Brokers or Banks?
“Tiki-taka” is the name of the soccer style made famous by Brasil & Spain in the last couple decades. Short, accurate passes, sometimes 80 or 90 passes even in a possession, proved hard for many opponents to defend, resulting in multiple world championships between the two teams.
That’s the best way I can describe the difference between working for a mortgage bank, vs. a mortgage brokerage.
You may have a mortgage broker in your city who tells you they can do an AIO for you. They don’t work for a bank, mind you; their brokers.
There are a few reasons I’d suggest you work with a proper mortgage bank instead of a brokerage:
As a team member at my bank I can walk down the hall from my office to work with my assistant, my processor, my manager, and my underwriters. I can go upstairs to the 3rd floor to work with our VP’s if I need to—we’re a local team. These short, quick “passes” make a massive difference in response times and overall expediency in taking a loan file from inception to closing. I’d guess there are often 80 or 90 pages of documents passing back and forth between lenders, assistants, processors, underwriters, realtors, insurers, lawyers, and closers. If the bulk of those are in-house, instead of inter-state, turn-times shorten drastically.
I’ve heard from multiple mortgage brokers who envy my position at my bank (and want to work for me) because of how often heir emails to the banks they’re trying to work with go unread, the support they need is often days overdue, and their frustration levels reach a boiling point. I’m not waiting on responses from people in other time zones, I can just pop next door and get any problems resolved with my team right here in my building.
Whereas brokers have to charge origination fees (usually 1% of the loan amount), as a bank we are able to waive it. That alone will end up saving you several thousand dollars.
With something as personal as your financial history, and something as complex as a home loan, you need a trusted team to get to the closing table with as little stress as possible. Brokers are lone rangers, working with disparate banks with whom they often have no actual personal relationships or physical proximity. That’s a tough spot to be in. I’d rather work with a well-trained team working in close relationships with one another, in a healthy culture, towards shared goals.
That’s exactly what we have at aio.Loan & Northpointe Bank.
Applying for a home loan, whether a new purchase or a refinance, will always include no small measure of headache. Why not partner with a team that can make that as quick and painless as possible?
