Tag Archives: how to get a mortgage in Houston

Did you answer mostly As, Bs, or Cs?

. The Scoop on Home Loans . , , ,

Sunday night my husband and I invited a few neighbors over for some cake and wine. After the obligatory chatter about how good the cake was (thanks bakery down the street!), the topic of conversation turned to mortgages. I’m not even kidding. See, my new house is situated in a new community that is still under construction, so barring that nobody flat out paid cash for their house (and if they did, I need to invite them over for cake more), all of my neighbors have recently secured a mortgage. I promise I didn’t bring the conversation up, and I didn’t even prompt them, but do you know what they were saying? I’ll tell you – they were complaining about the Big Box Bank and the crappy service they received. If my blog were a portable device that you could actually clasp in your hand, I would have thrown it in their faces and been all “Woo HA HA HA! Should have been reading my mortgage blog, suckas!”

So that you do not have to become one of my poor neighbors that didn’t close their loans on time and were led astray by the Big Box Bank, I have prepared some help for you. To help save you all the headache of one day deciding on where to secure a mortgage, I present to you a Glamour Magazine style quiz!

[Please note that even though I am writing a Glamour Magazine quiz, I am very angry with Glamour Magazine right now for putting 12-year-old old boys on the cover of August. Seriously, dudes didn’t even have chest hair and I felt dirty reading it.]

What mortgage bank should you use if you need a home loan? A Simple Quiz

1. You’re walking down the street when a pigeon poops on your left ear. You:

a. Chase after that bird and shoot him with your handmade bow and arrow and feed him to your family for dinner.

b. Look around to see if anyone noticed and then run into the nearest store to use their restroom to clean yourself up and possibly text your BFF to share the experience.

c. Shout out loud in the street that you are so happy to have been crapped on.

2. When ready to check out at the grocery store, you:

a. This question is difficult for you to answer because you grow all of your food in your back forty and don’t even know where the closest grocery store is.

b. Find the shortest line or proceed to self checkout.

c. Stand behind a lady with a three-ringed binder full of coupons who will be paying by check that she won’t start filling out until the cashier has given her the total. Actually, the lady hasn’t even pulled the checkbook out of her purse. Instead, she will raise her eyebrows in shock and ask to speak to the manager when her total does not come to zero. This does not bother you. You wait for four hours in line.

3. You are planning a romantic weekend away with that special someone. You:

a. Begin by replacing the horses’ shoes and securing a new hide to the top of your wagon in preparation for the long journey ahead. You will not pack “snacks for the road” as you will kill your own vittles throughout the journey.

b. Check out the hotel online and read the reviews.

c. Decide that you can “find a motel once we’re on the road” and leave your map at home. After seven hours of searching for a spot with vacancies, you convince your lover that sleeping in a truck stop parking lot on the side of Interstate 10 is “romantic.” (Your lover leaves you the next day. You are okay with this.)

You answered:

Mostly As – Transistor Radio Man

You like to keep things old school. The janky mortgage broker you find through clicking a blinking “Zero Percent Interest Rates with No Credit Score!” on the side of your Myspace page is the one for you. It won’t bother you that your mortgage broker works from his mom’s basement and makes you fill out your application in a number 2 pencil. You call that “simply charming!”

Mostly Bs – The Normal Human Being

You are a normal person, ready to tackle the world. You like things done well, in a timely manner by intelligent people. You are a perfect candidate for getting a home loan with the Memorial/Heights Branch of Envoy Mortgage.

Mostly Cs – The Masochist

Pain is the name of your game. The harder life is for you, the better. And if most of it is spent waiting, that’s fine, too. You’ll love the Big Box Banks and relish in the fact that they don’t give a toot about you and never close loans on time.

Alright folks, tune in later this week for some office gossip. Will Recycling Nikki garbage dive again? Will Former Online Dater Jason find true love and shout “Boom!”? Will John find the bathroom floor-peeing culprit? Will Straight-Shooter Shane stop drinking Dr. Pepper? Will Hayley thwart another robbery? Has Will learned his lesson about asking non-pregnant women if they’re pregnant? Will you get to hear about my co-worker Sandra once performing surgery on a man’s nipple? (True story.) Find out later this week. Happy Tuesday, readers.

