Tony Ray Baker
Hi, I’m Tony Ray Baker, and this is Jeremy Reigns. We’re with Remax Select in Tucson, Arizona, today. What we’re going to talk about is choosing the right lender. Is that pretty fun?
Jeremy Rains
Yeah.
Tony Ray Baker
So choosing the right loan officer could save you thousands of dollars and choosing the wrong loan officer could actually stop you from getting a home.
Jeremy Rains
Right. But where do we start?
Tony Ray Baker
Well, let’s start with the mortgage company, also known as the bank.
Jeremy Rains
Right.
Tony Ray Baker
Let’s talk about the few things that we know about banks and mortgage companies. Banks they should not have sellers. Banks and credit unions, for example, with sellers only offer a very limited portfolio of loan products. And the loan officers at the banks and credit unions, they don’t have to be licensed.
Tony Ray Baker
Yeah, that’s true.
Jeremy Rains
Not great.
Tony Ray Baker
The other problem I have with banks and credit unions is that the loan officers don’t have any incentive to complete the loan on time as per contract and possibly puts our buyers into potential breach of contract. And I’ve seen this happen many times.
Jeremy Rains
That’s not where you want to be.
Tony Ray Baker
No. You’re like, oh, yeah. We’ll get that appraisal order sometime next week after I come back from pregnancy leave. It’s like crazy stuff happens with these guys.
Jeremy Rains
I’ve had it.
Tony Ray Baker
No, I’ve had that.
Jeremy Rains
Yeah.
Tony Ray Baker
Nine months.
Jeremy Rains
Yeah. She didn’t tell anybody. Okay.
Tony Ray Baker
She’s just going to take off next. Let’s talk about appraisers. Appraisers must be local. And one of the other issues we have with those banks and those credit unions is usually they don’t have access to the A paper appraisers. Right. Because the A paper appraisers are being working for all the big mortgage companies with the great reputation in town. So they don’t have time to take the appraisals for the banks and credit unions. Just makes sense. But a subpar appraiser can cost you thousands of dollars and even prevent you from getting your home.
Jeremy Rains
Absolutely.
Tony Ray Baker
You can go on and on on how that works and doesn’t work.
Speaker 21
Yes.
Tony Ray Baker
So call me. We’ll talk about it online banks, not your teller banks. The online banks. They even have a worst time getting your local appraisals.
Speaker 21
Yeah.
Jeremy Rains
Well, they got to basically scramble when they get this file to try to find somebody that’s going to be anywhere around here. And somebody in Detroit isn’t going to know exactly what the Tucson area is. And they’re going to send somebody down for Mesa to try to tell us what our homes are worth. Right.
Tony Ray Baker
We just had this happen. We just had the out of town lender. We beg them not to use them. The out of town lender calls for an appraiser. The appraiser comes out of Benton, doesn’t know the Tucson market at all, doesn’t know how to do the cops, declares Tidewater, which means they are saying, I have no idea how to do this appraisal. So they asked all of the people involved, both the real estate agents and the buyer and seller to come up with comps for their appraisal.
Jeremy Rains
Yeah.
Tony Ray Baker
We have to submit everything. And the appraiser says, I don’t agree. And drops the price, $100,000, leaving buyer and seller to negotiate.
Jeremy Rains
Insane. Yes, insane. And they got paid the same.
Jeremy Rains
Oh, no.
Tony Ray Baker
The Benson appraiser got paid $2,500, which was charged to the buyer instead of $600. Oh, my. Because they had to drive up from Benson.
Jeremy Rains
Of course.
Jeremy Rains
Yeah.
Tony Ray Baker
Wouldn’t you know that’s why we don’t use those folks.
Jeremy Rains
Okay.
Tony Ray Baker
And the last thing is that the mortgage company, the bank, they should also have a Sterling reputation with your local real estate agents.
Jeremy Rains
Oh, absolutely.
Tony Ray Baker
I’m telling you, I know who the banks are. I know who the good ones are. And I’m telling my seller, which offers to look at based on bank and loan officer.
