rate to build their 2021 business on most, if not practically, all refinance loans. That’s what we like to call low hanging fruit gang. By doing this, they neglected to do purchase loans. They were going after the quick and easy buck because refinance loans are easier. It’s a simpler, faster way for them to make their money, and then they can pay their mortgage. It sounds logical like, “They are just adjusting and going with the market.” In reality, it’s a very shortsighted way to run a lending business.
It’s shortsighted because what happens when rates go up again? As a mortgage broker, suddenly, they haven’t done any purchase loans with the banks. The banks are not going to be offering them the best rates. All the people that your mortgage brokers are looking at to get you a loan offer volume discounts with the mortgage brokers that have maintained a good purchase loan business.
The folks who are giving them more stuff are going to give them the best products back for them to give to their clients. Here’s what’s happening. The refi well has dried up, so lots of lenders are panicking. They are trying to find a way to attract more purchase buyer loans. They start to advertise to you and advertising that discounted rate but they don’t have the high volume to get those good purchase rates from the banks that they are trying to work with.
How do you think they get them? They take a gigantic pay cut because they are desperate. They need to do anything to make even a little bit of money to stay afloat. You think they take a big pay cut, “That’s cool. That still works for me.” Not if they haven’t done those, don’t understand the current market or if they are actively involved, and there are a lot of them out there.
The people that were doing all these refis all year long and suddenly get to the end of the year and make no money. Maybe they are a one-man show working post-pandemic style out of their living room because they suddenly learned how to work remotely. They don’t have to refi anymore, so they start working cheaper and try to pass the savings onto you.
It sounds like a great deal but here comes my big but. Remember, you are not buying a product. You are not buying the rate they are offering to you. You are buying the service to help you get the best and the right loan product available to you. You are shopping for an experienced purchase loan expert. You are not shopping for a refi person who’s freaking out this month trying to figure out how they are going to eat. You need to be sure that they are going to close a purchase deal for you with the right banks at any rate that’s offered. If they are offering 1%, but the banks have never done it, and they can’t do it, it’s not going to close. Who cares?
The lower rate lenders don’t have a track record with the purchase deals. That means they could be a discount realtor. There are plenty of realtors out there that are offering to kickback commission to close any deal. What does that mean for the consumer? It sounds great but the technical business term for that is, “It sucks,” and you are getting an inexperienced person or someone desperate.
That person has to represent you. Probably if they are that desperate at what they are doing, they probably do a low amount of volume in the field that they are offering their services to you, so desperate to make any money in any way, they offer a discount. You will get a little discount but it also gives you that wonderful added bonus of a high probability of this transaction costing you thousands of thousands of dollars, more than you should be paying for inexperience, inability, unskilled negotiating.
Remember, this is a complex, giant transaction, hundreds of thousands of dollars, not a $500 television. This is the stuff you are not going to find online but that is how the business works. Insider info again. It’s the margins. The profits for lenders get tight when the refinances go away, so they start to advertise in the areas that they are not proficient in just to try to make ends meet to increase their volume no matter what the cost. That means lots of lenders begging for loan home purchases with truly scary inferior service that’s going to cost you. People, you are their target. You have become their means to make their rent or mortgage payment. Instead of looking at you as a respected and valued consumer, you are a client.
You are that with a mortgage broker who builds their business the right way and long game. Even they will tell you if they are not right for you because they are confident that building the trust with their unicorn realtor is going to bring them more business down the line. A lot of times, my unicorn mortgage brokers tell them that buying a home now is not right for the buyer because they don’t need this business to close in 30 days to pay the light bill. They want this business when it’s right for you, the buyer, so you go out and tell everyone else that the lender or mortgage broker you worked with is the bomb diggity. You are going to refer them to life. It’s the old Teach a Man to Fish parable, is it? Not really. You know what I mean.
The fact is it’s just scary to choose someone on the rate. Remember, the realtors out there, where there are a million of them, you can choose whoever you want, so why not choose the best? It’s your decision. The differences in this case, unlike your realtor, which is for ETU, this service you’ve got to pay for. Now suddenly, a lot of buyers out there focus on the rate and stop forgetting that all things are being close to equal. You are probably going to get the same rates from a bunch of good mortgage brokers because the rates are by the large banks and the daily activity of the markets, and all the good banks are going to be offering around the same rate. You are not shopping the rates. You are shopping for that service.
