Channeling "The Donald"

We consider ourselves completely unlike Donald Trump in every way imaginable -- especially in terms of our assets! -- except for one. We've been on the verge of telling our real estate agent, "You're fired!" The Apprentice-style for the past two weeks.

This particular individual had come recommended to us courtesy of my aunt, who had been a Big Cheese in the real estate biz about a decade ago, before she changed careers. My aunt is extremely intelligent and perceptive, not to mention vastly experienced, so her opinion carried a lot of weight. Unfortunately, the colleagues she had known personally during her work in that field had either moved on to other locations, transitioned to focusing on a very exclusive clientele, or taken up other pursuits as she had. So that left only the sister of someone she had known, allegedly one of several practitioners in a real estate family, as a referral. Yay, nepotism.

But we thought, what the hey. Even a secondhand recommendation is better than none at all.

Before hearing back from my aunt, we had planned to interview a few prospective realtor candidates, asking probing questions and checking references, as our For Dummies book suggested. However, once this recommendation materialized, we felt that our hands were tied because this particular individual was a "gift horse" of sorts, and we worried that putting her through the ringer as we would a complete stranger might be insulting both to her and to my aunt.

The red alert began going off in my head almost immediately. I looked up this person's bio online at her firm's web site, and saw that despite eight years of experience, she had not distinguished herself in any way -- the "Professional Profile" section just listed a bunch of memberships to trade organizations. In the "What Clients Say About Me" section, there was only one testimonial. One testimonial in *eight years*??? Uh-oh...

I called the office number listed on the web site rather than her cell phone, because the nature of my call was intended to be no more than an introduction to us and to our needs and therefore not urgent. She wasn't there, so I left a voicemail. Her outgoing message said to call her cell "if this is an emergency," so I felt that my inclination to call the office number first had been confirmed. Two days later, I still hadn't heard back from her. I called the firm and asked the front desk if she was in, and they said they'd recently seen her in the office but that she wasn't there at the moment.

On the third day, I called her cell. She said she hadn't gotten my message. That struck me as odd, but I gave her the benefit of the doubt -- she seemed pleasant enough, and I figured I should just use her cell from now on.

Another red alert sounded when, right off the bat, she recommended a place that was a) above the absolute upper limit of our price range, with no room for negotiation and b) in South Orange rather than Maplewood. Her desire to maximize her commission was utterly transparent from the get-go. After I brought her back down to reality, she said she'd e-mail me a listing later that day that seemed appropriate, and I gave her my address. We also made an appointment to go and tour properties for the first time two weeks later.

By the next day, I hadn't received a thing. That afternoon, I called her back. "Oh, I was going to call you," she said. "The e-mail I sent you bounced." She read me the address she had, which she had copied down incorrectly. Just how long was she going to wait before calling me?

The next listing she sent us was in a somewhat more reasonable price range, but the counter space in the kitchen looked virtually nonexistent. When we had spoken on the phone, I specifically mentioned that ample counter and storage space in the kitchen was important. I e-mailed her back and asked whether the kitchen was bigger than it looked in the photo.

A week went by -- no response. She had previously said she'd e-mail me other listings that seemed suitable as they came up -- none of those either.

My hubby took it upon himself to dig up six more listings that he thought seemed like reasonable possibilities within our financial comfort zone and have me send them to her for her evaluation. While I was at it, I asked her if she had seen my question from a week ago asking about the kitchen in the listing she had sent us.

The next day she replied, indicating three houses that she thought were "nice" and three that were "not very nice," with no further explanation. She also made a point of mentioning that she checks new listings every day and would contact me right away with news of anything promising in our price range -- but that was to say nothing of the three viable existing listings she had clearly overlooked. Her reply to my question about the kitchen: "[The house in question] has a smaller kitchen but an efficient space for the price point." I had noticed a consistent pattern of her qualifying any positive comment she made about houses under a particular price range with "for what it is" or "for the price," and/or calling them "cute." This patronizing tone combined with an egregious lack of concrete information just about sent us over the edge. I pumped her for further details about the places she had deemed "not very nice" -- suggesting concrete examples she could choose among to describe what could be wrong with them -- and asking whether she could confirm that we would see the "nice" places during our upcoming appointment with her, since she hadn't indicated that one way or the other.

