- Sacramento Real Estate Adventures - Your Sacramento Real Estate and mortgage blog!

We just finished helping a 28 year old couple finance their first Sacramento Investment home!   Our Client's have saved their money wisely and live well below their means because the bigger picture is their priority.

They made an offer on a short sale in Sacramento and waited patiently for the bank to respond. Of course the bank came back with a short sale approval that needed to fund and record in 3 weeks! Do they know what is going on in our market? Apparently not!

We were confident we could get it done on-time because we already had a complete loan file with a pre-approval (another testiment for getting pre-approved). All we needed to do was submit the file and order the appraisal. This, of course was done right away! 

If you can believe it... I had a full approval (with all of the borrower conditions signed off), but we had to wait several more days for the HVCC appraisal to come in. That alone is whole new blog post!

Sign the petition http://www.hvccpetition.com

Even after that lag time we still have plenty of time to close! 

This bank...which is normally spot on... decided they were not going to answer their phone or email for 4 days. We were told we were clear to order loan documents but their system would not release them for whatever reason. Obviously this is a big problem! But we have to remain calm! We control the fate of the transaction and didn't want to get everyone rilled up.

Four days later, we found out the underwriter had not called the borrower to clear up an issue with a fraud alert the client had placed on his credit report... which is why our loan docs where "stuck".

The underwriter insisted the client had to be at the home number in order to verify and remove this fraud alert. So ... the client had to leave work early to go home to take the call. I sent an email to the underwriter to let him know the client was home and could take his call. Guess what phone number that lovely underwriter called? ... his CELL PHONE NUMBER! That poor client!  I felt like Jack A$$! 

When the loan docs came in... Linda at Fidelity Title was the bomb and had them processed and to the notary in a matter of an hour. The client came to our office that night to sign because it was critical to getting the loan funded. If this was a standard bank owned title company... there would have been no chance of this file closing... NONE! 

The precision we needed as a team to pull this off was incredible!  We got all information to the funder 1 1/2 days before the closing... but the funder decided that was not enough time... even though it was a short sale that needed to close THAT DAY.

Talk about a let down!  I think the listing agent said it best ... "Erin, this is a major fumble!" He was so right ... but there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. I practically begged the funder and her manager.

So we ended up funding the next day and everything ultimately worked out!

Even though I did a great job.. at the end of the day... we closed 1 day late so I thought my chance to work with both agents in the future was as good as gone! Our reputation is important to us and closing a deal late... is what the other mortgage pros do!

I spoke with Linda right before we recorded and she shared the feedback she had gotten from both agents involved with the transaction.  She said she had never had the listing agent speak so positively about mortgage pro especially under these circumstances.  She told me that both the listing agent and the selling agent commented that they knew that I had worked my tail off to get this done and the funder had dropped the ball.

That made feel sooo good I can't tell you! Especially coming from the short sale listing agent who was somewhat of a bull dog from the beginning (which is a good trait if you are closing short sales). 

Writing this post reminded me how we earn every penny of our commissions!  Often times investors are all about the numbers so they see our commission as eating up their profit.  I get that... trust me! Sometimes I think clients think that we are sipping tea earning our commission because they do not see half the drama that goes down behind the scenes with their file!  If they did I am sure they would have a heart attack!  At least the First Time Home Buyers would!

So another success story and a happy client! It certainly would not have happened if it were not for the complete team effort!