A deal that doesn’t close, just because it’s got an eighth of a point lower, is going to cost you way more than on paper slight savings that you get with a lender that isn’t active in the home purchase market. I’m going to give you the math a little bit to back up how much you think you are saving versus what happens. Service is a weird word. How do you shop that?
There’s something you can do. Instead of shopping rates, you should be shopping track record, and then eventually asking around about the service, too. Sometimes you can look at the reviews, though that’s not a steadfast indicator, especially if you are getting a great referral from a unicorn realtor because you might be getting a referral to a mortgage broker that is a word of mouth guy. Most of the time, that could be a great thing because they work only through word of mouth. They work to get a great relationship with you, the buyer and don’t just see you as a paycheck.
Getting Your Money’s Worth
I’m going to get right into the details of what the service that you are looking for and should be looking for your real money’s worth. Service is just that. It’s a lost art in nowadays’ world of shop for it online, ship, and get it. This is not a TV or a computer. I know that some of the national online lenders offer service that is just deplorable. It’s on par with your cable or cell phone company. No one uses cable anymore. Whatever the worst services you’ve got in the world is like that.
[bctt tweet=”There are a million realtors out there. You can choose whoever you want, so why not choose the best.” username=””]
The window is 9:00 in the morning until 9:00 at night, and then they don’t show up until 11:00 PM. I know you didn’t think that service worse than that was possible but it is. Imagine being a few days from closing on your house, the years of preparation, and then something super difficult comes up in the loan underwriting process. That is the last phase of somebody digging through your life with a fine-tooth comb and something comes up because, trust me, it will.
Suddenly, you realized that the only way for you to communicate with this person who gave you this great rate was through messaging. This happens. I know it’s freaky but it’s true. What about when you are trying to get the house? Let’s go back to the beginning of the deal. The loan presentation is a large part of your offer. Why do you think I have done 60 something episodes? This one is 66, the episode of The Devil.
The way your loan is presented is a large part of your offer, especially in the competitive market of 2021. This loan presentation was crucial to all my How to Buy A Homies buyers, getting their offer accepted because lots of times, we are competing against 5, 10 or 25 other offers on the table. My unicorn broker and I came up with the plan when things started to get competitive. We have done this a few times in our careers. The most recent plans started back in 2013 because things got competitive then. We have been adjusting and making them better all the way through the pandemic.
We started offering things that we could write directly on the offer to make our valued buyers’ offers stand out. He started having me put things right there. We wrote down, “No loan contingency.” Not all of you have contingencies but it’s like a condition because every single buyer we have, we always have prepped them at and done all the financials. They were pre-approved well before we even started looking at homes. My unicorn lending machine that does purchases all day, every day, every year knows when a loan can close.
“Let’s just put it right on the deal. I’m not writing this if I don’t know it. No loan contingency. We are in.” When everyone was offering a 30 day close with a loan, we started offering 21 days. Now we had to get so competitive because 2021 was bananas. We offer a fifteen-day close with a loan, unheard of in lots of places. He then even started having me put right on the contract that he, the lender, would pay a $250 penalty for every day after the contract had a closing date if we couldn’t close the loan. How can he offer all that? It’s because the best mortgage brokers have the best banks and lending institutions shopping him.
The best lending institutions want to give the Mac daddy deals to the Mac daddy mortgage brokers. The exceptional mortgage brokers out there are being shopped and in turn, when they make their decision, they get the best interest rates with the best banks and the best lending institutions that not only can give you the money at a good rate but they can close the deal with the least amount of problems that are major. Good mortgage brokers can offer the best because they get the best offered to them.
They get great rates from the best banks and pass the savings onto you. My guy won’t even use the bank’s offer because it’s slightly lower rates. The ones that offer those slightly lower rates have too many problems and it causes too much stress. Not on him but on you, the buyers. That’s what unicorns do. They run a Bichon business.
They get the best people to court them, and then they give us all the best service and the best rates in anything we can do so that we can offer it to you so that you love these unicorns and tell everyone about them. Do they know if someone wants a slightly better rate with someone else with inferior service and a higher probability of the loans not closing? Sure.
