Sometimes all one can do is laugh at themselves! So, I decided with rates having gotten so low again that I would take a HUGE leap of faith and lock my husband and I into a 15 year mortgage at 4.625%! After all, someone has to have some faith that the mortgage industry is tightening, but there is still business to be had out there! We were very excited, and in fact still are as we closed today- yay!!! Assuming all goes well, we will have our mortgage paid off shortly after our first child goes off to college (or maybe earlier if we play our cards right). I, personally, am not planning to move before then!
But doing my own loan (technically a co-worker was the LO on this one) was an eye opening experience. It brings you back to reality about how it feels to be a customer! It reminds you of being human and how what we think is so common sense is totally not common sense to our customers! We work in the field, so of course it is totally natural for us to know that every amount of money we pay as we go should be paid by check or cashier's check- for example, the earnest money should be paid by check, the check at close must be a cashier's check, cash and money orders are not acceptable, cash at home will not fly, etc.! But how easily I diverted back into a lay person mode. I have two examples of things that I did during the transaction in which I had to ask myself, "What would I tell a customer right now?!"
The first experience was when I was walking around my house gathering up documentation. I was looking for my own two years of W2s. I could find 2007, but for the life of me couldn't find 2006. I kept asking myself, does my processor really need this? Did my husband shred it when we had a contractor build shelves in our storage room? Well, I had the a-ha moment when I realized that I'd ask a customer to get this from HR, payroll, etc. So, I did just that and then experienced the same frustration when their urgency wasn't the same as my urgency- note to self- KEEP DOCUMENTS FOR YEARS! Then I reminded my husband that my processor would be sending a VOE to his HR so to please ask HR to expedite this, and his question was, "You guys need a formal VOE? I gave you two pay stubs... won't that suffice?" I smiled as I thought, I've trained the team well, he really knows the mortgage lingo after all these years, but then I had to clarify, "Oh honey, that was alt. doc. and remember, that's over. It's all about full doc. now, and we need a full VOE in every file!"
The last Laugh Out Loud moment was after I had gone through my bank drivethrough yesterday to get my cashier's check for today's closing. I was so proud. I had it in hand before my processor called to give me my final numbers. She's very good, and she's always within a dollar, so it never occurred to me that her figures would be slightly different- well, needless to say, she was 77 cents off- that's right- just 77 cents. So, I proudly rounded up the 77 cents from my various stashes around my house. She laughed as she said, so calmly just like she would talk calmly to a customer but with more casualness, "Dude, do you think they will accept cash at the closing?" Oh my gosh! The light bulb totally went off, and I laughed out loud! It was so funny. Of course not! What was I thinking? Now I had to write a personal check for 77 cents! But it was a great learning moment about coming back down to reality and realizing that what we think is so natural, we really shouldn't expect a customer who doesn't work in this industry to think about!
Comments(2)