Trust issues with agents

Posted on Jan 7, 2010 by Paul Kaplan

Thought I’d repost this from www.housechick.com because I think its very relevant. It stresses the importance for buyers to get PreQualified with a lender PRIOR to looking for homes.

Do You Trust Me?
January 7, 2010 | By Kelley Koehler | Filed Under Home Buying, Loans and Financing

…in both the real estate and mortgage industries, there’s a decent amount of distrust between consumers and lenders, between clients and real estate agents. Historically, there’s been some amazingly dishonest people who have generally brought down the overall reputation of agents and lenders. Also, agents and lenders have a reputation for the hard sell, for pestering and annoying and pushing a sales message beyond what is appropriate.

(We’re not all like that. I promise.)

Anyway. We were talking about people shopping for agents and lenders online. I’d say 90% of my home buyers contact me without having talked to a lender first, or even really thought much about talking to a lender and getting pre-approved for a home loan. In my experience, that’s because people don’t know they need a pre-approval that early on in the game. He contests that people don’t get the pre-approval because they don’t trust the lenders either.

I say people don’t get the pre-approval because of a lack of knowledge about this process that most only go through very few times in their lives. He says it’s a trust issue.

What say you?