Choosing a lender because of another banking relationship

In one of our recent staff meetings the topic of home buyers using lenders because of previous banking relationships came up.

As a exclusive buyer's agent we discuss all our purchases to leverage all of our experience. (No traditional real estate company could do this because they represent buyers and sellers at the same time and the conflicts of interest are huge.)

Anyway, we recommend only using "credible lenders". And we define credible lenders as a lender that either the buyer someone the buyer knows personally or our office has had a recent positive mortgage experience with. (Positive being the lender did everything they said they would do.)

So with that background -

We had one relocating buyer who did banking with ING and the got a good quote from the ING lending division. We haven't had other experience with them and the buyer never used them for a mortgage so they didn't qualify as a "credible lender". But the buyer decided to use them anyway.

The result:

A generally good experience except that there was a quirk in the closing documents that was to the buyer's benefit. We thought the lender might have a problem when they did their final review and we were a little nervous about there being a delay. In the end the lender either wasn't bothered by the quirk or they didn't notice it and the purchase closed smoothly.

We had a second relocating buyer who used Wells Fargo for their banking so they got connected to a local mortgage office of Wells to provide their loan.

Now understand that Wells Fargo is the largest mortgage lender in the country and there are a lot of different people working for them. And, they lend wholesale and retail. And, I've personally probably been involved with over a hundred Wells Fargo mortgages. BUT - this buyer used a loan officer and loan office against our recommendation and that we have no positive experience with.

The result:

A totally frustrating experience for the buyer, along with costs close to $3,000 more than they could have paid if they had followed our agent's advice.

Oh well...