I'm Returning Your Love Letter to Sender
Some buyers will try anything to increase their odds of getting into contract and tugging the heart strings of the seller whose home has set their hearts aflutter. One of the most popular tools for this job is the so-called "love letter." A love letter from potential buyer to seller typically fires its opening salvo along these sights:
"Dear Seller, we knew from the minute we walked in the door..."
As a mortgage lender in California, and even more so here in the highly-competitive San Francisco Bay Area, many of the best real estate agents with whom we work encourage their buyers to include a love letter along with our pre-approval letter when they submit an offer. And why not? Some sellers rightly want to understand who will next occupy their home. Some will want to assess which buyer best embodies the spirit they saw in themselves during the time they lived in the property.
So I don't want to weigh in on the effectiveness of love letters themselves. I believe they help and my wife and I wrote one ourselves when we offered on a home. But here's one thing, as a home loan advisor, I would like to say to buyers and their agents: Leave the love letters out of the documents you send us! Yes, we can and will remove them when we notice them, but it only takes one oversight from me or anyone on my team before a love letter that may say something like what you read below finds its way in front of an underwriter:
"...the repairs in the downstairs kitchen don't concern us. John (Dear John?) is good with his hands and we plan to fix this upon moving in..."
"...we realize that the home has some deferred maintenance but we find it charming and are ready for the challenge..."
"...the termite damage in the report is trivial in our opinion...we still love the house!"
As you can tell, any of the above statements could initiate a cascade of questions and, possibly, problems. Love letters are great on the emotional level, and to the seller, but by the time a ratified contract is about to come to us, let's all do our part to make sure that anything superfluous is removed from documentation we will process and as of now, mortgage guidelines are not calling for love letters. Yet... So all we want is a copy of the fully executed contract and all addenda. That's it. And if your contract is written to reference inspection reports, we may request those too. That's another topic but something about which to exercise great caution also.
Remember, it's a full doc world in lending. Every time. What's been seen cannot be unseen and every one of us along the chain has a resposibility to provide a clean, concise file to the bank. So go ahead buyers and Realtors. Put on your colorfully creative writing cap and woo your seller. Just don't let us in on the love fest if you can help it. We don't want to be writing banking's equivalent of any Dear John letters to you. That is, "You're on your own, we've found another loan to love."
No such number, no such zone,
Robert J. Spinosa
Executive Loan Advisor
NMLS: 22343
Cell/Text: 415-367-5959 Fax: 415-366-1590
rob.spinosa@supremelending.com
1058 Redwood Highway, Frontage Road, Mill Valley, CA 94941
EVERETT FINANCIAL, INC. D/B/A SUPREME LENDING (NMLS ID #2129)
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