One of the keys to building a successful Mortgage Broker/Realtor relationship is identifying the common misconceptions that each party may have.  Since I am a mortgage broker myself I have a good understanding of what our perceptions are on the finance side of the fence but I consulted 10 Realtors to get a better understanding of the general perceptions that the real of what real estate professionals thought about the finance side.

My findings were as I thought they would be.  Both sides have rather large misconceptions of what each other does per the "transaction".  In these blog letters I would like to expose these misconceptions and hopefully break down some walls that will lead to better business practices in our industry as well as better relationships.

 1. The overwhelming misconception that Realtors have of Mortgage brokers is that Mortgage Brokers keep the mortgage process mysterious on purpose.  Each Realtor I consulted with all said that they felt like mortgage brokers were purposely with holding information about the loan process because it was a way that they could control the deal and purposely keep the Realtors in the dark so it renders them powerless to their customers.  A wise man once told me, be it right or wrong the way a person feels about something causes their reality to produce decisions that affect daily life actions.  So the fact that Realtors have this perception of mortgage brokers actually causes them to build walls in the relationship which ultimately can have an effect on the "transaction" in which both parties are working on together.  Most of the time it produces a negative outcome.

To any realtor that is reading this and feels this way about mortgage brokers I sympathize with you because I can see how you come to this conclusion after talking with other Realtors.  I can assure you that this is the furthest thing from the truth though.  The process of doing a loan is extremely complicated.  It requires a high amount of attention to details.  Unfortunately our industry unlike yours throws the sheep to the wolves.  We go through only 24 hours of training and then take a test and wah lah we have a License.  The things that you are tested on only apply to the law and being ethical.  You get absolutely no training on how to put a deal together.  Yeah we know how to make a file compliant but how the heck do we get this client money? 

It is definitely a flaw on our side of the fence.  Most of you have probably had a bad experience green loan officers that were acting like they new what they were doing just to keep you at bay in order to hopefully close a deal and get paid.  That is the sad truth.  So use your deductive reasoning and see that the reality is actually the polar opposite of what you are thinking, we don't have a secret mystery that we are trying to hide from you in order to make ourselves feel more powerful but we have a mystery that we are trying to figure out and most of the time we are either to proud or more likely to fearful to admit to you we don't know what we are doing.

I could write so much more about this but I will save it for mortgage minute #3.  In my follow up letters I will tell you everything you want to know and probably more about the Mortgage process.  I will discuss fees at length and prove to you that there are no hidden fees.  I will expose exactly how a loan officer/mortgage broker makes their money.

Please feel free to comment on anything that you feel is correct or incorrect.

 This is a goodwill project in an effort to make our industry the best it can be.

Sincerely,

John Cookman