The next day went by with no reply.

The following day, I received an e-mail message from her that was almost entirely blank except for her signature. Talk about technical acumen! I was less than impressed to say the least, and sent her a followup e-mail indicating receipt of the nearly-blank message but not the answers I needed to my questions. She replied later that day claiming that she had tried e-mailing me with answers, but that the firm was havnig e-mail problems -- yeah, whatever -- and provided the barest of explanations she could get away with, complete with typos/spelling errors, to describe what was wrong with the so-called problematic houses. And she *still* hadn't confirmed that we would see the "nice" ones when we met with her! She did send us two new listings, however.

Two days later, I compiled in an e-mail message to her the MLS numbers of all the houses we were interested in seeing when we met with her -- three generated by her and three generated by us -- and put them in priority order according to asking price. She wrote back and consented to our request.

In the meantime, during the preceding days, I had made a couple of phone calls to other realtors to arrange interviews in the time we had prior to our meeting with her. It was clear that she was either overextended at best or incompetent and lazy at worst, and we had no interest in continuing to work with her beyond the day we had committed to meeting her. One agent I had called was a thirdhand recommendation -- a friend's realtor's classmate in a licensing course -- and another was someone whose office we had wandered into during our initial visit to Maplewood. The latter, who I called first, had left my contact information on a piece of paper at a client's house, so she wasn't able to call me back indicating her availability over the weekend until a couple of days later when she had recovered it. She apologized and said she could give us about twenty minutes of her time. Not the greatest way to start out, but I suppose it could have happened to anyone. At least she had the decency to claim responsibility for the delay and follow up. Based on our scheduled appointment time, I called the former to see if he would be free during the remaining slot between meetings -- which was unfortunately the next day by that point -- or the following week. He was kind enough to make time for us during the next day's slot, and even offered to pick us up from the train station, before I told him we wouldn't be coming directly from there.

The next day came, and our trip to Maplewood via train went very smoothly. We conducted our interviews, and the two realtors in question were about as different as night and day. Both were pleasant and seemed reasonably competent and distinguished in their field despite having been in it for less than six years, but the similarities ended there. The woman was calm and collected, while the man was antsy and garrulous. The woman had little in the way of documentation to show us, apart from several client testimonials, while the man bombarded us with self-promotional ads -- all of which contained his photograph -- and letters of recognition in a binder. The woman was focused and able to clearly answer our questions and stick to the topics at hand, while the man was constantly fiddling with his Blackberry in the midst of speaking with us, and was stalling for answers. The woman convinced us that she could represent buyers well, while the man focused almost exclusively on the selling side, which he came right out and directly told us was the more lucrative path of the two for a realtor. The woman was not interrupted by her support staff during our meeting, while the man was interrupted twice by his assistant with reminders about upcoming appointments -- one of which he had completely forgotten about. During our walk to the office of our existing realtor, we decided to go with the woman.

Our existing realtor greeted us and took us in her Jaguar to look at houses. While she was reaonsably friendly, her conversational style didn't convey intelligence or particular expertise. And true to form, the very first place she showed us -- which had also been the first listing she e-mailed us -- was one of the ones we had de-prioritized due to its price on the list we had sent her, suggesting that it be left for last, which she had agreed to. She told us that she thought we would like it the best of any of the others we'd see, and that it was the best maintained. This turned out to be completely untrue. Despite it having newly finished floors, a finished basement, and a renovated bathroom and eat-in kitchen (whose counter space was indeed virtually nonexistent) on the inside, on the outside, it had long diagonal cracks in the foundation, a hole where a pipe had been, an old fence with rot on the bottom, a cracked sidewelk, and rough boards on the edge of the porch with a rusty railing. The garage was practically delapidated, with a sagging roof, a cracked wood door sagging in its frame and ivy growing along it, water seeping in, and several large cracks in its concrete floor and in the driveway. Only one other place we saw was in worse shape, and even there, she hadn't particularly noticed its structural defects, focusing instead on the awkward layout and flow of the rooms. She struggled to remember which types of cracks indicated more serious defects in a house's foundation, never reaching a conclusion. She seemed quite surprised that we carried around a long checklist and inspected each place so thoroughly, asking where we had gotten the material and reminding us that a home inspector would cover everything we were looking at. She just didn't get it. To make matters worse, she kept trying to whisk us around from room to room instead of letting us take our time to examine each. Eventually when we started ignoring her, she got the hint and kept herself busy chatting with the sellers.

