I was a banker at Quicken Loans for years and there is a lot that goes into this business. First off, realizee that it is a business and not a charity. There is a certain amount of honesty that the team members are held accountable for, however there are also pressures in relations to sales that override honesty. I am not going to call it all bad, I was there for years.
The team members - Please do not expect much, these are mostly kids fresh out of college, or people that "need" a job as bad as Quicken Loans needs to fill the seats in their office that is 3/4 empty. The training is basic and not much in relation to financing. They are good people that fall under the corperate world. Lets keep in mind that they are severly overworked, tied to a blackberry that they pay for so the company can make sure that any deal is able to be written at a moments notice, even at 11-12 at night.
Working 8-8 is common, as mentioned at times until 10 or 11 at night. At that point you will tell the client anything to get a loan in the door. The banker will use a 2 call method that allows him to follow a scropt and consult with a more experienced banker to see if there is a loan. There is a saying. "write it and fight it!" which supports the mentality of getting your director and his boss out of your 6x6 cube.
Get it in the door, in the end if the client does not qualify and they signed the application. They are covered one deposit at a time. It is sales focused. Many operations team members and unserwriters are actually former bankers that could not cut the job anymore or just grew tired of it.
Pay-They are paid as units in addition to their 24k base salary, Mortgage bankers make $200 a unit on average every 100k is a unit on closed loans. They are also paid 20% of "green bar" which is the premium that the banker overcharges the client. The more need that is made the more green we can pack into the loan.
At times 7000 in additional fees based on loan amounts. The computer Lakewood puts a maximum of 2 points or 2% of your loan amount that a banker is allowed to overcharge you. That is their ethics at its best, it is also what will border the state restrictions and federal guidelines based on what your loan amount is.
QL pay. It really varies based on loan type. The base loans (30/ 25/20 year loans, and the 3/5/7 year loans make a bit over 2% on each loan. The fha makes over 4%. What this means is your 250k loan on a conventional loan type makes roughly 5k to the company; not including title charges from Title Source. On Fha QL makes 10k. They only need to make about 2400 each loan and can approve a shortage up until that point.
Once again, the loan type matters. As mentioned Title makes QL cash as well. TSI apprasials is owned by QL, so is Title Source, your title insurance is expensive and is often uverlooked as a 3rd party. QL is making cash on all aspects of the transactions from deposit, title, apprasial, yield spread premium as well as green bar.
The Deposit - Consider this.in an average market Ql will write between 8000-9000 loans a month in the system. At 8000 loans there is 4 million in deposits as commitments from clients. Quicken Loans sees 70% fallout (failure) healthy. That means that only 2400 loans are clean, the rest are trouble loans.
It also means that 2 of every 3 loans will end up a disappointmnent to the client by not closing. This does not mean that the loans terms will not change. There is nothing iron clad with QL, nothing. The deposit is a connitment to do business, refunded at close. That simply means that its not refundable and the closing costs can be adjusted to suit the banker and company.
The Job - The sales team members are only responsible for getting the clients in the door. Quicken mainly focuses on selling through your emotions. Their terms of digging deep will trench into your past and financial mess and make you feel obligated to comit to a loan, Once in the Lakewood system called rocket.
A good loan officer can manipulate any application to get the approval on your initial application. Once you sigh the IRD (interest rate disclosure / Deposit agreement) you are in for $350-500. This is not refundable at all and no matter who's fault it is you will pay because its already charged on your credit card.
The pitch - Once again, they are not your friends. They are not looking to form a relationship with you. They are looking to close a loan, charge you as much as they are able and ask you to sell your friends on the idea. They will ask you deep questions in an attempt to attach emotions to gain trust, this is the same chassis that con artists use as well as most sales professionals.
The worst client is one that will talk and only requests the 30 year fixed rate. Basically it shuts the salesman down and puts the control of the call back to the client to make an educated decision. They like to talk to the decision maker and not " pitch to the bitch" aka your dumbass wife that ran you into debt and has to resort to refinancing the equity from of your home. At least this in true in the most part when a wife is shopping for the husband while he is at work.
Why so many questions and what are they for?
The sales man at ql are trained to follow a client profile to a tee.in initial conversation you will be generally talking and warming up. Being asked questions like what are you looking to do? How long have you been shopping? How soon are you looking to close the loan? What dod you not like about your last loan transaction? From there the questions will branch out to establish need and basically show you the importance of doing a loan today. The questions are slowly engineered to cut through your guard and get down to business.
The property questions are basically asked to see what you have done to the house and see what equity is there, how long you are there, plans on moving or changing loan types in the future to allow them to sell you an ARM.
The income questions are simular, what do you do? How smart are you? What is the probability that you know finance? Are you barely scraping by and can they sell you a FHA loan.
The credit and SSN? This is used to evaluate your spending habits, credit use, education, mortgage balance, previous names ect. What it also does is keep you from shopping QL bankers against one another. The Lola system only allows you to pull one report! So if you give your ssn to a banker and he pulls it, you can not get a quote from another banker at the company to verify that this is a legit offer.
It allows the credit bruise to be pressed, and also shows QL who has viewed your credit in the last 360 days, if you are shopping, they will know. Another important fact QL uses credit trigger leads. Which means that the company gets a lead that is generated automatically if another bank, mortgage company or lender looks at your credit. All the sudden you are under the radar again with 4 call s a day.
What they sell you and what is a myth,
Banker for life... No, you are a number. When that banker quits or is fired you will be given as an inherited client to another banker who dont know you and is responsible for your financial well being. With the high turnover that QL has, you are forgotten in the masses.
No cost refinancing. That is bullshit at its best. Ecinomics 101; There is no such thing as a free lunch! No matter the company, the no cost refinance is a unicorn loan. It is simply adjusted through the rate in the future so you will get a higher than market rate. They adjust the "greenbar" in the loan to cover the closing costs, apprasial, and title and give you a lender paid credit. Facts not being mentioned that if you just pay the closing costs you will get a lower rate overall. Stick to one type of shopping. No cost or set a limit to the costs to compare apples to apples!
Loan Tracker - A fancy word for a company wide spreadsheet of each bankers closed clients, QL wants us it dial this every 4 months per client. Notice i said dial. There is nothing automatic about it really and there is nothing that alerts the banker on a daily basis if rates drop. If the loan is done right, there is little reason to rework it a year later unless you are that bad financially that you use your equity as a charge card.
We are Quicken, TurboTax, Quickbooks ect. NO! Intuit sold them back. Its a private company that is not required to report profits and is not under that form of being regulated at all.
They are assumptive in doing business. I have found rates a bit high by as much as 1/2% and the closing costs high as well. This is a very profit based company that is riding on the backs of uneducated salesman, and advertizing and a company name that is made famous by a company that is no longer associated with Intuit.
To tell you the absolute truth, a credit union that holds the mortgage is the best at what you are looking for. They hold the note and can offer a more competative rate and little to no costs to close the loan. To rework it, its simple.
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