They know that they can get that for you if they want, they will even offer it to you. After all, the unicorn is a broker, so they can get you the lowest rate in the universe. If they do with that particular loan to protect themselves and their reputation, they are not going to offer all the extras that I was talking about to help get your offer to the top of the pile when you are in a competitive offer situation. They will have to go back and do the traditional 30-day close instead of 15. They won’t offer the $250 unless you, the buyer, want to say that you are going to pay for it, and they won’t remove the loan contingency with the offer.
You can go out there and get a slightly better rate but you are going to lose all the extras that could help your loan get accepted. You might pay a slightly better rate over 30 years. Let’s do the math on that. For the average $375,000 home, you pay about $25 less a month for the eight less in rate. It’s about $50 a month for the full quarter point less. Over 30 years, no one is saying that isn’t a lot of money. It doesn’t sound like a lot monthly but we get it. $25 a month for the eight of a point difference is $9,000 over 30 years and $50 a month is $18,000 over 30 years.
Let’s break that math down even more. Let’s think about it this way. Many of you out there probably aren’t going to have this home for twenty years, so let’s think of this in the biggest savings way. We will get conservative and say, “We will do the biggest one. We will do the quarter-point difference at $50 a month,” but let’s just say, for twenty years because you might sell the home, refinance, you might do something else with it but let’s say, you know you want to live and stay there for a long time. Let’s call it twenty years.
20 years at $50 a pop is $12,000. That’s a lot of money. I totally get that and so would a unicorn mortgage broker but compare that $12,000 savings to what happens if you don’t get the offer accepted in this super hyper-competitive market. You are going to lose way more than $12,000. I know $12,000 is a lot of money but truly, it sounds awful, snooty and 1% of me to say but it’s peanuts compared to what you lose if you spend months trying to get an inferior offer with an inferior loan product accepted while you are watching prices go up.
Don’t forget, along with watching interest rates go up. The math is there. It’s solid. If you want to buy a home or a condo with an average price of $375,000 and you miss it, and that one gets sold, I can guarantee you this. In 2021, probably through most of 2022, for sure, the next comparable home to hit the market, after that one that sold the $375,000, is going to be a bidding war for that one because multiple people didn’t get that home. The lowest price in that bidding war is going to be $390,000. The bids are going to go up above that. Suddenly, the aforementioned $12,000 is peanuts, especially if the rates jump up in 2022, and they will.
The Grinders
Let me give you an even more real insider scoop. The industry has a not-so-flattering term for people who shop aggressively and hard. The people who always try to get the best deal get the most they can for the least amount of money. This is not just a real estate term. This is a sales term and it’s for the people trying to get that top service for the lowest price. They keep grinding until they feel like they are paying the absolute least amount for the service that everyone else gets for a higher payment. I’m not a hater. I’m all for you being smart and frugal but these guys are there. They are known in the sales industry as grinders.
Sometimes, I have to wonder why these grinders think that they can get the absolute best service after being a pain in the butt, freaking out and demanding $10 service for only a $5 fee? I never understand that. What has been an interesting trend in the competitive homebuying market of 2021 is that many of these grinders who ask for the cheapest options possible from their unicorn mortgage broker, either get it from them or they go get it from someplace else end up not getting their offer accepted, and they are missing out.
Suddenly, the homes they are looking at start seeing major price increases. If they’ve got the home at the beginning, they would have had that equity and the profit. They also missed out on lower interest rates as the rates went up throughout the year. Why do they miss out on those homes? It’s because the mortgage broker couldn’t offer them all the extras, knowing that they were working with a solid bank that could close the loan. They went with the cheaper rate and had to put in an offer that wasn’t as attractive to the seller. Since the absolute cheapest rates out there are just not secure enough to offer all those extras, they didn’t get an offer and are still out there shopping for a home.
I know I keep saying insider info. I sound like some horrible reality show about true crime or American greed. Many of the grinders out there have been coming back to mortgage brokers everywhere. Tails between their legs and their spreadsheets in their pockets making them cry. After getting their buts handed them over again, they realized the huge advantage of a quality mortgage broker and paying a fair market interest rate.