None of the places we saw made much of a lasting impression -- I was prepared to write off the day -- until we got to the very last one, the fifth we had seen that day, which had been among the ones we'd dug up ourselves online. While smaller than the others we'd seen, it had almost no noticeable defects on initial, non-professional insepction, with the exception of a crack in the sidewalk, a few chips along the bottom and a crack along the top of the siding at the back of the house, and the need for an extra sump pump in the basement. It had lovely refinished floors, an enclosed front porch, a nice-sized living room, dining room, and kitchen that had been recently remodeled, with ample counter space and decent storage, relatively new kitchen appliances which came with the house, a large master bedroom, smaller second bedroom, partially finished attic with a small room in it, huge wooden deck, two-car garage in good condition with a garage door opener and newly repaved driveway, a full bathroom in the unfinished but seemingly well maintained basement, and a built-in security system and smoke/carbon monoxide detectors. It had nice little touches like faux-gas lamps on the front porch, carefully manicured hedges, a cat sculpture along the side of the house, and a smooth, polished faux-stone ledge between the outside of the kitchen and the entrance to the dining room, where plates and/or drinks could be staged or against which one could comfortably lean during conversation. As an added convenience, the house was already vacant, eliminating the hassle of hovering sellers and distracting clutter. Best of all, the asking price was great -- squarely within our comfort zone.

We couldn't linger there as long as we would have liked because we had to catch the train to a friend's place for dinner, but it gave us something to think about. It was modest but elegant, and seemed like it would suit our needs just fine, especially given its seemingly sound condition. The realtor had also mentioned that the seller was open to "all offers," and we could see on the listing sheet that it had already been on the market for about a month, so it appeared we had a bit of leverage there as well. As spring approached, good deals would only become scarcer, we'd be in greater competition with other sellers, and interest rates could go up. There was something to be said for striking while the iron was hot. On the other hand, we weren't in any way emotionally drawn to the house, as so many home-buyers are when they seriously consider making an offer, and we'd been out for only *one day* -- we had braced ourselves for a search that would require our going to Maplewood every weekend for months, fully understanding the scope and significance of this decision and the need to shop around. We didn't even have a real estate lawyer or property inspector lined up yet! Where were we to draw the line between having a large enough sample size to feel fully informed, and taking the opportunity to jump on a seemingly great deal as soon as we found it? Was there any merit to extended comparison-shopping purely for form's sake?

We figured we'd sleep on it and see if the place we liked was worth a second look.

We woke up the next day -- yesterday -- and decided it seemed like too good of a deal not to be given further consideration, and quickly. As it happened, both my parents said they'd be available and interested in accompanying us for a second look on President's Day, based on what we told them about it. But what to do about this clown of a realtor? If she had performed this poorly up to now, trusting her to guide the negotiation process seemed like a recipe for disaster. Our first inclination was to call the woman we had interviewed, give her the MLS number for the house we liked, and have her take us there a second time, possibly making an offer through her instead. But when I discussed this with my parents, they both had concerns about doing that legally and ethically. My hubby reminded me that even if it became evident that our existing realtor was handling the negotiating process poorly, we could turn to her broker for backup support. It also helped that we had done our homework ahead of time about how to negotiate, so we could suggest wording for her to use and request that she follow a certain course of action, essentially scripting the process for her. I must confess that I resent there being a need to do this, and from a strictly business perspective, I feel entitled to get the service I need from the person who can best provide it, but going behind her back to another agent with a potential offer for a property the first one had shown us does feel somewhat underhanded and politically awkward to maneuver, even if it is techincally legal. If she hadn't shown us that last house, we could have made a complete, clean break from her moving forward, as we had originally planned. But since we like this place and consider it a serious contender, we may have to focus on damage control instead in the interest of avoiding stepping into a political and ethical quagmire.

