My father’s career in real estate and my career as a mortgage broker crossed paths for a few short years. We didn’t do a lot of business together, but he did teach me a lot about the business. One lesson, which he doesn’t even realize he taught me, stands out.
As a young hotshot mortgage broker, I thought I had it all figured out. I remember sitting in the car with him, growing frustrated as he told me about how one of his clients had bought with another realtor.
My father had shown them a bunch of houses, and the clients had fallen in love with one that backed onto a major roadway. It had been on the market for ages. No one wanted to buy it because of the road noise. Houses on major thorough fairs are hard to sell and don’t maintain value very well.
Dad knew that this was not a forever home for this family. He knew that they would likely be transferred to another city in the next couple of years. Buying this home would end up being a disaster waiting to happen. There was no guarantee that the property would sell. Dad could foresee that.
I remember getting so mad at him. “If the client wants to buy that house, it is your job to sell it to them!” He disagreed. He didn’t feel right selling his clients a home that would cause them problems down the road. A few years later, we found out through the grapevine that the property had done just that. It almost ended the marriage of the young couple who had bought it.
Fifteen years later, I now see where my father was coming from. Every week I find myself saying to clients, “I can get you that rate, but I don’t feel comfortable with that mortgage.” That care and concern resonates with our clients nine times out of ten, and for the ones that it doesn’t, they get their mortgages elsewhere. And that’s okay because I would rather know that I did the right thing and have someone go elsewhere than end a marriage because of financial hardship by poor mortgage selection.
