Reason 1– Online rates are flakey at best because there are 26 criteria to quote accurate rates.

The Secret Revealed: Most lenders quote “blanket rates” as if you have perfect credit, lots of equity and plenty of assets. Then, once you go down the road of getting a credit report, an appraisal, and a completed title report…voila, your rate just changed. Most lenders figure that once you’ve endured the pain of getting started (maybe even a lock/appraisal deposit) you won’t want to go anywhere else.     

Reason 2– Rates Change Many Times a Day so it's no good to see mine now and someone else's in 10 minutes.

The Secret Revealed: Have you ever watched the stock market? The dow is up and down and around and sideways. Well that’s the exact same way mortgage bonds work. They go up and down as fast as stocks and mutual funds. We’ve seen up to 30 rate changes in a day so unless you’re ready to lock the second you see my online rate, there’s no way your rate is guaranteed. See above too, you can lock low only to get screwed in the end.

Reason 3– You can’t see everyone’s rates just mine…so what good does that do you?

The secret revealed: If you want to see all the rates side by side to determine who has the best rate, go to www.zillow.com or other websites. If you’re looking at my website and rates change what good does that do you? To compare real time rates, you need to see them side-by-side in real time. So use the internet and find out who has them, then you can decide if they seem fishy or honest.

Reason 4– If you see an extremely low rate on a website, bait-and-switch is imminent

The secret revealed: If someone says rates went up, be cautious. Lenders like me get paid higher commissions to sell you a higher rate. Banks want us to sell you a higher rate so they’ll make more money. Guess what, not only do they want me to sell you a higher rate but they actually pay me and other lenders thousands of dollars to do it. Finding the best rate is not about shopping online. It’s about finding someone you trust to work with. If you don’t trust me, I don’t want to work with you…and I’m okay with that. We all “fish out of the same barrel” so beware.

Reason 5– We have 23 banks for you to get a loan from.

The secret revealed: I could go very “finance techy” on you here but I’ll try to keep it simple. Each bank needs to sell different rates on different days. Some days a bank will give a big incentive to change your rate an eighth (up to $4000) and sometimes you can pay a point to get a huge discount in your interest rate (up to 1%). The real scoop here is bank A may have a better 0 point loan but bank B may have a better 1 point loan. It’s a big sliding scale that doesn’t matter to you unless you see the whole scale from every bank.