Ask the REALTOR: What are the pros and cons of using a local lender vs. a national mortgage service?

Ask the REALTOR® is a regular video series in which I answer your most commonly-asked real estate questions, with a new Q&A posting every week. If YOU have a real estate question for me, drop me a note here.

This week’s question: What are the pros and cons of using a local lender vs. a national mortgage service? Here’s the answer in this brief video, and don’t miss the transcript below.

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Transcript:

Hi, this is Cari McGee with Keller Williams Real Estate. Welcome to this week’s episode of Ask the Realtor. Every week, I answer questions from buyers, sellers, and pretty much everyone in between, regarding real estate.

So, this week’s question is, “What are some of the pros and cons of using a local lender as opposed to one of the national mortgage services?”

Well, as far as I’m concerned, there are only pros; there are no cons, and this is why: Number one, if you are unable to get a hold of your lender and you are emailing and you are calling and I am emailing and I am calling, and no one’s getting the answers we need, I vastly prefer being able to get into my car and physically drive to their office location, and knocking on their door until I get an answer. Or camping out in their lobby until I actually get an answer from the lender. That’s incredibly helpful and much less frustrating than constantly emailing or calling and not getting a response.

And then, another major reason why I prefer a local lender as opposed to a national, say, internet lender, is because, if the national…excuse me, if the local lender messes this up, I’m gonna know, and I’m going to tell my clients, and I’m going to talk to other Realtors, and pretty soon, they won’t do as much business as they could have if they would have done the job well and correctly. And that really goes with anything, of course, that, you know — you do a good job, you get known for doing a good job, and then your business expands. If you don’t have that as an incentive because you’re a national service and you’re going to get clients and leads anyway, so it doesn’t matter if you do a very good job. You can understand, then, why it’s important that if somebody’s local and I am gonna work with them again, it’s in their best interest to do a good job for me and my clients.

So, those are the main reasons and the positives of working with a lender that is a local lender. Thanks so much, and if you have any questions for me regarding real estate, by all means, reach me via any one of the methods that follow on the screen you’re going to see next. Thanks so much. Have a great one. Bye!