Comments on: Monday Blame Game: Mortgage Lead Scumbags

By: Tammy

Tammy — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 09:18:21 +0000

People should have to OPT-In and agree to be bombarded with false promises and all the lies these loan stealing cowards dish out. 90% of my business is word of mouth referral. I take great pride in the relationships that we build. I inform my customers immediately of the pandora box that is opened by pulling a credit report. I called the credit bureau and was told when someone opts-out, make sure they do on all 3 bureaus, it takes only 5 days to remove them from the list. If your borrower is not in a hurry, this is an option. I just explain to them what will happen. I am open and honest with all my customers. I was very upset when I heard about this and urge clients to contact representatives and senators about it. When these thieves mail information to a customer from a lead, these idiots are putting all the current debt totals on the solicitation! How stupid! One of my customers received one, – after his neighbor accidentally opened it because the mailman put it in the wrong box. I urged him to contact an attorney. I have not lost one yet and dont expect to, but I think it is completely wrong for credit bureaus to sell this information. Monopoly.

By: Sven

Sven — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 22:06:27 +0000

The reason location matters is that if a borrower gets screwed by someone at a local company, he can take a baseball bat and drive over to see the loan officer.

By: ajiny

ajiny — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 22:40:48 +0000

I have to agree with LeadCritic…ignoring the Internet as a source of business seems foolhardy to me. Many many people prefer to transact business on the Internet. At one time travel agents or telephone call centers booked all airline travel. Would you have wanted to be the airline that refused to have your tickets sold online? And honestly, from the customer’s point of view, what industry screws you worse than airlines?

Many, if not most, Internet lead providers are slime…and the reason is simple. When you contract to sell something to someone exclusively and you resell it 10 times that is fraud. When you contract to sell it only three times and sell it 20 it is fraud. When you represent that it is fresh and it is 6 month old that is fraud. These providers should be sued and should be prosecuted for crimes. But ones that are honest and use advertising designed to generate actual interested parties (say ones that searched for lenders on google vs. ones who want to win an ipod) provide a service to the industry (though one I am not sure why more companies do not do for themselves more).

The notion that referral business is inherently more ethical is silly. I have been in this business long enough to see clients railroaded into “referrals” that make sense only to the referring party. Payoffs to realtors, whether secret or disguised enough to slip openly by RESPA, husband and wife agent/mortgage broker tag teams, agents/accountants/lawyers taken on trips, etc.

There is nothing inherently local about the mortgage business. A realtor cannot function long distance…a lender can. Very few of my local clients want to meet…if they are repeat customers they know me and I can take their app in 10 minutes on the phone. I can pre-qual a client in ten minutes when they call me from the realtor’s office.

I have to agree that trigger leads are the slimiest thing I have ever encountered. All the more so because they are really selling out their clients. We pay to run credit and then they sell that info (that we paid to give them) to competitors without any consent from the borrower. How is that even legal? It staggers me…and people think lenders are scum?

By: Jeremiah Arn

Jeremiah Arn — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 21:28:33 +0000

I agree with the main point that lead addiction tends toward a scarcity mentality. Chasing the next deal makes for desparate loan officers, and a desparate loan officer is not a pleasant thing.
Trigger leads should absolutely be outlawed – maybe I’m not as libertarian as Chris in this way. It should be a crime to reveal when you have applied for credit or insurance. But he IS right – avoiding cold leads is the mark of a good businessman in ANY business – lead-gen should not be brought under government scrutiny. In fact, the government should get out of the mortgage regulation business. Period.

By: LeadCritic

LeadCritic — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 18:53:53 +0000

Holy cow and I thought I was critical.
There is no doubt in my mind that if you are receiving leads by fax, you are in trouble. I agree also that there is a large portion of the mortgage lead-gen industry that are scum bags and sell junk to brokers and banks, but there are also stand up marketing/lead-gen companies that generate leads the right way. These companies provide a great service too, there is no doubt. The bad companies should definitely be called out, like you have done, but to group them altogether is not quite accurate or fair.
Fielding Mellish,
‘By and large, people who look to the internet or a 1-800 # for a mortgage loan are suckers.” What?? Do you have a website?? Does it generate leads? Do you have a 800 # on the site? That is the most ridiculous thing I have heard. More and more people are going online for services like mortgage financing and real estate. To say that they are suckers is nuts. I agree that there are boiler room type shops, of course and to say that they may not get the best deal is also completely accurate, but to disregard the Internet as form of quality lead generation for you is not smart. And to also say that the Internet is not a good source to find quality service providers is not smart either.
I hope you don’t think that your local bank or your friends cousin isn’t going to rip you off too.
In any transaction as large as a home purchase or refinance, I would suggest you be diligent in your vetting before pursuing the relationship no matter what median you found the bank or broker through.

By: Mike Agerter

Mike Agerter — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 18:27:57 +0000

Trigger leads are pretty bad; I really don’t understand how they are legal. I’ve heard a story about a little experiment with these things that I’d like to share. A mortgage broker talked to one of his friends and asked his friend’s permission to do a credit pull. The broker knew his friend had great credit, and told his friend to keep a tally of the number of broker calls that he received. After about 4 days, the tally was at 17, and by the time a week had passed the guy was appending his name to the opt out list. Pretty crazy number of calls. For whatever reason, all this does for me is conjure up the image of throwing a small cut of raw hamburger into a pack of rabid junkyard dogs.

By: Phoenix az real estate

Phoenix az real estate — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 18:04:47 +0000

This type of predatory lending practice is one of the exact reasons why the market is where it is right now.

By: Tom

Tom — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 17:40:24 +0000

Fielding, I think that it’s not so much the distance as it is the nature of the referral. I’ve done loans from Berkley to Arizona to South Dakota to Florida to Virginia from Grand Rapids Michigan. The important thing is that they were all referrals from people who knew me. The people who get their mortgage off the internet or an #800 number are asking to get screwed. But if someone in Illinois wants to work with the same reputable mortgage lender that their Dad, brother, uncle and Grandpa worked with in Michigan, then more power to them……

By: Fielding Mellish

Fielding Mellish — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 15:03:31 +0000

EXACTLY! Distant borrowers don’t get the same level of service as do borrowers from the same locality as the loan officer – especially borrowers who were referred by a valued referral source (Realtor, past customer, etc.) That’s why intelligent borrowers generally don’t get a loan from a distant loan officer they found on the internet or after having been targeted by marketing from a distant mortgage company. Good attorneys, CPA’s, physicians. financial planners – heck, auto mechanics – don’t come by their business by advertising on the internet, telemarketing, spamming or by “buying leads”. They get their business based upon their reputation for top-quality service. That’s why people successful in those fields use local mortgage loan officers with a reputation for top-quality service. By and large, people who look to the internet or a 1-800 # for a mortgage loan are suckers. For every one who gets a good deal with good service, there are many more who are treated merely as “marks” by inexperienced boiler-room loan hacks.