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January 3, 2005
When Are Mortgage
Prices Negotiable: the General Rule
The general rule is that interest rates and
points are negotiable when the person the borrower is dealing with has the
discretion to change them. (Points are an upfront charge expressed as a percent
of the loan.) In most cases, borrowers deal with either commissioned loan
officers (LOs) or mortgage brokers. LOs usually have discretion to change the
rate and points, and brokers always do.
Negotiating With
Commissioned Loan Officers
Commissioned loan officers (LOs) are
employees of lenders, but they have many of the characteristics of independent contractors. Their main job is to find borrowers and take their applications.
They are compensated largely or entirely by a commission expressed as a percent
of the loan amount.
LOs usually have limited discretion to depart
from the price sheets they receive every day from elsewhere in their firm. If
they can charge the borrower more than the price on the sheet, it is called an
"overage", and the LO may share it. If the LO is forced to take less than the
posted price to meet the competition, it is an "underage", and may cost the LO
part of his commission.
Some lenders allow underages but not
overages. This is not necessarily consumer-friendly, because the lender that
only allows underages might be pricing above the market. "If the borrower is
dumb enough to pay our price, fine, but if he wants to haggle we�ll come down."
Lender policies toward overages and underages are not public information.
Bottom line: if you are dealing with an LO,
you should be in negotiation mode, because there is a good chance that your
interests are not entirely in sync.
Lenders view LOs as a necessary evil: they
need them to generate loan volume, but they are costly to support. Successful
LOs can earn half a million dollars a year or more in commissions. I was once on
the board of a large lender where the top LO made twice as much as the CEO.
Lenders are always on the lookout for less costly alternatives, and the internet
is the most promising one to come along.
Do You Negotiate
on the Internet?
If you contact a lender through the internet,
the person who assumes responsibility for your transaction is most likely to be
a salaried employee rather than an LO. The lender does not have to pay this
person a commission, since she was not responsible for getting you in the door.
She is also unlikely to have any discretion over prices. Hence, you need not be
in negotiation mode, though you should compare prices across different sites.
Negotiating With
Mortgage Brokers
Mortgage brokers are independent contractors
who deal with multiple lenders. They receive price sheets every day, just like
LOs, but brokers get them from every lender with whom they do business. Except
in special circumstances, brokers do not have the discretion to deviate
from the price sheets; the lenders will accept the posted prices, nothing less.
The prices posted by the lenders who deal
with brokers, however, are wholesale prices, as opposed to the retail prices
received by LOs. The wholesale lenders who post these prices rely on brokers to
do the work that is performed for retail lenders by its employees. The broker
adds a markup to these prices, which converts them into retail prices.
Ordinarily the markup is not revealed.
The retail prices quoted by brokers are
negotiable because they include the broker markup. An adjustment in the retail
price by the broker is an adjustment in the markup. If you are dealing with a
broker, therefore, you should be in negotiation mode, because your interests are
not entirely in sync.
An Upfront Mortgage Broker (UMB), however,
will negotiate his markup directly with you and pass through the wholesale price
from the lender. Once the markup is established, the conflict between you and
the broker is largely eliminated. UMBs are listed on my web site.
Negotiating
Fixed-Dollar Fees
What was said above regarding the discretion
of LOs to change rates and points applies as well to fixed-dollar fees charged
by lenders. However, these fees are seldom included in price quotes, on the
theory that they are mechanically fixed by the lender to cover costs. Hence,
even borrowers in negotiation mode often ignore them. This can be a costly
mistake, because some lenders view them as a source of extra profit.
Bottom line, borrowers dealing with LOs
should always include fixed-dollar fees in their negotiations. If you deal with
a mortgage broker, this is not a problem because the lenders who use brokers
don�t play games with fixed-dollar fees.
Copyright Jack Guttentag 2005
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