My wife's first transaction and lessons we both learned. I like to network with lenders and other 
affiliate partners and I am a person that believes what people tell me to be the truth, I am gullible that way. I apologize but I tend to believe people when they tell me something, I guess stupid is as stupid does. I figure I am always telling the truth so I expect every one else to do the same (ok that was a lie, there is no tooth fairy).
Anyway, another blog sparked my memory on this one lender in particular that I used several years ago, I had just left a brokerage to venture out on my own and to find some "partners" that we could help one another with business. So I was open to lenders that wanted to help my clients. One in particular stood out, with his persistence so I gave him a couple refi's and then a couple buyers and before you know it we were working together fairly often, I think I referred hin 15-18 clients over the course of a year.
My wife was my partner and we were getting very busy, so busy that we were not able to go along with each other on every appointment and she had her very first solo transaction, a young couple that were referred to us by a chain of previous transactions. My wife went over the top to take care of these first time home buyers and make sure that every step had been meticulously handled fo a very simple experience in home buying.
The day after loan conditions deadline, the lender called my wife and told her he was going on a 3-week vacation to Europe and the buyers are not able to qualify for the loan and he was sorry but there was really nothing he could do about it. "SORRY! are you kidding me, why didn't you tell me they could not qualify the past 4 weeks we had been working with them, especially when I called you two days before loan conditions deadline to make sure they were not jeopardizing their earnest money!"Sorry, was the only response and away he flew to enjoy 3 weeks in Europe.
My wife asked me frantically, what to do. I said lets get the other agent on the phone and figure out a solution, the agent understood our situation and introduced us to her preferred lender and he was able to put the piece's back together and we successfully closed a week later than planned thanks to cooperation between agents putting their heads together.
Lessons learned-
- Thoroughly check out all of the people you refer to your clients, ask for references
- Ask for feedback from all clients on the people you refer them to (we went back and asked the clients we referred to this lender and none of them gave him rave reviews, we should have done this from the beginning and would have had much less stress in our lives
- Co-operate, that is why it is called a cooperating agent, and that agents are willing to pay a cooperative fee, put your heads together when issues arise to solve them, we are all in this to help or clients, the more we understand that the better we become.
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