I called our existing realtor before the afternoon grew too late, and luckily she was available to take us back to the property the next day, parents in tow, despite the short notice. She sounded pleased that we were seriously considering the house. I suggested that she find out more about the current status of any existing offers on it, and she said she would get in touch with the seller's agent to learn more. I also asked her to drive us around the immediate neighborhood, highlighting what was nearby, so that we could better put the house in geographical context, which she also agreed to do.

We are scheduled to meet with her at 4pm today, and will see what develops.

On safari: Watch out for those lions!

It's been quite the odyssey steering our metaphorical Jeep through the wilds of Loan Land these past couple of weeks. Our lives lately have consisted largely of comparing the offerings of various mortgage companies so that we could get preapproved prior to looking at houses, thereby reducing the chances of processing delays once we've actually found the place we're ready to buy. I solicited friends, family, co-workers, and trusted web sites for recommendations, and got quite a few.

Several of the companies I called made me feel like I'd been launched into space as I rode out their epic hold times and voicemail trees, far removed from any living organism and hurtled into a monotonous and infinite landscape.

Others had people who answered right away, but might as well not have bothered. Two of them were simply message-takers for the loan officers, none of whom were in the office despite it being well within the business day (and one of whom never returned my call). One person I got was severely English-challenged and couldn't answer my questions coherently. And then there were the couple of people I reached from whom getting any meaningful information was like pulling teeth. My favorite responses:

Me: What is your interest rate today on a 30-year fixed, conventional mortgage for a detached, single-family house, assuming a purchase price of [specific dollar figure], a down payment of [specific percentage], [specific number] points, and a FICO score of [specific score]?
Them: Oh, it really depends.

Me: What are the application and closing fees you charge?
Them: Anywhere from nothing to $900, it all depends on the customer!
Me: Are there any other fees you charge that I should know about?
Them: There's also [X, Y, and Z].

And the grand prize winner:

Me: Can you tell me...
Them: You know, in all the time you've been asking me questions, you could have already completed a loan application with us!

We did manage to finally identify a company that seemed like a good bet. The rep I spoke with, who works out of her home office, had been referred to me by my dad, and was straightforward, responsive, conscientious, intelligent, and friendly with a great sense of humor. But what really sold us was a unique feature they offered: lender-paid mortgage insurance! Ordinarily, people who make down payments of less than 20% on their home purchase are required to pay Private Mortgage Insurance (PMI), which in our case would add another $200 or so to the monthly bill until we'd built up enough equity to reach 20% of the original purchase price. These guys waive it for you right off the bat in exchange for your paying them an additional 1.4% of the total loan amount upfront which, when you do the math, actually comes out to far less than we'd be paying cumulatively as PMI -- especially at a time when the rate of appreciation is slower than in recent years. We had been warned by our For Dummies book that companies offering lender-paid MI were likely to charge higher interest rates than others, but this was not the case. My hubby compiled a master spreadsheet comparing all the rates, fees, and monthly payments for the various companies I had called, and this one offered us a clear advantage.

VA loans also offer the benefit of no PMI, but in nearly every case but one that we investigated, the interest rates for those were actually higher, and we received warnings from several sources not to opt for one unless absolutely necessary because a lot more red tape is involved in order to successfully obtain a specific property -- especially older properties. Many sellers are biased against VA-loan-holding buyers because the home purchases they make tend to be more vulnerable to unraveling for one reason or another.

Another point in favor of the mortgage company we chose was the generous availability of our loan officer. On several occasions, she suggested that we call her after-hours and on weekends with questions...and we took her up on it. She was reachable as promised, and consistently provided satisfying answers to our questions.

So, we moved forward with the pre-approval process, which was done partially by phone and partially via fax and went relatively painlessly, all things considered. We now have our letter in-hand and are ready to go forth and explore actual properties. Our loan officer's reaction when she pulled up our credit reports: "These are, like, the highest scores I've seen -- ridiculous! You have less debt that I do! You guys are sickening." Much laughter ensued. Hopefully this bodes well for the future!