#41 Listening, Understanding, Coordinating!


If someone asked: What do you do for a living?  My best answer would probably be:  I listen!   Because, as your Mortgage loan officer, if I listen well and you share pertinent facts, documents and dreams thoroughly and accurately  -- just about everything else is follow-thru-made-easier!

Together, our challenge is to look at facts, docs and dreams and fit them into a doable formula.  Then we move it all forward towards the goal of securing your home Mortgage loan.  The key is that your loan officer needs to know a lot, and has to listen carefully in order to see the best way to guide you to your goal of home ownership.

Every mortgage loan officer has techniques and disciplines they employ in order to get the most thorough picture of their client --the client’s qualifying information and circumstances.   What is needed for the loan application is specific.  I personally view good listening as a critical and essential skill for developing a successful process.   It’s important to be able to take the information I hear, interpret it correctly (in the context of a Mortgage loan) and begin to frame the documentation path.

That dream of yours has to touch down and partner with reality.  It’s your mortgage loan officer’s job to pull it all together and make it make sense.   Listening carefully, your Mortgage loan officer begins to understand, not only your end goal, but your strengths, your misgivings, any special circumstances that might exist, your relevant relationships and your personality.  Those are critical insights.  It is those insights that will help win the day!

When you share your information and speak about things you may believe – or might have heard – about the home mortgage loan application process, you may reveal information and beliefs to your lending officer that simply are not accurate.  You might have been fearing some perceived stumbling block that isn’t there at all!

By carefully listening, your home loan officer will be able to identify exactly what your preparatory “homework” needs to be.  The list could be quite long, and it might contain the need for information that surprises you or even makes you uncomfortable.   For instance, in your financial back trail there might be some “situations” where your financial activities weren’t the best moves.  For instance, you might have over-extended or defaulted on a random obligation or credit card.  It’s important that you reveal even that kind of history.

Remember, at this point in your life when you have decided on home ownership, the direction is forward, not backward.   As your loan officer listens, that officer is already piecing together how to present negative information in a positive light for contemporary purposes.   That process cannot be successfully accomplished if you are withholding information, putting lipstick on the pig or skirting facts that might feel a bit embarrassing.  The facts would eventually surface anyway; better they come from you -– up front --  than later in a troublesome way.

Some folks have difficulty verbally discussing uncomfortable issues they would rather avoid.  That takes me back to the importance of your loan officer as a good listener.  Hearing your discomfort or hesitancy is a signal that you have hit a confusing, difficult or touchy or spot in the discussion.  (It’s an important clue, for instance, to where repair work on your financial profile may be needed.)  By revealing those sticky issues, your loan officer learns what will be necessary for structuring your particular homework, and how to organize your loan application.

Of course, even a really good listener can’t do much with that skill if the client is not forthcoming!   Obviously, it is a team effort of give and take.  One fact should be mentioned:  Most obstacles can be overcome, and most past mistakes can be understood in context, and in consideration of obviously better patterns in the present!  So, talk!  Your Mortgage loan officer is listening!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

#56 About Insurance

Image
The decision to buy a home of your own, includes both the consideration of, the added expense of and the mandate to carry the appropriate insurance coverage for the property you are considering.  It’s a “given” that qualifying for your Mortgage Loan means your new property must be insured to protect the property you do not actually own until your Mortgage loan is fully paid. Many factors drive the amount and the kind of insurance you must carry for your specific property.   The recent factors of repeated (and repeated!) wildfires and floods have inspired many new insurance considerations and changes that directly relate to both of those “natural” disasters.    It is not that floods and fires did not exist in the past.   However, the more recent phenomenon, of wildfires originating miles away then sweeping across densely populated areas some distance from their point of origin, is seriously impacting fire insurance availability and limits.    Ne...
Read more

#58 Preserving an Interrupted Plan

Image
When making almost any kind of a serious plan, it’s probably smart to also consider the possibility of some kind of a glitch creating some kind of an interruption!   Interruptions to a plan for purchasing your own home can come in dozens of ways, from any number of directions.   But, understanding that reality, and accepting that “possibilities” may come up, shouldn’t be a reason to worry unnecessarily or become a bundle of nervous “what ifs.” Challenges, and many perfectly normal life situations, might arise and interrupt the original rhythms and timing you have developed for your master plan.    Most such things can be managed, and need not critically damage your plan.     An interruption to how you want things to proceed will probably just mean adjustments, modification and a little finagling! What’s most important, when the unexpected happens, is to keep your sights on your plan as a whole.   For instance, an employment status ...
Read more

#57 Windfalls and Nest Eggs

Image
They are definitely connected!  Understanding both – and their possible positive potential – can make measurable differences in your financial life! Having a formula, some disciplines and a plan for money to reserve may sound like an old fashioned homily, but savings don’t just happen – savings accumulate by determination and repetition.    When an unexpected “windfall” drops into your hands, it can be added to your existing reserves, or it can be a beginning to what you may have been intending but never quite got around to: some savings! Windfalls have several sources! A simple one might be an unexpected raise in pay, or an unexpected bonus!   The key determinator here is “unexpected.”   We all know how easily it can just disappear into the cash flow that’s already flowing! But, wait a minute.   Before it happened, you were probably making ends meet, one way or another, right?   Well, you now have an opportunity to treat a Windfall diffe...
Read more