MY RATE WAS LOCKED, WHAT HAPPENED?

POST: ECONOMY

I have a lot of good friends and familiar faces at my gym.  They motivate me to get my butt in there and get to work.  It’s the same 30-40 people every morning.  And whether anyone wants to admit it or not, we all take a personal inventory of who hasn’t shown up for a few days.  Tom! Where you been buddy? Ohh, uh, I had to uhh...my wife is away so I had to take the kids….    Riiiiight.  It’s all good though, because when we’re in there we’re all working hard.  And to catch my breath in-between sets, I always end up in some discussion about mortgage or real estate.  My good friend Darren always has some new insight or a good book for me to read about the future of our economy.  I swear the guy reads about the economy non-stop.  He’s a sophisticated 40 something guy, has investment property and plays things pretty conservatively.  As his broker, we’ve looked at his situation for a refinance but it’s just not time yet.  Hey John, when these rates go down another quarter-point, let me know and you can lock my rate and we’ll hurry up and get my refinance done.

Not that easy.  You see, one thing about our economy is mortgages and banks have cut back on their spending just like most of us have.  We’ve held off on that vacation we are just itching to take.  We are squeezing another year out of that car we want to trade in.  Banks – they’re doing the same thing.  With the low rates and high mortgage activity going on right now, you’d think banks would hire plenty of staff to get all these loans done in time, right?  They too are holding off on the staff and infrastructure they’d like to buy to make things run smoothly.  But there’s no long term sight for our economy.  So who knows how long these rates will be down.  And for the time being, the banks are making the investment to create such luxuries.  Instead, they’re working their staff harder and letting service levels and turn-around times suffer.  It’s good and bad business in one.  So what can we do?

Well Darren, when the rates drop another quarter point and we decide to lock, we gotta to move fast and get a perfect loan package put together and submitted.  We have to do all the extra little things to make it easy on everyone else.  That’s the only way to make sure a loan gets done on time these days.

And oh, Darren, where were you the past two mornings buddy?  Okay back to these dumbbell lounges.