Lending Climate
Is The New Lending Climate Good For Consumers?
Not always. Most consumers do not know that loans, like beef, are graded. Grading depends on overall quality. Past credit and job stability are two of the most important quality factors.
The grading of beef is established by one entity, the U. S. Department of Agriculture. Loans, on the other hand, are graded by individual lenders, not one entity. So lender knowledge and ethics play a huge part in the grading decision for the loan that a borrower receives.
Too often consumers are being pushed into sub-market loans. Why would that be? Many lenders lack expertise, some are lazy and some are greedy. An ill-informed buyer can suffer.
More and more professional agents are seeing the need to take on advisory roles with their customers. The choice of a lender must always be the customer’s ultimate decision, but without an agent’s advice, buyers can face serious problems.
Understand, not all borrowers have earned the "right" to receive "A" grade paper loans. However, we are seeing an alarming number of loans that have either been denied, (that didn’t need to be), or pushed into high-profit "sub-market" loans that some lenders want to make.
Many customers, and unfortunately many agents, inaccurately believe that all lenders are the same. Nothing could be further from the truth. In today’s lending climate many lenders look at their lending practices as a box. The customers either fit in their lending box or they don’t. The problem is that not all boxes are the same size. More accurately, some lenders make their boxes so small that many people don’t fit.
Our belief is that some lenders lack the expertise or do not have the desire for broader loan programs that can be beneficial to consumers. In other words, customers can suffer because a lender’s box is too small. It is not that customers don’t fit; they just don’t fit in the boxes that many lenders offer.
That is why First Integrity offers many different sizes of boxes. They may be called Conventional, or FHA, or VA, or Private Investor ARMs. Or, they may be called Power Plus, MAP or The Solution Loan.
We know that one size does not fit all. We don’t try to squeeze anyone into a box they don’t want, or worse, let them be squeezed out of the buying process.
