Our loan broker and real estate person suck

When we were (semi) looking to buy our home, we did it backwards (as usual) and made a rather impulsive offer that was quickly accepted, then went looking for a loan. We have good credit and stable income, so we thought it would be a breeze. And oddly enough, the basics of getting approved were a piece of cake. 6 months prior to making the offer, we saw the house right when it went onto the market at an open house. We wanted to view the interior, so I tried to make an appointment and called his office, leaving a voicemail. Nothing. A week later, I tried again, this time asking the receptionist for his cell phone number, left a message on the office line and his cell. Still nothing. So we let it go, figuring there was already an accepted offer on the table.

Six months later, the listing was still there, with a price drop. So we called and the agent picked up on the first try. When we met at the house, he was incredibly condescending, impatient, and acted like he was too good to be showing the property. We made a connection with the owner, who liked us and agreed to the asking price – the agent actually tried to lie to us and tell us that we needed to increase our offer. After the owner read him the riot act and put him in his place, he then proceeded to tell us we should be more grateful to him for negotiating such a great deal.

Then came the loan. We decided to go with our bank, since they had a great deal on the interest rate and were offering closing costs to be credited back, so it really worked for us. We made an appointment, and we took the afternoon off from work to meet the broker. He “forgot” and told us to just meet him the next day, which happened to also be a weekday. As if we didn’t have to work and could accomodate his schedule, you know, no problem. We ended up meeting him on a Saturday, where the loan was approved. It was supposed to close in 3 weeks, during which time the broker went on TWO one-week vacations where we couldn’t reach him or find out status. The broker tried to reach out to us recently regarding refinancing, which we’re interested in so we called him back and re-forwarded all our info – it then took him a month to call us back to tell us that he needed more time.

So it was such a pain that the process itself was easy, but the people we were working with were so unprofessional. And there aren’t the only instances where we’ve seen this happen, many of our friends have had similar experiences. How sad is it that in a customer service industry, you can’t serve the customer?  Look – I understand that agents and brokers are often mistreated by people who don’t value their time and can be condescending, but that’s not a reason to stay in this industry and pay it forward to future potential customers.

How has your experience been with your agent or broker? 

I’m back!

It’s been a while since I’ve been here, and boy, have I missed it!  Since the last post, we bought a house, remodeled, moved, started an MBA program, dropped out of an MBA program, hubs sold his business and is trying to start a new one, and I started a new job. Whew!

We stumbled upon the house unexpectedly… we both love real estate and cruise Redfin.com frequently – one Sunday while going through the real estate section of the paper, I saw a house in a great area that had been on and off the market for a while that had been relisted. Altogether, it had been on the market for nearly 6 months… and this time it was back on, but with a huge price drop. We weren’t ready to really begin looking, after all, we still had 7 months to go on the existing lease.  But for whatever reason, there was something in the air that Sunday, we were dizzy from not having had breakfast yet, etc, we spontaneously decided to call the realtor. He picked up on the 2nd ring, and we had an appointment to see the house in an hour. We went into the house, and the area was much nicer than we had expected – lovely mature trees, quiet, and great school district. We went back to the realtor’s office, made an offer, and went into escrow the next day.

The loan process was excruciating. I wanted to give up several times. We have 700+ credit scores, stable employment, tax returns, finances in order, etc. We didn’t have enough for 20% down, but we knew we were selling his business and would be able to refi at a later date, so we went with FHA. And with that, it still took 3 months to be approved. Luckily, our loan broker was great to work with and kept us informed during the entire process.

More a bit later – so glad to be back!