May 19th, 2010 11:15 PM by Eric Fang
The Loan Agent is a career, or a small business. I call myself loan originator(LO) sometimes.
For most people, we are the servicing person who helps the buyersor borrowers to get the loans, with the best rates/options if possible.
Recently, a few realtors want to work with me and refer the business to me because I can close their transactions smoothly. We worked togetherjust because our mutual clients. And they like the way I close the loans.And they acknoledge my value to their clients and tried working with me for the mutual benefits.
I still don't commit to work with those agents yet. To me, like I always saidmy cleints' interest first(not their clients) is my first priority.I will help my clients(purchase or refi) to get the best rates first.
A few years ago, the book of "Rich Dad Poor Dad" was so popular when the real estate was hot. And the author Robert Kiyosaki mentioned that if you want to invest successfuly in real estate, you should have a team, which includes the lawyear, CPA, banker, realtor, handyman(or property management) and loan agent(or banker). Yes, LOs are part of the team as well.
The value of the loan agent is not simply to get a good rates, we help youto have some planning as well when investing.
If you read my previous blog before, I have some very good investors whocan have very good sense of the RE market and grasp all the opportunitythey can. They can use ALT-A loans when the underwriting guideline isloose, change to ARM immediately before the ARM rate rose and refinancedagain to low ARM rates recently. And when the investors do the loans, they do not loans with any LOs, they only work with good LOs.
Sometime ago, one previous client cancelled a signed loan because the rate of 5.125%(400k loan) was too high and he wanted to get 5% with anotherperson. And later, by comparison, he liked my way of doing business(goodrates, smooth transaction, no surprise, etc) and he wanted to work with meagain. But the only thing I am not so sure is that I don't know whether he willchoose to cancel a signed loan again when the rate is 0.125% lower.And the 0.125% rate fluctuation is normal for any market.