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Call for Special Pricing!

Secret-Rates

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who do this, can we all pause for a moment and ask: Are your unpublished rates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to phone you, only to hear that your 5-year unpublished rate is the same as the published rate of six other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their competition’s top-secret “unpublished” rates before most brokers do.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keep sending deals if you want to get our ‘special’ unpublished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know (or who forget) a lender’s unpublished rates will sometimes skip the extra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)


Rob McLister,
CMT