Experience with New Home Sales and Multiple Lenders?

I am curious if any community have recent experience with new (or used) home sales experience and having prospective buyers work with lenders to get financing. As the home seller/dealer, we are not allowed to steer buyers to particular lenders and have to offer at least 3 known lenders (ie 21st, Clayton, PEP, Triad, CU, Mountainside, etc)

I am curious your feedback on the process, and whether is has been simple or complicated.
How has the customer experience been?
How is the timing?

Any thoughts or experiences would be appreciated. As an ultimate goal, it would be best to have a streamlined process. But unless you are a licensed MO there is a limit to your participation in this step of the process.

Thanks in advance!

Hi Howard,
If you follow the Dodd-Frank rules exactly, it’s almost impossible to comply. Literally impossible. However, I think you can take a common sense approach to the process by doing the following things:

  1. Hand the consumer the name and contact information of three or more potential lenders;
  2. Tell the consumer that credit scores less than X, or more than X collection accounts will result in declinations from all companies but ABC Finance Co;
  3. Say, “you can use any or all of them, but applicants similar to you have received the best value from ABC Bank”; and
  4. Presuming a down payment of $X, an interest rate of Y, and a 15 year term, a payment would be $Y.

It’s important to know the rules. It’s also valuable to know that you can have common sense general discussions with consumers and that there’s no prevalent active enforcement of the Dodd-Frank nonsense rules against MH Retailers at this time.

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Thanks Kurt
I like these suggestions. Truly the gray area of the Dodd-Frank rules are a pain. Is there really any common sense when it comes to these laws :slight_smile:

Cheers
H

I run a dealership. We have a lender choice forms and ask the customer to select several lenders or all the lenders. Save a copy of the form and the loan decision on each in case of a future audit to prove you gave them multiple choices of lenders who competed to give them the best rates and terms.

You are not to discuss exact payments, rates, etc., unless you are a licensed mortgage originator. You may deal in generalizations however, like payment ranges or guide them with rules like, “you can calculate an approximate payment by using $10 per thousand”(or $12), this will get them in the ballpark, or a $40K home will be $375-$450ish.

It’s kind of nice not being the bad guy in many instances of delivering the news of needing more money down, shorter terms, etc., just let the banker be the bad guy.

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