Lessons learned from a difficult home buying experience
Posted on 03. Jun, 2010 by Scott Schang in Uncategorized
I want to share with you a very emotional and challenging home buying experience we were involved in this past week.
This story is being told through a series of emails sent to me from a home buyer that encountered various challenges throughout the 30 day escrow period while working with our company, Broadview Mortgage – Katella branch.
I think there is great value in telling you this story, even though at (most) times it puts our company in a very bad light, there are important lessons to be learned here.
To begin this story, I am going to start with the end.
Tuesday, June 2nd 2010:
Mr. Schang,
You have my full permission to reprint any of my e-mails. I was so exhausted from my own job when I was writing and therefore my e-mails were full of mispellings and grammatical errors but hopefully you can still benefit from some of the comments I made. I think it is quite refreshing that you are willing to take an objective, realistic, open-minded examination of some of the practices or difficulties that can occur in this process and try to have discussions that will make your company better. I really appreciate your attitude and response. I have worked for 40 years in education and I absolutely enjoy trying to make my business and practices better whenever I can and I am impressed that you feel the same way. If I go two or 3 weeks without looking at trying to find a better way of doing something at my work I am not happy with myself. Continuous improvement, feedback, brainstorming, and keeping an open mind about how we do business is a good way of living.
In response to my email:
Mr. xxxxxxxx,
I am very happy to hear that your journey has ended. Ryan has been keeping me up to date for the past two weeks about all of the challenges you’ve encountered during the buying process.
With your permission, I would like to reprint your emails (removing your identity and the names of everyone except myself) as an example of lessons we have learned and managing the expectations of others buying homes.
Yes, there were many things that in retrospect could have or should have gone differently. Delays, challenges and miscommunication are common occurrences for most home buyers – and it is never the same thing twice.
I think that by sharing this story, reflecting on the mistakes and miscommunication and ultimately the successful result of you being a homeowner, would be very valuable to others that are going through different, but similar challenges.
Every home purchase is unique. Each buyer, each seller, each home has it’s own unique challenges. As a lender, we are problem solvers. There are ALWAYS problems. The experience of our team (Ryan, loan officer, Processors, Underwriters) is what determines the final, end result when navigating these troubled waters.
We have learned and grown from this experience as we do with every single home buyer that counts on us to give a 100% effort to accomplish the singular goal of making you the proud owner of a new home.
Congratulations on your new home!
Please let me know if it’s ok to reprint portions of your emails and tell the story of these challenges so that others may benefit from the challenges you have overcome. I think this would be very valuable for others to hear your story.
You may call me anytime on my cell phone if you would like to talk more: 714-336-8286
Scott Schang
Ok, let’s start closer to the beginning now so that you can put this into perspective.
Tuesday, May 25th 2010:
Dear (Real Estate Agent),
Its Tuesday May 25th at 2:25 and I still don’t have an appointment at Escrow. According To Broadview Mortgage, The Escrow office charge two sets of equal fess for the first and second mortgage charging over $7000 of monies that they shouldn’t charge. Now when the Operations Mangager of Broadview called the Escrow company to help them, they said they were too busy. This is the same Escrow company that sent papers too my house when they should not have according to Broadview.
I am just letting you know what is happening or not happening. Last Tuesday, May 18 (Loan Officer) called me and told to bring all the documents I had from Ladera Ranch and everything that the Escrow company sent me because he said they sent me 4 documents that they should not have and did not copies. On that Tuesday night at 7:00 I asked (Loan Officer) for the timeline leading up to the signing at escrow. He assured me that Thursday May 19th or Friday May 20 I would be signing at Escrow. Friday afternoon after clearing my work schedule and getting all excited and waiting for the call, it never came and so I called (Loan Officer). (Loan Officer) tells me that the interest rate went down from 5.375 to 5.250 and this is a good thing ($27.00 a month) and when I asked him when I would sign he said Monday May 24th for sure. So now I clear my work schedule, cancel my appointments. go AAA and get personal property insurance and wait for the call. At 2:00pm I e-mailed (Loan Officer) and nothing. AT 3:00 I call (Loan Officer) and he tells me that Corporate hasn’t sent the docs yet. I then ask to speak to his boss, the operations mangager, Ryan Ellis and he listens and tells me that when (Loan Officer) accepted the lower interest rate, the process was definitely going to be delayed because it had to go thru several channels again. I then said to Ryan, (Loan Officer) new the urgency that I discussed with him on Tuesday night and my frustrations and lowered the interest rate knowing there would be delays without consulting me. I said thats totally unacceptable. Ryan agreed and said he would talk to (Loan Officer) because he made a mistake and he himself would get behind this process. Escrow closes at 5:30 and naturally I did not hear from them or the lender even though I spent the whole day at home expecting to sign the papers.Today Tuesday at 10:00 I left a message for (Loan Officer) and Ryan to call me back. (Loan Officer) called me back at 12:15 and said that Escrow double charged and now we have to wait for escrow to redo the numbers and send them to corporate and then corporate will send the papers back to escrow and then sometime they will call me. I asked (Loan Officer) why he accepted the lowering of the interest rate last friday without consulting me and he now said that there was a communications processing problem. I asked what that meant? He said he was telling a woman about another account to let that interest rate float and the woman misunderstood and somehow let my account float.
