The Most Important Questions You Should Ask your Broker

Brokers come a dime a dozen. The most successful ones are able to post their smiling faces on billboards. When you’re shopping around for brokers, though, it takes more than a pretty face to guarantee good deals.

Before shaking your hand with a mortgage scout, you need to get to know him/her better by asking for these credentials.

Experience

As much as we would like to avoid clichés, brokers are like any other professionals. The survivors stick around and gather lessons from years and years of experience in handling lenders, borrowers, and mortgage deals.

When you’re looking for a broker, you would at least want someone who’s armed with at least five years of experience. If s/he doesn’t have that, you can go for someone who’s top of the class and newly licensed. I say that the experienced broker is still the safer bet, though.

Strategy

Although you’re probably asking for sales talk when you ask this, it’s interesting to look at how brokers answer difficult, pageant-y questions.

If s/he sounds knowledgeable and convincing enough when s/he’s trying to humor you with your “strategy query”, you can probably trust the broker when it comes to making good deals.

A word of advice though, no smart real estate vulture would come out with his/her best kept secrets.

References

When your broker has credible references, you’re probably in good hands. Having someone else speak about the broker’s capability is also comforting for any borrower and/or lender.

Understanding Representations: Is your Broker Speaking on your behalf?

The quick answer to this question is a no. Although upfront, the broker could act as a bridge between you and the lender, in reality, s/he is looking after his/her own sake. In other words, the broker will only spruce up the image of the lender or borrower who pays the right price.

While your broker scouts “on your behalf” theoretically, in reality, s/he can’t guarantee you the best deals in the market. What the broker can give is a wholesale price tag. You probably won’t do well as a borrower flying solo in the open market because you don’t have the benefits of a broker who can bring in 10 to 20 borrowers to a single lender.

The best thing you can do is look for a good broker that can offer competitive rates. You can ask for referrals from friends or relatives, so you can more or less catch a glimpse of the broker’s capabilities as a professional.

Don’t entrust your life to any single broker or bank though. The best technique of getting good mortgage deals is still research. Conduct your own research, so when you deal with a broker, s/he knows that s/he’s dealing with someone who’s well educated about the real estate business.

A word of warning: real estate people can smell a food from miles away. You wouldn’t want them to take advantage of you just because you were too lazy to watch your own back.