Expert ADVICE
Refinance with the Best Deal from the Start
Lance Armer Owner
Santa Fe Mortgage 459 Cerrillos Rd. 505.988.2501 Armer.lance@gmail.com
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ive years ago, a man and his wife were looking to buy a home in Taos. The couple lived on the East Coast; he worked in oil and gas, and she was a university professor. They had always wanted a vacation and retirement home and, given their professions, they had stretches of free time to visit a remote area of the country. It helped they loved to ski. They were referred to Lance Armer of Santa Fe Mortgage. They sat down to lunch with Armer, discussed the details, and next thing they knew they were buying their Taos home. Fast forward five years, and the man decides to refinance both his family home in Massachusetts and his Taos vacation home. Refinancing allowed him to look at the current historically low rates and decide whether it made sense to stay with a 30-year loan or go with a 15-year loan. He called Armer and asked for rates. After a couple of weeks, he called Armer again to reconfirm the rates, and they moved forward with the refinancing.
But the man also called around in order to ensure he was getting the best deal. Armer was unaware his client was shopping the loan around, but later discovered the man had spoken with two other mortgage companies. The man told Armer the other mortgage companies had initially given him a rate, and then lowered it when the man told them what he had been quoted by Armer. Why would a broker give a higher rate and then lower it? “Santa Fe Mortgage does most of its loans with a bank in Detroit that I’ve worked with since 1997, though I also work with a few other lenders. We have a negotiated low rate for every loan,” Armer explains. “Every broker or lender can choose what they want that pricing tier to be and you can’t change the tier from loan to loan. If a new client comes in, she will get exactly the same pricing
as my sister; you used to be able to cut a deal to friends and repeat business. Now you can’t. However, if backed into a corner, most mortgage brokers can offer a cheaper rate because they set different tiers with the different lenders they work with. In other words, if they need to save a deal, they can go to another one of their lenders whose tier is less preferable for the broker. I don’t do that.” So Armer’s client shopped around, got rates from other brokers, and then, when he compared their quote to Armer’s rate, they were able to give him a lower rate. The question is: Why didn’t they just give the best deal from the start? “This is a business where you really don’t want to jump up and down. You want people to decide to trust you,” Armer says. In other words, Santa Fe Mortgage gives you the best deal from the start.