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Here is my opinion. I think I would wait an additional few days for $27 per month, with no complaints. Think of the $ that was saved, thanks to the loan person. I also think this was blown WAY out of proportion. I bought a home about 5 years ago using a different lender. There was fraud, my loan person falsified docs with my signature, and lied to me just about the whole time. Once I was eventually signing my docs, there was thousands of dollars worth of charges that I was not told about. Of course, being so excited for my new home, I paid them. Not to mention the manager was miraculously always on the phone or in a meeting when I asked to speak with him. I used Broadview (The same branch) a little over a year ago to buy my current home. I was very pleased with the service, and the honesty that came with my loan. I still follow Scott’s info, and find it helpful. Anybody who would write this much negative info, has too much time to look for the bad and not enough time looking forward to the good. He is now a home owner, with a lower interest rate. There are too many people and entities involved PROTECTING YOU to get mad if a time line is not met perfectly. I thank some forgiveness, and understanding is needed both from the new homebuyer, and any management that may be mad. However, learning from this is also respectable.
Thank you for your input Steve. There is a tremendous amount of anxiety that first time homebuyer goes through, most do not take the time to express it like this – but I would venture to say that many have felt this “helpless”.
You’re right, the savings was important and now that everything is done, appreciated. The biggest challenge we encountered (and learned from) is the point that I try to make over and over again – that is giving the home buyer the information and empowering them to make an informed decisions.
This is really just another day in the life of helping folks buy homes. We encounter challenges and miscommunications between involved parties every day. And every day we navigate through these choppy waters to arrive safely at home ownership with the buyers never knowing the difference.
I absolutely applaude this home buyer for feeling empowered enough to communicate this to me. That took a lot of guts to reach out to me to make me aware of his experience. The end result, we all learn something.
Scott,
I purchased my first home 60 days ago and I remember the frustration and the nonresponsiveness of my loan company. It drove me crazy. My loan officer stated if there are no updates there is no need to respond. I am a horse of a different color. When time is of the essence I think there should always be an update and if there isn’t at least say that. Anyway, I reminded the loan officer that although he processes loans everyday I only plan to purchase a house once so my experience was the most traumatic I have experienced next to the death of my mother. That may seem harsh but when you have money particularly your life saving wrapped up in a deal and someone who treats it so nonchalantly it literally drives you crazy. However, the funniest part of the entire situation is that he wanted me to refer him to my family and friends. I told him it wouldn’t happen because unlike him I care about my reputation. The moral of my comment is this when you deal in a service business especially one like loan processing you have to treat each client as an individual who is special because more than likely this is their first time buying and they shouldn’t be traumatized in the process.
Thanks for your articles I actually learn a lot and I will be so much more knowledgeable when I am ready to purchase my rental properties.
Scott,
You’re a class act. It takes courage and confidence to share an experience that could potentially put the competence of your organization in a questionable light. You’re always educating. I love it. You understand what consitutes a true “learning environment.” Thanks for sharing.
Thank you Dodd, you’re very kind.
Scott,
Thanks for sharing. I, like 99% of the ppl. Had an “experience” too. As frustrating as it was. Knowing my down was in jeopardy and at risk of losing the house. We communicated with the seller got extra time (Extention of time) and we worked our butts off (Loan company and my self ) to make things happen. I was over my closing date by a little more than two weeks! and the loan office over looks a big issues that if not fixed my loan could not be funded. Be we worked it out and in the end I got my house. Never the less when your going through it and sh*** keeps happening I can see (home buyers) frustrations. 4 days over the close date is not so bad. I am glad it all worked out!
Ronnda,
I am very happy to hear that it all worked out for you in the end. There are many unforseen pitfalls and challenges during the home buying process. Some we cannot anticipate and have no control over, others we do have control other.
The most important lesson here is the communication. It sounds like everyone was working together in your scenario, you worked hard to do what you could do and the lender and agent did their part.
Thank you for telling your story and congratulations on your new home!