This is my Real Estate Ad on a CTA bus!

For a period of 5 weeks my Real Estate Ad was displayed on the side of a CTA bus in Chicago, which took different routes every day. I was one of 15 agents at Dream Town to have their face on the side of a bus! Ha!

]]> http://www.sullivan-realestate.com/ctabusad/feed 0 http://www.sullivan-realestate.com/don%e2%80%99t-let-the-lending-world-get-you-down-part-1 http://www.sullivan-realestate.com/don%e2%80%99t-let-the-lending-world-get-you-down-part-1#comments Fri, 18 Jun 2010 18:47:44 +0000 admin http://www.sullivan-realestate.com/don%e2%80%99t-let-the-lending-world-get-you-down-part-1 The first thing any buyer should know is that the lending world today isn’t what it used to be four or five years ago. For experienced buyers this means that what they know of the process from the past has drastically changed. This can be frustrating for some!
The first thing a Realtor should know is that staying on top of lending guidelines is crucial to ensuring that the sale goes smoothly. Obviously due to frequent changes in guidelines and lack of expertise in the field, we won’t know EVERYTHING, but we should all get in the habit of creating and maintaining open communication with our lenders.
If there’s one KEY thing I’ve learned in how to ensure that things go as smoothly as possible, it is simply this: disclose, disclose, disclose! We all know that surprises can kill deals. A well-informed buyer will be a happy buyer and a happy buyer makes for a happy agent. So the bottom line is to make sure your buyer is well-informed about the process PRIOR to even beginning and then well-informed throughout.
Make sure your buyers understand, right from the get-go, that the process of getting approved for a loan might be lengthy even despite good credit history and adequate funding. For an experienced buyer, this may be frustrating because banks are requiring more and more information these days – in fact, it may even feel like an invasion of privacy. But if your buyer knows and understands ahead of time that all requested documents are NEEDED to follow and comply with lending GUIDELINES (rules that other people make up,) he or she will feel much more comfortable with disclosing certain things and/or giving over certain documents. I think that often times we let lenders handle anything that is “lending-related” and we assume that the lender will take care of disclosing and explaining things. Ideally, this WILL be the case BUT, it is always good to hear things twice and if you take it upon yourself to convey information (even if your lender has already done so) it will make you seem like you are thorough, knowledgeable, and diligent.
With a first-time buyer all of the guidelines are new and so because they don’t know any better, they will assume that everything they are asked to do is standard procedure. So with a first time buyer, no need to talk about the differences between “then and now” BUT it is still important to disclose everything. AND, with a first-time buyer there are things that we might take for granted. An experienced buyer knows that a lender will pull credit in order to determine loan approval eligibility, for instance. Seems obvious, right? I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve heard a first-time buyer say “I was so angry when I found out that my lender pulled my credit – no one ever told me it would be pulled!” Don’t take anything for granted – just because it may seem obvious to you does not mean it will be obvious to a first time buyer.
So here are the things I constantly remind myself to do:
• Make sure your buyer understands the difference between a pre-qualification and a pre-approval; explain the importance of a pre-approval; explain what information a lender will require for a pre-approval (that last step is important in setting expectations because a lot of people just don’t know!)
• Provide your buyer with a checklist of items that a lender might request (your lender can usually provide this for you) and let your buyer know, up front, that these documents have a life of about 30 days – meaning that the lender will request new documents if you aren’t scheduled to close within 30 days of the pre-approval.
• In addition, depending on the specific situation, documents not listed on the sheet might be requested.
• Make sure that you understand the loan situation – what will be required for this specific purchase in order for the loan to go through? Know that guidelines will be different for single family homes versus condos, primary/secondary home purchases versus investment purchases, FHA versus conventional, etc.
• Make sure that throughout the process you are checking in with the lender AND keeping your client informed (I usually copy everyone on all emails to ensure that everyone is on the same page and to ensure that all information is kept in writing somewhere.)
• Let your clients know that on occasion surprises may still come up but that if they do not to be alarmed – buyers get very scared and nervous about anything “new” so letting them know ahead of time that new things often DO pop up makes the discovery of the new thing easier to digest in the future.

Part two of this blog will discuss certain lending guidelines that every agent should know!