Birds, Dog, a Horse, and My Co-workers

. Office Happenings, The Scoop on Home Loans . , , ,

I may have caused a bit of a mini-panic to settle itself on my Houston readers concerning the dead birds falling from the trees outside our office. Y’all are so touchy, I swear. Listen, at this point, nobody in the office is running a fever, and our front desk receptionist, Christi, even exercised for the first time in her life yesterday (I made her go on a walk with me and you would have thought it was the SEALs training),  thus proving that all our lung capacities are still optimally running.

Here’s what’s happened since Thursday. The Humane Society finally showed up and took “samples” (dead birds) with them to run some tests. After they left, birds kept on dropping, and Juan, our awesome building maintenance man, had to run out and scoop them up as they fell. But then Juan had to go run an errand, and for two hours the birds piled up. Otis watched nervously from his post inside the building and directed visitors around the “samples.”

Meanwhile, until Otis hears back from the Humane Society, he’s busy trying to find out what’s up by frantically searching the Internet, which worries me because I don’t want Homeland Security tracking his searches and thinking he’s a lunatic. Hey Homeland – Otis is a really great guy! I swear!

Enough of the bird debacle. This week I’m working on writing bios for the team for some website we’re going to have (why this website isn’t enough for us, I do not know). I’ve been pulling the mortgage bankers into a conference room and asking them all their hopes and dreams. Here are the highlights:

  • When I asked Richard about his dog, he abruptly got up to go fetch his phone to show me pictures. On his way back to the conference room from his desk (like, four feet away) he was so engrossed in the dog pictures that he passed the conference room and walked into some random office. I was like, “Richard! Hey Richard I’m in here!” Dude loves his dog. He also loves everything else about life and I’m having a hard time coming up with a snarky nickname for him. More on that later.
  • When I sent Straight Shooter Shane the rough draft of his bio, which included the phrase “frat house” because he used to be in a creepy fraternity, he actually wrote back: It’s never a “frat house” always a fraternity lodge or house…. Otherwise, I love it! That’s so weird. It’s just so weird. What is a “lodge” anyway? Lodge. It sounds like throat lozenge. I asked him if he still wears his letterman’s jacket, and he frowned and gave me some lip about not having a class ring. And he still won’t show me the secret frat house (d’ya hear that!?) handshake. Also, I have changed his name to Straight Shooter Shane because the guy totally tells clients what’s up. Not a coddler, that Shane.
  • V-Shaped Mortgage Banker Will, forgetting it was an interview for a professional bio, ended up telling me some horrible story about a horse getting killed (he didn’t kill it). Y’all, come on. I’m trying to bring you business here. Don’t go telling me about the night an axe murderer broke into your house.
  • In Just So John‘s interview, he told me about a loan he did for a transgendered person, and Just So John had to file all this paperwork to prove that his client was one person and not two people since the guy/girl’s W-2s from one year said Bill and the next year said Veronica. And you thought you had a tricky loan?

Oh, and by the way, apparently nobody listened to me last week when I said to get a loan somewhere else, because our business is exploding this week. Two borrowers in the past hour have called Online Dater Mortgage Banker Jason asking for loans, and I know this because he’s all, “BOOM!” and singing and giving people high fives. (Dude loves mortgages.) Then he made a big sandwich to celebrate.

That must've been one big loan...

That must’ve been one big loan…

Alright folks, I promise I’ll let you know as soon as we hear from the Humane Society. While you all be on the lookout for falling parakeets, I’m off to edit these bios and try to make this group of people with whom I work appear fairly normal. Wish me luck.

Are You Driving Chad Helmcamp Crazy?

. Office Happenings, The Scoop on Home Loans .

Chad is experiencing a bit of frustration. He keeps letting out these maniacal laughs and saying OMG to his computer. It has to do with a client. Not a client like you all lovely people, but a client that’s not listening and not reading e-mails and instructions. Now don’t get me wrong; Chad LOVES his clients and would probably pay their mortgages himself if he had the money, but this doesn’t mean some borrowers don’t send him into panic attacks at times. You may be wondering if you are that type of client. I assure you, dear reader, you are not. But in case you are still concerned, here is a nice flowchart to help you determine Chad’s state of mind upon working on your loan.

Have you driven Chad Helmcamp crazy?

If you would like to not drive Chad Helmcamp crazy this week, send him an e-mail at CHelmcamp@EnvoyMortgage.com and ask what kind of payment you’d be looking at on a home loan (and any other questions you may have about the mortgage process).