I just went through a very frustrating experience and thought I would share it in the hopes it may help someone else. It has to do with the policy many banks have adopted of forcing a buyer to pre-qualify with the banks lender of choice before they can submit an offer. If you are not ready for this scenario, it could spell disaster.

This weekend I showed property to a nice couple I have been dealing with for quite some time. They are well to do and seem like they should easily qualify. We found a really great bank owned home that they fell in love with. The home is owned by Countrywide and they demand that anybody who makes an offer has to be prequalified through Countrywide. I have encountered this before and was not surprised in the least. My clients were already preapproved through their own lender and it seemed like the Countrywide prequal was just a little bump in the road.

Guess what? The Countrywide lender refused to prequalify my buyers. Here we were with a recent, valid preapproval letter from the buyers lender and we can't even submit an offer because the Countrywide lender couldn't get it together. To make things worse, she was unavailable in a conference for almost the whole day yesterday. By the time my buyer got her the requested documents, the day and the timeline was past. She needed more docs from them to do a prequalification, but it didn't matter. Countrywide only gives you 24 hours to complete the process and they were up. Maybe if the lender they were forcing us to use had shown up to work for the full day, this wouldn't have happened.

Another thing that really bothers me is the lender you are forced to prequal with will invariably try to muscle in on the deal. They will pester your buyers and make sales pitches to them until the minute the property goes into escrow. I have had several buyers get a bad taste in their mouths from this tactic. It is almost like a used car salesman kicking the tires. Whenever I meet a potential buyer or seller and they tell me they are already working with another Realtor, I back off immediately and let them know if things don't work out, they can always call me. After that, I don't contact them or bother them. It is amazing that these lenders don't extend the same professional courtesy to their fellow lenders.

Originally posted at www.bigbearilluminated.com