Call for Special Pricing!

Some lenders like to write "call for special pricing" on their broker rate sheets.

For you lenders who do this, can we all pause for a moment and ask: Are your unpublished rates truly that special and exclusive?

When a broker has to phone you, only to hear that your 5-year unpublished rate is the same as the published rate of six other lenders, that’s misusing one thing everyone is short on: time.

There are few secrets in this business when it comes to rates and products. It's futile for lenders to pretend otherwise and inconvenience brokers in the process.

The ironic thing is, Business Development Managers at other lenders often know their competition’s top-secret “unpublished” rates before most brokers do.

Some say that lenders use the "call us" tactic to make brokers more reliant on them. It’s akin to a lender telling the broker, “You better keep in touch, stay on our good side and keep sending deals if you want to get our ‘special’ unpublished rates.”

If true, that’s unfortunate, and certainly inefficient.

Time-conscious and busy professionals:

• Pull their hairs out one by one when they have to look for, and can’t find, a lender’s best rates in writing
• Would rather call their mother-in-law to recap the latest episode of The Young and the Restless than search for a lender’s phone number, call up their BDM, make small talk for 10 minutes, and then ask for rates. Note to my BDMs: This doesn’t apply to you! ;)

Brokers who don’t know (or who forget) a lender’s unpublished rates will sometimes skip the extra steps and send an application to a competing lender that offers the same terms and fully disclosed pricing.

So, who wins with “call us for pricing” policies?

Email your answer to wehavenoidea@pointless.com*  

(* Not a real email)

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Rob McLister, CMT