Sunday, August 22, 2010

Time for a shift.  Here's where I vilify my mortgage broker instead of the seller.  It's July 16.  The same day that I got the great news about the contractor.  I got a voicemail from the broker the night of the 15th.  It was confusing, basically he suggested that I get the mortgage without my Dad.  I knew I could qualify on my own but never considered it because then my Dad's down payment help would have to be taxed.  If he signs with me, he's not giving me the money as a gift, he's just putting money down for our mortgage.


So.  July 16th.  I call the broker back from work.  We no longer qualify for the loan.  Panic.  Rage.


Remember when my mortgage was pre-approved more than a month before this, the mortgage that included my Dad?  Yeah, the mortgage guy fucked up royally.  And in the terms of the contract, I had to have my loan secured by July 23rd.  And my Dad is in France.  The mortgage broker and his assistant somehow missed one of my Dad's debts.  Please consider that about a year before he had also done my sister's mortgage, with my Dad cosigning and at that time the debt existed as well.  Moral of this story:  records are important.  Filing.  Cross-referencing.  Look at the damned mortgage you did last year and start from there.


So basically the options, as mortgage broker (MB) saw them and emailed them to me that day:

  1. My dad would gift me the money and be taxed off of his ass. 
  2. I would have to just take a larger mortgage and in a year, pay down the mortgage with the lump sum from my dad.
If you could all take a second and very seriously analyze these options, I'll break down the very rude phone call I made to my MB.
  1. Unacceptable.  He'll be paying out the ass.
  2. I lose a full year of mortgage payments.  Because this option is essentially a refinance.  Also, my payments would be huge for that year.  And there's no guarantee that they would get smaller at the time of the lump sum payment.  Cluster.
My Dad's solution was to loan me the money.  "Loan".  Mortgage broker, on the phone, said that was not possible as I would no longer qualify on my own with the loan.  Here's where I went full on bitch.  It went something like this.

Mortgage broker:  No, you can't accept a loan as this would adversely affect your asset to debt ratio and you no longer would qualify.  Do you understand?
Me: No actually, I don't.  First, how did the debt get missed? (imagine full on dripping bitchiness)
MB: That was my fault, I apologize.
Me:  Second, you want me to take a full mortgage, right?  One which I qualify for on my own?  How is it possible that I no longer qualify for a mortgage if I take the loan?  Smaller mortgage + LOAN should equal bigger mortgage.  There are no missing variables here.  I would be borrowing the same amount of money in both cases, only from my Dad my interest rate is lower.  So technically, if I got a loan from my Dad, my asset to debt ratio is BETTER.
MB:  .................(long silence).  That makes sense.  I'm not at my desk.  Let me work on some things and call you back.

Yes, that's right, I schooled my mortgage broker in finance.  I HATE THAT DUDE.

Eventually we worked it out and I got a loan from my dad for the down payment, which is technically a second lien on the house.  But don't worry, mortgage broker fucks up again, at the closing.  See you next time.

As a complete side note, I got an email on July 21st that my closing was scheduled for August 5th.  If you'll remember, it took us weeks to settle on August 16th.  I had a brief panic attack when I got that email and imagined the seller engaged in some kind of hostile takeover of the house - living in it for free for 11 days.  Truth is, she just didn't want to pay the fees.

Not sure what to share, so here's the tiny yard patch.  Garage on the right.  

1 comment:

  1. Katie,

    We had all kinds of problems with the mortgage broker last year when Ang got her loan. I thought he sucked then and couldn't believe that the realtor was still recommending him. The guy is impossibly dumb and disorganized.

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