St. Louis Real Estate - Dark Side (cont)

So how do you avoid the “Dark Side?”
by Chris Scheer, First Integrity Mortgage

Let me first say that I believe that everyone should have the opportunity to make money. The Mortgage Industry is a great place to earn a living, provide for your family and help people make dreams come true. However, with every industry there are always people who are in it only for themselves. These people prey on others who are less educated, less intelligent and sometimes less qualified. When they do, they usually abuse the system, creating large incomes for themselves while staining the reputation of their entire industry. Not to mention that the people who are usually their prey are the people who need to have a lender who will treat them fairly as opposed to taking advantage of them.

Once a “B” always a “B”. When the sub prime lending market was in its beginning, there were borrowers who would not qualify for the “A” paper loans. On more that one occasion I would hear an account rep say that “B” borrowers don’t change their habits and they don’t learn their lesson. That may be true about some people, but I believe that people can learn to manage their credit and they can learn to manage their finances. All they have to do is have an honest chance!

So what is an honest chance? Well it is putting someone into a loan program so that they can develop a budget off of it. It is creating a mortgage solution that will not penalize the client in a short period of time. It is not gouging them in fees when they do come back to you, eating all of their equity up with refinance fees. It is treating people the way that you would want to be treated.

As we see mortgage delinquencies rise and foreclosures happening at an alarming rate, there is a change that must take place. But it is going to have to be consumer driven. Legislation is not the key. Education of both the consumer and of the mortgage sales people will be the basis of this revolution. The consumer must learn not to fall into the trap of working with people who spend tremendous amounts of money on advertising. Mortgage originators need to learn that if you are going to stay in this business for a career, relationships are a necessity. To nurture those relationships you must take care of people so that they want to come back and refer other clients to you.

Chris Scheer can be contacted at
chrisscheer@stlouisrealestatevoice.com
or visit Chris at his blog
http://chrisscheer.blogspot.com/

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 19th, 2007 at 5:11 pm and is filed under First Time Home Buyer, For Buyers, Mortgage News, Real Estate News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.