In the pantheon of lender horror stories, this one may not even make the “honorable mention” list, but it cost a deal nonetheless…

The loan officer was a “friend of a friend” of my clients who had promised them a “really good deal.” My clients, avid deal-sniffers, loved the sound of that. I, on the other hand, didn’t. I exercised my prerogative as their agent and grilled the loan officer. She was, to put it mildly, a tad too casual for my taste. “Yeah, I can probably get them a loan at 5%,” she said. “Yeah, I can probably complete it in 28 days. No worries!” “No, I haven’t yet pulled their credit score, but, hey, it’s only been 5 days since they submitted their paperwork.”

I voiced my strong concern to my clients, but they decided, against my better judgment, to proceed with her.

Sure enough, the deal fell apart. Literally the night before we were supposed to remove financing contingencies, my clients called me up in a panic. “I can’t believe this! She had promised us a 5% loan, and now she’s quoting us 7.5% and telling us it’s still a deal! She’s saying we should take it, and then refinance later on.”

A quick phone call to the loan agent confirmed the worst: not only was she incompetent, but she was also, well, just a tad slimy. Classic bait and switch: quote a low rate, get the client to sign up, then pressure them at the last minute to accept a higher rate.

I called up my regular lender, who performs lending miracles as a matter of routine, but even she wasn’t able to pull this one off.

We had to cancel the deal.

Moral of the story: if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. If the loan agent sounds incompetent, she probably is.

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