Refinancing: Without Uncle Sam’s Nor a Bank’s Oversight (Nor Fees!)
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A World Without Barney Frank and Bank Fees. Is that Possible?
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I re-financed my jumbo mortgage (ok, everyone who has taken out a mortgage thinks their’s is “jumbo” regardless of the size).
I admit, I am in a hybrid situation. I have the “rich uncle” who assisted me into the American dream of debt several years ago. Now, with rates much lower, it was time to pay a lower interest rate.
So I e-mailed my benefactor and suggested that I was on the market for a better rate. An e-mail or 3 over the matter transpired and voilà, a deal was struck. A 25% reduction in the rate.
No paperwork, just e-mails.
No Loan Application Interview in which I meet a loan officer, a total stranger, and bare my soul to him, pleading why I should make him money.
No pile of paperwork that few, if any will look at. No form to say that I ever had an alias name (in this life or a past one). No form giving the lender permission to look at my tax returns for income that I have long ago spent, and will spend in the future. No form stating my assets which could well be significantly different in value by the time of closing. No HUD statement that, while a nice recitation of the transaction, is probably only looked at in detail by the person who prepared such. And no other superfluous forms that were solely created to prevent a misguided and politically ambitious state attorney general from suing my lender.
No credit analyst to answer to explaining every seeming credit transgression I ever had (I truly thought I had paid Columbia House!). And no credit analyst who is trying to prevent the next financial crisis or, worst yet, go back in time and prevent the last one.
No less-than-friendly mortgage administrator to plead with to get the paperwork, that I look to eagerly, finalized some time in the next 2 years (yes, I’m glad to hear about your upcoming vacation, sorely deserved no doubt, that’s been the only thing on your mind but can we get closure on this?).
And no Fees! Fees that would pay for the layers of regulation (yes, government oversight has a cost) and bureaucracy as well as to pad the lender’s bottom line, as if paying several points above what the lender pays for money is not enough. No application fee (the e-mail cost my lender nothing). No loan origination fees (A fee to pay interest to you?). No appraisal fees (the same appraisal process used prior to the housing meltdown?). No commitment fee (I have to pay a fee for the lender to get into a transaction that benefits the lender?). No processing fee (I think I’m getting dizzy). No document preparation fee (…and dizzier).
While mine is a hybrid case on one end of the spectrum, it would seem that the average borrower is on the other end of a spectrum that needs to be re-calibrated to a more reasonable level of paperwork, and consequent fees, regardless of what Barney Frank and his regulatory behemoth cabal says.
-I.M. Windee