They realize that the rate that they are going to offer is well worth the minor eighth of a point or even a quarter for the best service possible and, most importantly, the ability to close on a deal. Real estate is two things, time and money. If you have a plan and you work the timing specific to what’s happening now, you are going to save the money. There is no generic one size fits all way to do this. Your plan, hopefully, like your minds and hearts, got to adapt and react to help reap the maximum benefits.
That leads to the biggest part of the service you get from a true unicorn mortgage broker who can still offer you fantastic rates. The biggest part of the service is the planning. A punch in the numbers app or an online lender isn’t going to help you plan weeks, months or years ahead of the purchase so you can be in the best possible buying situation for you.
It’s not giving you even a way to figure out what your best purchase power is. The way to do that is to have a mortgage broker that’s going to listen to you, get your long-term goals, and help you shape the plan to get to where you are trying to go. You are using the best products at the time when you are ready to pull the trigger but also figuring out the best products for you throughout the life of the loan.
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Is this going to be the one that’s going to work for you for a long time as your life changes? Life happens, baby promotions, babies, more pets, a job change you’ve got to move or a desire to move up into a bigger house someday. This can all affect what loan is best for you. You can’t figure that out by just punching the numbers in to see what loan is possible for you.
It’s not about finding out what’s possible. It’s about exploring the possibilities for you to help get you to where you want to be. I’m not preaching this because this is a new trend. This is not some new thing I’m doing because suddenly, people are shopping loans. The internet has been around for a while. People have been doing this for a long time.
One thing I try to do with the show is to make you feel these words are for you. I have done this by myself in the dark like a loser for your specific questions. The truth is I couldn’t do that. It wouldn’t sound like that if I hadn’t been helping people for years and constantly listening to you, and how this is working for you, listening to other unicorns.
I’m spending numerous trips a year going on the most boring seminar retreat ever but to talk to other realtors and find out what’s going on with them. Find out what’s making out there is working for everyone, finding the best tried and true solutions but also continuing to evolve and get the new tips and the tricks in the market.
Before I wrote all these things down for my show, believe it or not, some of this stuff is bullet point here and there. They are mixed in with my lame, oftentimes, stream of consciousness. It’s a lot of trial and error. There are a lot of stuff off the top of my head that I have been through and know about. I have had successes and massive failures for myself, lenders, and in the early days for some of my clients. I’m not scared to admit that. It keeps me up at night. I bust my booty every day to try to make those things right.
My Unicorn Mortgage Broker
I went back and listened to episode sixteen of my own show. Not to hear what I said. That is an unending discorded symphony playing in my own head 24/7. Nobody wants that. I went back to listen to it because I interviewed someone. I want to listen to my unicorn mortgage broker. I was reminded why I still constantly refer him to all of my most precious commodities, my buyers. This was from June 2019. I even called him the night before Thanksgiving. I was like, “I know your wife hates me. Please, pick up the phone.” He gave me some more insights. In that episode and in our call, Dino, the Mortgage Man, reminded me of some of this stuff.
He said, “Timelines and deadlines while under contract are very serious situations with potentially huge consequences.” He’s the one that reminded me that the online lenders are the ones that are just going to message or chat with you when things get hairy. That’s a scary thing. What he said was interesting. He said, “Many people are introverted. They love the idea of an online chat, being able to punch in some information or chat with someone and get the answers they need because perhaps you want to avoid conversations.”
Dino and I, sometimes, even with our extroverted folks, use texts, chats, and emails for the little things to move things along. When it comes to the big plan to your hundreds of thousands of dollars on the line and discussing your long-term goals or overcoming obstacles that come up and things get seriously hairy, then for you introverts out there, it’s time to face the fear and have a conversation with someone live.
Don’t online chat with someone just because you are afraid of having a conversation with someone and you think you can get it done that way. Use your words. Have a conversation with someone when making your plan. This is not about rates. The good ones are going to have that for you but when you are trying to figure out who to use, talk to someone. Listen to them in their voice to hear if that mortgage broker is going to help and serve. A lot of the online lenders have scripts sitting right in front of them and might say the right things but you can tell. Talk to someone.
Don’t let them talk. You talk. You ask questions. It will help you feel better, more comfortable, and then follow your gut and go with a real person, someone who truly sounds like they are going to be an advocate for you. They are not just reading a script trying to get you to the next phase of the process, probably talking to someone else. They don’t just see you as a paycheck. Good people do this job and they want you to still get the best rate that is out there for you. They want to work hard for you and get paid for it.
