Ruth's Blog: We closed $70 million more in September!

This September, our company closed $70 million more than any other September in our history! BUT the really great news is that 80% of our production resulted from purchase money transactions!! Yet, we only have offices in 9 states (by choice, obviously!)

How exciting is that? And, I for one, believe we have found the perfect solution to the balance between the product and security of working with a mortgage banker vs the service and pricing of a mortgage broker: It's called a correspondent lender, which you really don't hear a lot about.

A correspondent lender differs from a mortgage broker because we underwrite our own loans and fund with our own money. This allows us to provide service limited only by our internal systems. "Dual accountability" is the term our owner, Bill Starkey, uses to keep production and service both working toward the common goal that supports our tag line: "... a different kind of company where people come first."

Yet we are able to have product diversity that limit products (and guideline interpretations of) mortgage bankers. Let's face it, there are many mortage bankers that are very good at SERVICING loan payments, but not as focused on the service it takes in ORIGINATING loans. Why is that? Maybe because they know they can buy all the new loan originations they want!

Yes, we do have the best of both worlds, which is a very good reason to take another look at doing business with a correspondent lender. I think correspondent lenders could be the upset in the "which is best" race between "mortgage bankers" vs "mortgage brokers"! Just something to think about...