The loan process is enough to turn a normal person into a zombie. You may have retired from a stressful career in police work, military service, or sales at Oracle, but that has not prepared you for the mortgage mine field. Trust me. I was an attorney for 20 years, and I know what stress, bureaucracy, and B.S. are, and if you think working for Larry Ellison was a nightmare, you haven’t applied for a mortgage recently.
Keys in The Loan Process
The loan process can go smoothly, or it can suck the life out of you. Experience has taught me that the very first tip to save yourself from a mortgage nightmare is to hire a local mortgage broker. I’ve written several articles on why this is so important. A mortgage broker outside your market does not know the local real estate requirements for an underwriter, and they are so far away, they often put your file at the bottom of a huge stack. Do yourself a big favor: do not hire some national mortgage company that advertises like crazy. [Read Hire a Local Mortgage Broker]
The second tip is do not hire a new or inexperienced mortgage broker. That has turned into a nightmare for so many buyers, I cannot even count that high. An inexperienced loan officer doesn’t know what they don’t know, and at the 11th hour just before closing they will often hit you will new documentation they could have asked for weeks before, and this can kill your transaction or require a closing extension. A closing extension can create hardships for the buyer and seller in additional costs and rescheduling moving trucks (and sometimes that can’t be done without a mini-nightmare of its own), rescheduling airline tickets, and so on.
The third tip is hire an experienced, professional, and honest mortgage broker. This may sound like the last tip, but is is not the same. I cannot overemphasize this one. The best of the best in every profession always consists of a small percentage of people, and that is true in the mortgage business.
The Loan Process – VA Loans
A VA loan can be a nightmare by virtue of the massive documentation and bureaucracy, but the loan process is especially a nightmare if you have an inexperienced loan officer, and the loan process gets even more problematic if your loan officer is not local. A VA loan also requires VA certified appraisers, which often means the appraiser is not local, and that can create another mini-nightmare as they often under-appraise properties. The parties are then thrown into a legal quagmire as the price must be renegotiated, or the parties must appoint a second appraiser, and all that will require a closing extension, and the parties might not agree on price. The transaction may be terminated, and it’s possible the parties will get into a dispute over who gets to keep the earnest money. This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the loan process for a VA loan and many other loans.
I strongly recommend you connect with the best of the best when it comes to a Realtor, and the best of the best when it comes to selecting a mortgage broker. Save yourself the stress and nightmare by taking these tips from the school of hard knocks seriously. I am certain that the last thing you need going into retirement is a nightmare with the loan process.
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