Jeremy Rains
Absolutely. And it’s a good segue. Let’s talk about the loan officer themselves. They can save you thousands of dollars. Right, right. So here’s what you need to know. Your loan officer must be local just like everything else. What we just talked about, local appraiser, local underwriter. It’s very important that you’re it’s a theme. Yeah, it’s a theme.
Tony Ray Baker
I shop local. Everything local. It does. It makes a difference. Especially the smaller the cities. It just really makes a big difference. In Tucson, for example, is a small town.
Speaker 21
Yeah.
Jeremy Rains
Well, big town, small city.
Speaker 21
Yeah.
Tony Ray Baker
We act like a little town. Everybody knows each other. But more importantly, there’s very specific niches and things that you have to know. There’s a difference between Blend and Elm and Sam Hughes, which are side by side.
Jeremy Rains
Same zip code.
Tony Ray Baker
Pricing is different because of Desirability. Does an out of town anybody understand that?
Jeremy Rains
No, absolutely not.
Tony Ray Baker
That’s why we’re here to explain that.
Jeremy Rains
Right. And your loan officer should also be full time. That should go without saying.
Tony Ray Baker
But no, I met one that was swinging.
Tony Ray Baker
No good side hustles.
Jeremy Rains
Right. And your loan officer should have at least ten years experience in the business as well. And this is super important. It means that they have the knowledge and experience and expertise when they’re met with an issue that isn’t your everyday issue. They know how to get over that hurdle.
Speaker 21
Yeah.
Tony Ray Baker
They’ve been there before.
Speaker 21
Exactly.
Tony Ray Baker
Let’s go through that 10,000 hours rule that Malcolm Gladwell writes about, and it’s been written about in other books as well. But it’s about being a master of your trade. Ten years is a really good indicator for a good loan officer.
Jeremy Rains
Absolutely. And your loan officer must also have a great reputation amongst top real estate agents. Also really important because that’s going to put your offer above others where they have that out of state online lender or something like that. If the listing agent knows and recognizes the name of your lender, they’re going to know their reputation. They’re going to be able to counsel their seller.
Tony Ray Baker
Correct. This is what I usually do when I see the out of town ones. Not kidding. Just tell the seller, just don’t even look at it. We’ve got great other ones in front.
Jeremy Rains
Of us and we know they’ll close.
Tony Ray Baker
Yeah, they’ll close. Kind of important.
Jeremy Rains
Now, did you know over 80% of the home sold in most markets are sold by the agents of the top 20% and most likely it’s closer to 15 now, right?
Speaker 21
Yeah.
Tony Ray Baker
That’s the old 80 20 rule in business. It’s moving to 15, which is interesting. The 15% of people are doing most of the businesses because they’re mastering their trades.
Jeremy Rains
Absolutely.
Tony Ray Baker
And that’s in all businesses.
Jeremy Rains
It’s very interesting.
Speaker 21
Yeah.
Jeremy Rains
It’s also very important that those agents endorse your loan officer to the seller.
Speaker 21
Right.
Jeremy Rains
Like we were talking about, especially in the multiple offers situation. So if you have multiple offers, you have three that are from online banks and then three that are from local lenders. Guess which three are going to be more important to the seller.
Speaker 21
Right.
Tony Ray Baker
Do the paper thing again.
Speaker 21
No.
Jeremy Rains
Pick it up. For more information on this, watch our short video on creating the winning offer. Loan officers must also be available to answer questions, communicate with your agent regularly, and most importantly, to get you the pre qual your agent so that you have it as soon as you need it. Yeah, right. So in the weekend, for instance.
Speaker 21
If.
Tony Ray Baker
You’Re with a bank, they typically close weekend. And how many times have you seen where the offer the seller wants to look at offers on a Sunday and you find it on a Saturday. And now you have to call and get a pre call from your loan officer. And guess what? You can’t get one. If they’re closed, they’re not answering their cell phone.
Jeremy Rains
They’re hiking.
Tony Ray Baker
They’re hiking, which is great. They all deserve to be hiking. But you’ve got to have somebody and get your pre call right away.
Speaker 21
Absolutely.
Tony Ray Baker
And in a competitive market, that’s imperative. And so what happens is these buyers don’t know this. They actually want to submit an offer. They don’t have a prequel. The other offers get submitted, theirs gets left behind. And that’s a sad state of affairs. But that’s about communication.
