You Expect Me to Believe That!?

I am married to an engineer. He believes roughly 0% of what he’s told unless it’s proven to him. I’m not talking about outlandish claims about the sky falling or even controversial issues like people originating from chimps, but I mean, anything he’s told. I made a comment recently about how I needed to stop shopping at Whole Foods because it’s so much more expensive, and he wouldn’t believe me until he had one Kroger receipt and one Whole Foods receipt laid out side by side so that he could compare almond prices. Things that are just so obvious to me are not at all obvious to him unless he has a calculator, spreadsheet and scientific experiment to work with.

I’ve learned to love it about him (if it weren’t for this knack of his, we’d be totally in debt and probably members of a cult), and he, over the years, has learned to keep his mouth shut on certain claims I throw out. “Yes, opening my mouth really wide while I apply mascara makes it go on easier. Women have been doing it for, like, centuries, and I don’t know how to prove it!”

All this said, I totally get the need for some people to simply have proof of things before they believe them. Take, for example, the mortgage industry. When you receive a loan from James Beaver or Chad Helmcamp, you’ll be asked to provide documents that back up everything on your loan application. And here’s why. . .

When my ole Bosses provide you with a loan, they end up selling that loan to a servicing bank. For example, my own refinance with them a few months ago resulted in me actually making my loan payments to Chase Bank. And eventually, if not already, Chase is going to sell my loan to Fannie Mae (though I’ll still make payments to Chase and I won’t even know it’s been sold to Fannie). Okay before you ask, I really don’t know who Fannie Mae is. It has something to do with the government. There. That’s all I know.

Okay so here’s what could happen, and has happened in the past to other lenders. Fannie Mae buys your loan from the servicing bank (Chase, Wells Fargo, etc), and after taking a closer look at it (auditing it), they notice that some things aren’t documented just how they’d like them documented. Fannie forces Chase, or whichever servicing bank it is, to buy back the loan. And you know what Chase does then? It goes to the mortgage banker and forces him or her to “repurchase” the loan, thus leaving that mortgage bank with less money to lend out in the future.

Okay, in the following analogy, I will be Fannie Mae, JCrew will be Chase, and the mortgage banker will be the Italian mill workers.

Let’s say I buy some ballet flats from JCrew. I take them home and wear them to a nice garden party (because in my analogies, I go to garden parties). Once there, the blasted flats begin to fall apart, thus, not being exactly what I thought I was buying. After the garden party, I drive over to JCrew and kindly tell JCrew that they must buy the flats back from me. JCrew complies. Then, JCrew calls up the Italian mill workers ( I swear, their catalog is all the time telling us that their stuff is made in some ancient Italian mill). Finally, JCrew makes the Italians buy back the shoes. See how this works? From then on, those mill workers make sure every shoe is perfect.

So my ole Bosses’ job is to make sure nobody down the road will be asking them to repurchase your loan. That means that James Beaver and Chad Helmcamp give you the best service possible, providing you with the loan that fits your exact situation, and they document the heck out of it.

When James and Chad pre-approve you for a loan, they are provided with a list of things they’ll need to “prove” about you. It all boils down to, are you who you say you are, and do you have what you say you have.

Sure, James and Chad could take a look at your bank statement summary page and get a good idea of how much money you have. But they also know that a few months down the road, someone else’s eyes will be on your loan, and that someone is going to want to see every single page of your bank statements, front and back.

Here’s the point. When you go through the loan process here at Envoy Mortgage, someone is going to ask you for lots of detailed documents. You have to give them exactly what they ask for. And that’s not just for my ole Bosses’ benefit, but your own. If you do not provide exactly what is asked, then your loan will not go through smoothly. Period. The best way to ensure that you have a smooth loan process is to provide every single document your loan officer asks for, and to get it to them promptly.

There will be times when it seems redundant. Just go with it. James and Chad aren’t trying to be difficult; they just simply know what is required of them to provide great loans.

If you’re thinking of buying a home or refinancing the one you have and you have questions, contact me or the ole Bosses. They get so excited when blog readers contact them, and it makes them less likely to send me packing.

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