ricflairfinance.com

I kid you not. This is terrifying.

Jillayne – I am going to assume that you are in management, and based merely on the few lines I have heard, I bet you are a good leader. You hit the nail on the head that many lo’s have allowed themselves to become products of the environment. This is the only job they know, and if you don’t take it to the house each time on fees, you might get canned! In this lower volume environemt, even with all of the new law we face, I would bet my last donut that we see instances of fraud increase! Desperate times, right?

Hezekiah – Amen to you, and I will leave it at that.

Nick – I agree that borrowers are often uneducated, but that does not mean that we simply turn it into a contest. I will take your fees right up to section 32, and if you catch me then I guess you win? The fact that they allow it does not make it right. It goes back to Jillayne’s statement of being internally motivated and ethical. Just because the fish is in the barrell doesn’t make it right for you to shoot it!

Brian – your buyer beware sentiments seem to be more in line with how I feel (not saying you and I are right and all others are wrong, I’m just saying I agree). Some of the crap I saw as an AE here in Columbus, OH was just mind numbing and I could not believe that anyone with a pulse would trust them. I actually heard a loan officer tell a borrower that they needed to close so he could get paid and keep from getting evicted, AND HE WAS NOT KIDDING! I saw the 50+ person shops with 5 licensed lo’s on staff and the rest were “processors” or “underwriting consultants”. As fast as lending laws are developed, people figure out ways to get around them!

Jack – when I was an AE I had an account that was, at the time, the largest fee volume lender in OH and had the highest revenue (now out of business – go figure!). There was a loan officer that had no education and was selling suits before he was a lo, and he had one of the big pimped out hummers with a license plat that said “Big Rips”, which is a rip off from the movie Bioler Room, which should again be a red flag. And like Ann said, we would see these guys out and about and all they could talk about was getting 65% on maxed out loans!
Well congrats, dirtbag!

I have learned a lot from all of these comments!

Hezekia is making assertions that lawyers, salesmen, mechanics, and dentists are all shysters and that a lawyer is the same as the person who washes your car.

The business world is much more complex than trying to reduce everything down to a simple heuristic that says “we are all evil and need god’s guidance.”

People, and specifically, people who hold professional status such as lawyers and dentists hold a radically different position in relation to their client, than a retail salesmen such as a loan originator.

If Hezekia wants to have a rational dialogue, great. If everything is going to be simplified to kindergarden sunday school fare, why bother contributing? Save it for….the little kids at sunday school.

Hi Morgan,

I believe everyone (with some very minor exceptions such as a person born brain damaged or a sociopath) is capable of moral growth.

External motivation is like motivation by fear, which teaches employees to just figure out clever ways of not getting caught. Trying to get people to be ethical by teaching them to follow a bunch of rules (laws, compliance) is keeping them low on the moral development scale, at about the age of a 12 to 16 year old.

(source: L. Kohlberg 1981, The Philosophy of Moral Development)

Likewise, teaching people how to be ethical by following rules based on religion also keeps adults at the same moral development level, which is why, when we enter the workforce and attempt to call ourselves professionals, we simply must leave the realm of rule following (laws, religious rules) and move into a new domain.

Surely following state/federal law and falling back on a religious upbringing could help a loan originator, but we simply would not want to stop there.

Internal motivation is what I believe we are all capable of learning, even Max Fees.
When a person is interally motivated, they need little if no supervision.

When a person is externally motivated (ex: fear of the law, fear of a religious god watching over your behavior) he or she is setting himself or herself up for needing constant supervision, like a child.

The bottom line is banks didn’t care, brokers didn’t care, home buyers and investors didn’t care – it was all gravy. Now its turning and the consumers are starting to care, brokers and banks are going out of business and the legal and regulatory environment is about to become very dangerous for the remaining players still standing.

You make a good point about consumer responsibility in choosing a provider and their responsibility in the transaction, which cannot be understated; however, confused homeowners are little match for con-men who choose this line of work such as the type of person who would put MAXFEES on their license plate. I wonder if he has it as a tattoo too?

Regards,
Jack Reacher