Jeremy Rains
Absolutely.
Tony Ray Baker
It’s about availability.
Jeremy Rains
And we’re going to bring this one up again. They must be licensed. If the state requires that, they have one to practice. But really, I don’t know what state wouldn’t want a licensed professional.
Tony Ray Baker
Wait, you get a licensed professional to cut your hair, right?
Speaker 21
Really?
Tony Ray Baker
Seriously, why would you not have a licensed loan officer? That’s crazy. That’s big money.
Speaker 21
Yeah.
Tony Ray Baker
All right.
Jeremy Rains
Now, your loan officer, they must also have a good reputation with the underwriter and they must be able to speak with them. And again, this just goes to some of the other lending facilities that you can use. Their loan officer needs to sit on a phone tree to get a hold of the underwriter. And sometimes they can’t even do that.
Tony Ray Baker
It was in New York, the underwriters in New York and the loan officers in Tucson. She’s trying to explain to the underwriter why this house is worth this value, because the appraiser said so and because it’s Sam Hughes, not Fleming else.
Jeremy Rains
Right.
Tony Ray Baker
There’s just all these weird issues.
Speaker 21
Right.
Jeremy Rains
And your loan officer just they are your advocate, and they need to advocate you to their underwriters as well. And the only way they can really do that is if they can communicate with them and have some kind of relationship with them. And also, most of their business is from referrals, which is also something that not a lot of people think about. But that just shows how great their reputation is. Right. If all of their business is coming from previous business saying, hey, they were great, go use them. That’s really important, right?
Tony Ray Baker
Well, and this goes back to all business. We built our business, our real estate business, all on referral. And nowadays that has translated to Google. You go to Google reviews or Yelp or Facebook reviews or whatever. But the reality is we’re all used to searching for reviews and reviews are referrals. It’s somebody who took the time to say, hey, I worked with these folks and they’re great.
Jeremy Rains
These are referrals.
Tony Ray Baker
But that’s important because you really want to pay attention to referrals and reviews. And the loan officers should have that great reputation.
Jeremy Rains
Absolutely. And just as importantly, you must feel a high level of trust with them. You’re going to be going through your finances. You’re going to be going through your personal situation, your goals. I mean, these are really intimate details that you need to go over with a stranger, and you need to be able to trust them with that information.
Speaker 21
Right.
Tony Ray Baker
And they’re going to take that information, and they’re going to look at different options and different ways to help you. There are so many different types of loan scenarios they can help you with if they know what they need to know. So you’ve got to be able to trust them and just give them all your information. Total transparency. That comes down to a feeling of trust. Right? That’s awesome. So we’re signing out.
Speaker 21
Yes.
Tony Ray Baker
Awesome. I’m Tony Ray Baker.
Jeremy Rains
Jeremy Reigns.
Tony Ray Baker
We’ve got some other great little short videos for you.
Jeremy Rains
Those are in YouTube, YouTube, Facebook and Ctnsite. Ctuc homes. Comfyersworkshop is what it was, buyers Workshop.
Tony Ray Baker
We’ll have links and stuff somewhere on this page, somewhere around there for you, but there’s little videos. They’re meant to be a little bite size videos for you to get more acclimated to the different subjects. If you want to take a real deep dive, there’s one for about an hour where we really teach a class. It’s all about buying a home. And I highly recommend you jump into that.
Jeremy Rains
And if you don’t have time for that, you’re available.
Tony Ray Baker
I am available. So if you want to jump in and just say okay I don’t want to watch more videos. I just want to get a house. I want to get started. We will help you. You just give me a call at 520-631-8669. If you’re in Tucson, Arizona or Southern Arizona area, you call me and our team can help you. If you’re not in our area, call me. Anyways, we have folks in almost every city in the US now because we’ve been doing business 28 years. I can get you a really great real estate agent who will also get you a really great loan officer. But get the realtor first lined up because they’ll know who those loan officers.
Jeremy Rains
Are before you do pre qualification right, they’re your consultant. Use them.
Tony Ray Baker
Awesome. Have a great day. Thanks for watching our videos.