Your goal should be trying to find someone with high ethical standards to not only help you get a great deal but also advise you if you are doing the right thing for you. They will listen to you as an advocate, working for your best interest. However and whenever that may be, they are not just listening to you and thinking of you with dollar signs in their eyes.
In episode sixteen, Dino had stopped worrying about what your unicorn, realtor, and mortgage broker is doing in the transaction is going to do when you get into the buying process. At some point, there’s got to be some trust and that’s their job. Do your research. Listen and learn ahead of time. I practice what I preach here. I don’t tell you to trust me without putting hours of stuff that you can stick in ear holes so that things go the way it’s supposed to go. You will be ready knowing that your research is happening and you are protected because you haven’t followed my recommendation to go with a unicorn or a trusted person out there.
Once you are in it, your job is to work the plan ahead of time before you get into it so you can get ready to take advantage of the things offered. A lot of those things offer to you that could make this smoother and better for you, those are the things that happen and change all the time or things we have done for years. You can’t know them all and you don’t have to. That’s not your job. It’s ours. We want to start helping you build your financial freedom as soon as we possibly can with your unicorn team in your unicorn bubble.
Dino said that this home is going to be someplace that’s going to bring you generational memories of all the things that are going to happen there. Be prepared when you are out there shopping. You can chill as much as you can because you can never truly chill in what is traditionally a totally non-chill process. You can rest easy and know that this is going to go as best as you can, and then you get to enjoy this major accomplishment for years to come creating memories with your friends and family.
If you don’t have friends or family, with your pets. If you don’t have pets, for your plans. That was me. I added the pets and plans things for those of you who are real introverts. Get your plan going and start reading the show. You can read them over the holiday break. That’s when I started binge time. What will be interesting is if you have read a lot, you might want to go back and re-read to e specific episodes that, when you first read them, sounded like another language.
You probably zoned out and went to sleep to them. Trust me. They are going to make a lot more sense. It works. 2021 has been 60 something buyers all over North America, and we’ve got over a dozen more closing before the end of 2021. Read this rad success story I’ve got from someone who’s still in the planning phase, “I’ve got some great news. I raised my credit score from 670 to 760.” I’ve got that from someone. Take one guess how they did it.
If you have read the credit episodes and some of the past episodes, he or she said, I can’t remember who it was, “I’m an authorized user on my mom’s credit card. I went from 670 to 760. I can’t believe it.” Authorized user. Now it’s your time. Stop reading and start taking action. Follow the steps. They work. Trust me. I have been doing this for a long time. If you don’t trust me, trust the other audience. Read the other episodes. Reach out, get your guide and start your plan.
You can do a lot on your own but a lot more with somebody else. If you want one, DM me, Instagram @DavidSidoni. Join the How to Buy a Home Facebook Group. You can TikTok message me. I haven’t done any dancing a little while, but I will get back to it or you can just go to DavidSidoni.com, HowToBuyAHome.com, and ask me for a unicorn to get yourself a plan. It’s not magic and it’s not impossible. It’s just knowing the game. Once you know the game, all you need is the right coach to help you in. You can do this.
Important Links:
- Dino Katsiametis – Past Episode
- @DavidSidoni – Instagram
- How to Buy a Home – Facebook Group
- DavidSidoni.com
This podcast was started for YOU, to demystify things for first time home buyers, and help crush the confusion. After helping first timers for over 13 years, I knew there wasn’t t a lot of clear, tangible, useable information out there on the internet, so I started this podcast. Help me spread the word to other people just like you, dying for answers. Tell your friends, family, and perhaps that random neighbor you REALLY want to move out about How to Buy a Home! A really easy way is to hit the share button and text it to your friends. Go for it, help someone out. And if you’re not already a regular listener, subscribe and get constant updates on the market. If you are a regular and learned something, help me help others – give the show a quick review in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts, or write a review on Spotify. Let’s change the way the real estate industry treats you first time buyers, one buyer at a time, starting with you – and make sure your favorite people don’t get screwed by going into this HUGE step blind and confused. Viva la Unicorn Revolution!
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