Why Won't You Meet With Us?

The short answer to that is because it is a waste of your time and mine.

In the old days you had to meet with your loan officer and convince him/her to give you a loan.  That led to loans being approved/disapproved for all kinds of reasons that had nothing to do with the creditworthiness of the borrowers like race, religion, etc.  Not only was that wrong, but in many cases it was illegal, leading to lawsuits and government action against the lenders.

Today, your loan officer has virtually no authority to approve or disapprove your loan.  My job as a loan officer is to know all the very complicated rules and guidelines that go along with the various loan programs available, and help you to comply with them.  I do that for my clients whether I like them or not, and in most cases it is completely unnecessary for me to know anything more about my client than what is on the loan application.  In those rare cases where more information is necessary, I will call and ask.

So who actually approves your loan application?  Actually, your loan is approved or declined by a computer program known as an automated underwriting system, and it couldn't possibly care less about anything that isn't on your loan application, other than your credit report, which it accesses on its own when it analyzes your loan application.  It doesn't care about who you are, what you look like, whether you're naughty or nice, etc.  It also doesn't care about why your credit is good or bad, or why you don't have any savings, or anything else you are going to tell me.  Either you satisfy the rules written into its code or you don't.

We can talk until we are both blue in the face, and I still won't be any closer to being able to tell you whether you will qualify or not, because the automated underwriting system rules and logic are so complicated that it is difficult to predict what answer it will give.

Surely, you would agree that when you are applying for a mortgage it is a waste of time and resources to drive across town to meet with someone who has no authority to make a decision about your loan.  That is why I generally require applicants to spend 15 minutes or so (about the time it would take you just to drive to my office) filling out the loan application on this website before we meet or talk at any length.

If I can get you a loan I will be happy to meet with you to answer all your questions, but if I can't get you a loan, then any other questions you might have about mortgages are pretty much irrelevant.  In that case, I will be happy to discuss what you need to do to qualify.