We have a fantastic loan officer/lender from Movement Mortgage.
His name is Arash Gezerseh.
Fantastic lender.
Arash, say hello to the audience.
Hello to the audience.
He's going to answer a few questions for us that we should know about real estate, especially
coming into the real estate world for the very first time.
We want to find out what's going on in the financial world.
How do we deal with lenders?
How do we deal with buyers?
We're hoping that this guy here has these answers for us.
All right Arash, I'm going to ask you a couple questions.
See if you can shed some light on some of this stuff.
In all these years I've been doing this, I've been doing this, gosh, 20-something years
now, in my opinion, it's the most important part when it comes to real estate as far as
dealing with the buyer, it's communicating with the buyer and the lender.
How important do you think the communication is between a buyer, a lender and the realtor?
That triangle.
Buyer, lender and realtor.
How important is it when it comes to that triangle and communication?
First of all, thanks for having me on.
Thanks for tuning in.
I think it's really important.
In a live escrow situation when you have a buyer, obviously they ... Usually this is
going to be their first rodeo, it's not something they do all the time.
There's so many moving parts, such a multifaceted situation that I think, from a lenders point
of view, if I'm not at least touching base with my realtor once or twice a week then
I'm probably not doing my job.
See, that's awesome.
That's what I try to emphasis to all the new realtors, the importance of not just talking
to your buyers but talking to your lenders.
That's the biggest thing.
Let me ask you a follow up question to that.
If it's hard to get to your clients, this being the buyer, say it's hard to pull documents
from them or not responding to phone calls, how do you deal with that?
It's interesting.
I've been doing this for a few days.
How long have you been doing this?
I started in December of '96.
Mother of mercy.
That's a long time.
Yeah, it's been about 20 years now, which is absolutely crazy.
But things have changed, obviously, a lot.
Not a lot with the market, but with people and just with the general demographic.
These days, I think this year it's forecasted about 50% of new home buyers are going to
be millennials.
One of the things that has changed dramatically over the last couple years is a lot of people
they want to be communicated to via test message, via email.
There's a certain number of people that do not pick up their phones.
Don't want to talk on the phone even if they're available.
They want it to be a text, want it to be an email.
One of the important things for me, as I'm sure it is for a new agent, to do is to figure
out what kind of client they have and what their preference is going to be.
You communicate to them the way that's most effective.
Tell me something else, interest rates today.
What do they look like?
This is one of my favorite questions to get asked.
Agents ask me all the time, "Hey, what's today's rate?
What's the rate today?"
That's a really tough question to answer because there is no magic rate.
One of the big problems with websites like Bank Rate or Google.
Someone goes on there and it's got one big flashing rate.
A lot of these websites are powered by advertisers so they're basically trying to put the best
possible rate out there and draw people in, get those clicks.
Mortgage rates, it's a little more nuanced than that.
On average, I would say rates these days for just a standard 30 year fix for somebody buying
a home that's not a jumbo loan, it's going to be something with a four in front of it,
which has changed over the last six months or so.
Used to be in the threes?
Used to be in the threes.
Now I feel like we're pretty much in the low fours.
Rates are really dependent on the specific scenario and specific situation with the loan.
The same person with the same credit and the same income buying a house is going to get
a different rate than a condo.
When people ask me what is the rate, or when they ask you what is the rate, as a realtor,
I think you have to be really careful.
You can give them a range, but the best answer is, "You should talk to your lender, you should
talk to your lender, and find out what the rate is for your specific situation."
Beautiful, and that's exactly what we teach in our classes is that delegate questions.
As a realtor, you don't know the answer to questions.
Many times, these questions are financial questions, lending questions.
I wouldn't even try to answer those question.
I like to delegate those questions to my lender, to my loan officer, have him take care of
that, or her take care of that.
Get it straight from the horses mouth, I guess.
I got new realtors who say they try to describe the loan process to the buyers, and they're
not quite familiar with the loan process.
Of course you are, 20 years in the business, but us new realtors aren't quite familiar
with the process of a loan.
What should they do when they're asked?
"Hey new realtor, what do I have to do to get a loan in this place?"
That's a great question.
Obviously, I think the first thing they need to do is to introduce them to either to your
preferred lender, or if the persons already working with a lender, reach out to that person
and talk to them as a realtor.
The easy answer is, basically, you're going to complete an application.
You're going to provide two years of income paperwork along with some bank statements.
Your loan officer is going to review that and give us a pre-qualification.
You can kind of give them that information just to set the expectation that they're going
to have to put together two years of tax records and then have to print their bank statements.
Personally, I don't think you'd be served by going any further than that just because
it depends.
Once I talk to a client, once I see the scenario, the process for them might be much simpler
than it is for somebody who owns a business or has multiple investment properties.
It's one of these things, again, where it's best, I think, to summarize and then direct
towards the lender to get the whole picture.
Good answer.
Hey, listen.
I've used before, a few times, in all the years I've been doing this, a broker.
How do you feel about brokers when it comes to lending?
I think brokers are great.
Full disclosure, I was a broker for about eight years.
He told us.
He admitted it.
From 2000 to 2008.
2008, the magic number.
After the financial meltdown, everything slowed down.
I had to wind that down and close that business, but brokers are actually ... They have access
to a lot of products that some direct lenders can't get.
They definitely serve a purpose.
I definitely think the market is better for having mortgage brokers in it.
However, one of the benefits I have as being a direct lender is I'm able to pick up the
telephone and call my underwriter and talk something through.
And that's important.
It's really important.
One of the biggest problems there is in lending is communication between the loan officer
and the decision maker, and that's the underwriter.
Underwriter, yeah.
It's kind of similar for a bank loan officer.
If you have a loan officer at Bank of America,
he doesn't have the ability to pick up the phone and call the underwriter
because that underwriter is underwriting,
God knows, how many dozen files that month. The same thing with a broker.
A broker has to go through a third party representative and that message has to get passed through
an account manager before it gets to an underwriter.
I think, in my opinion, there's a big disadvantage there and the biggest thing is time.
One of the things that we're able to do at Movement Mortgage is really cut through the
process and get things done, I think, much quicker than I was ever able to do as a broker.
Or, after I closed down that business, I actually went to Wells Fargo for a few years.
I have a really good perspective what it's like to work at a bank
I think working with a direct lender is really just a perfect balance of being able to still
get your client the best products that are available, but at the same time not have to
be held up for two to three months dealing with- I'm with you.
I'm with you.
Without the buyers ... My wife and I have closed approximately 325, 330 deals in our
career.
Of those 330 deals, I would say 70% were working with buyers.
Of those buyers, I would say approximately 25% used a direct lender and those were my
favorite, just like you said.
If you had a question or concern you go straight to the underwriter, the one that's got to
make the decision.
Enough said.
They can help us out when it comes to that situation as far as making things clear as
what we need to close the deal.
Hey, I appreciate your time.
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We can't wait to see you next week.
Have a great week and take care.