"Listen To Me"...said the lender

Every time I think I've seen most every screwball thing possible, someone comes along to prove me wrong.

I recently had a rural home for sale which I got under contract very smoothly....that is until the lender decided she wanted to play the buyer agent's role too. This lender, whom I'll call Ms. Mortgage (and who coincidentally is also a real estate broker), called me one day out of the blue and without even asking me if I were busy, she commenced to put me on a conference call with the buyer's agent.

It seems Ms. Mortgage did not like some of the provisions that my client included in the contract, including, but not limited to, an AS-IS provision and the type of deed that was being offered (special vs. general). She told me there was no good reason for these provisions and that she's not sure she would accept these in the contract. What?

Anyway, I listened to Ms. Mortgage for a while as she pretended she was the buyer's agent and when she finished I simply told her that I understood her concerns but that the contract was effective and if she didn't agree with it, the buyer should seek another more competent lender. Whoooooopps. Obviously not good to bust up someone's ego just when they thought they had the upper hand and would be running the show.

Ms. Mortgage then said, "Listen to me...you need to understand the Golden Rule...he who has the gold makes the rules." My, my, I didn't realize Ms. Mortgage was funding this with her own money. I found her statement hysterical since I was representing the seller, not the buyer. I promptly explained this fact to her and apparently caught Ms. Mortgage off guard because she became silent. She then said FHA would probably have issues with the contract and that she'd be in touch.  Of course, FHA had never had a problem with these provisions in previous contracts but Ms. Mortgage apparently apparently didn't want to hear that. After we hung up, the buyer's agent called to apologize because she said she had no idea that Ms. Mortgage was going to go off like that.

Of course the transaction closed without a hitch and I never heard back from Ms. Mortgage.