I’ve previously written on the importance of selecting a great lender, however, it doesn’t just end there. A loan officer is your main point of contact at the lender throughout your home purchase transaction. So when you’re assembling your team of rockstar professionals to help you buy your home, picking the right or wrong loan officer can make or break your home buying experience from a fantastic smooth ride or a bumpy detour-filled ride that may end up not closing on your home. Before you decide to invest your time and commit to a loan officer, you’ll want to make sure that they meet your needs and expectations to provide excellent service, not only close on your home successfully but also make the whole transaction smooth and without mistakes or delays.
How can you find a great loan officer? Ask for referrals from your real estate agent for their preferred loan officers. Real estate agents work with loan officers all the time and they will have a shortlist of top performing and reliable loan officers to refer you to. Can you trust their recommendation though? Your real estate agent shares the same common goal as you which is to find you a home and have a smooth successful transaction. Therefore they aren’t going to refer someone to you who will make the transaction a slow, challenging, and delayed experience. And generally, when someone gives you a referral for something, it’s because they know that’s a solid referral because if it isn’t, it’s going to reflect poorly on them. If you don’t have a specific real estate agent you’re committed to yet, simply ask for loan officer referrals from multiple agents that you might be interested in working with. When you start hearing the same referral over and over and that is a clear sign of who you should be interviewing with.
If you don’t have a specific referral to a great loan officer after submitting your mortgage application, you will end up being randomly paired with a loan officer. Whether you’re interviewing a referred loan officer or a randomly matched loan officer, you absolutely need to qualify them to make sure that they’re a good fit for you. What are some things to check for in a loan officer? Below are some questions you can ask during an interview with a loan officer. Keep in mind that these questions are for qualifying the loan officer themself and not so much the lender.
1. What is your preferred type of communication?
Some people love to email or text but hate to call or even answer their phones when someone calls them. Make sure that their preferred mode of communication matches with yours and most importantly that when you call them, they either answer the phone or call you back. The worst thing these days is when you call someone, they don’t pick up, so you leave a voicemail, and then you send a followup email or text as well letting them know it’s urgent you need to talk to them ASAP. They won’t bother to call you back, but they’ll text or email you back immediately.
2. What’s their average response time?
Especially with buying a home, time is of the essence to meet deadlines. If you send them an email or leave them a voicemail, will you be waiting a day for them to get back to you or are they generally pretty quick and responsive?
3. Are they available for you to call, email, text after business hours, late evenings, and seven days a week?
Is the loan officer willing to meet you where you are at, meaning around your schedule of availability? Or are you only going to get responses during normal bank hours 9-5? Especially during the home search phase, you may need to hit up your loan officer for an updated pre-approval letter at 6 PM on a Saturday or Sunday in order to get your offer submitted in time to the seller. Are they prepared and ready to get that over to you?
4. Are you paid by commission or salaried?
This can be an important question to ask not because you’re nosy about how much money they make. But sometimes a salaried employee may not be as committed to working outside of normal work hours or as hard for a client. Whereas an employee who only gets paid a commission when they are able to successfully close deals is more willing to do what’s needed to successfully close the deal and meet the needs of their client. They become more invested in your common goal as when you win, they win.
5. Does the loan officer communicate directly with not only your buyer agent but also the listing agent?
This is important as there may be times in the transaction where your agent and the listing agent may need to provide certain documents for the loan. And that communication should be direct to the agents rather than through you the buyer. Also, both agents should be notified of major milestone events such as scheduling of appraisal and completion of the appraisal report to make sure that important deadlines like the appraisal contingency are not missed. A protip for buyers in this competitive market, during the home search phase, it can be invaluable to have a loan officer who is willing to call the listing agent of the home you’re submitting an offer on at 3 PM on a Saturday and vouch for your financial capability to close on their seller’s listing. This can easily give you a leg up on the competition as the listing agent will have more confidence in your offer, your financial ability to close, and also appreciate that you have a loan officer who’s communicative, committed, and willing to work hard to make it a successful transaction.
6. Ask them to walk you through the entire loan process?
They should be able to explain the whole process without hesitation or fumbling. If not, they may not have the experience you’re looking for. This can be critical if you’re using a special or less common type loan such as new construction, 203K, VA, or USDA. You want a loan officer who’s on top of their game and knows the process in and out, front to back, and resourceful if there should be any unexpected roadblocks.
7. Will you be actively updating me as we progress through each major loan milestone? Is there an easy way for me to track and monitor each of these steps?
There are some loan officers who you will only hear from when they need something from you. That’s not the type of loan officer you want working for you. You want to have a loan officer who is actively updating you on your loan progress on a regular basis. You should not have to call and chase them down to find out the progress of your loan.
8. How many transactions have you done in the last calendar year? Of these transactions, how many were delayed because of lender caused issues? If the answer was yes, ask what were the causes of the delay?
You’re checking if both the loan officer and the lender are able to close transactions on time as promised. Delays in transactions can happen for a variety of reasons on behalf of buyers, sellers, lenders, and title company issues. Some examples of delays with lenders can arise when a loan officer drops the ball and schedules the appraisal too late, thus delaying the appraisal report. Lenders not fully underwriting your loan upfront to save you time on the backend when it comes time to final underwriting. This can cause closing delays and last-minute back and forth requests for additional information before underwriting can be completed.
9. Will you be my main contact at all times and personally working on my loan or do you have a team/ assistants?
It is an important question to ask because you may be expecting to work one on one and receive direct service from an elite top producing loan officer. In the first meeting, you meet the loan officer and the conversation is great. But all of sudden you find out that your transaction is being passed onto another team member/assistant. This is where it can become questionable and uneasy because if the team is not on point and experienced there can be delays caused by miscommunication and mistakes. In addition, you had expectations going in that you were going to get the best service directly only to find out that isn’t going to be the case. It may be better to work with one individual as you will know for sure that this person is the only contact in your transaction and knows all the details and progress of your loan at all times allowing for quick and responsive communication.
So these are some things you may want to consider when looking for a great loan officer. You’re only making one of the biggest purchases in your life for you and your family if you have one. Don’t you deserve to be working with someone who will work as hard as you and the other team members on your home buying team? It can be exhausting, frustrating, and heartbreaking to finally get an accepted offer after looking at 30+ houses, losing out on 5+ offers submitted, and then finally getting that one accepted offer. But then your transaction becomes stalled or worse canceled because the loan officer/lender couldn’t perform. So it’s extremely important that you have the right people on your home buying team. Thank you for reading and subscribe to my blog for future real estate-related topics.