Skip to main content

The Power (and Value) of Plastic (Posted July 5, 2016)

Saturday morning, I walked out into our backyard and noticed that the pool sweep hadn’t done a very good job the night before – it wasn’t covering the entire floor of the pool in its sweeps.  I turned the sweep on to see what it was doing and quickly noticed that it didn’t like making right turns.  While this is good for NASCAR drivers, this presented a problem for the pool sweep. 

Fortunately, the pool sweep we have is a very simple mechanism with very few moving parts, so I was reasonably certain I couldn’t screw this up.  I took it apart and soon figured out that there’s a group of small gears (not much bigger than the size of a half-dollar coin each) that are stacked atop one another that engage the rest of the unit and allow it to move in either direction.  One of those little plastic gears (for a reason I still can’t figure out) refused to budge, so the rest of the gears refused to move, too.  We’re talking about, probably, five cents worth of plastic in this little gear, but it was keeping the entire sweep from operating properly.  Crazy!  After replacing that gear (actually, I was forced to buy the entire gearbox package – and it was far more than five cents), I reassembled the pool sweep, hooked it back up to the hose, and dropped it back into the pool.  The thing darts around the bottom of the pool turning in both directions now. 

Like the small, seemingly inconsequential plastic gear in our pool sweep that has the power to stop the whole process, the lack of a small, seemingly inconsequential “thing” called customer service can derail an entire transaction.  Let me give you just two examples:

•  An agent referred a gentleman to us who wanted to purchase a home, but the gentleman only had Social Security as his active income.  The agent and his client had been turned away by a handful of other mortgage companies the moment they saw how little the buyer received in Social Security each month.  This transaction was obviously important to the buyer, and it was important to the agent – this was his means of supporting his family.  Knowing that, we didn’t turn them away.  We got a complete financial picture from the buyer and came up with a solution that not only got him in a home but . . . well, I won’t give away all our secrets in writing – if you call me, I’ll fill you in. 
•  One of the LOs in our office was working alongside a realtor in the process of getting a young family into their first home.  The father/husband got a little excited in the process and went out and bought his family a new truck – before the home deal closed.  Our intrepid LO, when he learned about the borrower’s exuberance, not only convinced the man to return the truck, he was able to convince the dealership to take it back and nullify the transaction.  The family is in their new home now!


You may view those two examples above as a shameless commercial for our company (that’s your choice), but I put them out there for you to ask yourself a couple of questions: (1) Would you, as an agent, have given up at some point in either of the two scenarios above?  (2) If not, why would you allow a lender to give up?  It’s your paycheck; it’s your living. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Definition of Insanity (in Real Estate)

More than a couple of years ago, I witnessed something that makes me laugh and cringe at the same time.  Having lunch at a local restaurant, I spied a real estate agent and a loan originator having what I would characterize as a “first date”. I couldn’t help but overhear little snippets of their conversation, and as far as I could tell, things were going relatively well . . . at least until the agent asked the LO this question: “So, do you like to sit at open houses with agents?”  I immediately looked to the LO’s face awaiting the response.  I didn’t need to hear another single word coming out of the LO’s mouth because his face said everything:  you would have thought the agent had asked him if he enjoyed bobbing for apples in a pool of acid judging by the look on his face.  While his face was communicating complete revulsion, his lips said, “Yes, of course.”  And that’s when I looked over at the agent’s face to see, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Time for a New York-Style Housing Fix

Previously, I’ve written about a man who works in our office who lived in New York City back in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s – let me assure you that while that does seem like a very long time ago, it’s not nearly as far bac k as when the wheel was invented and humankind learned to harness the power of fire. If you’ve been to New York City recently and blissfully walked around Harlem to get chicken and waffles at Sylvia’s on Malcolm X Boulevard between 126 th and 127 th Streets or stopped in at Keybar on 13 th Street between First Avenue and Avenue A to wedge yourself into a cozy corner next to their notable fireplace, you wouldn’t get a sense that these areas were once . . . not as welcoming and glitzy as you now see them. Our office mate has told some fairly interesting stories of living in those and other areas of New York City that give a much different sense.   In the late ‘80s/early ‘90s, no matter how many great things you heard about Sylvia’s food, 127 th Str...
Post a Comment
Read more

Change: the Only Sure Thing

Which headline is better for grabbing your attention and prompting you to read the article to which it’s attached: “Credit Reports to Exclude Certain Negative Information, But Read on to See if This Even Applies to You” or “ Credit Reports to Exclude Certain Negative Information, Boosting FICO Scores”?   Obviously, the former is less than tantalizing while the latter makes you say, “Tell me more!”   I was in the “tell me more” camp, and the folks at The Wall Street Journal sucked me into their vortex. The development, set to go into practice on July 1 st , is certainly a departure from how the Big Three (Experian, TransUnion , and Equifax) have done things in the past, but it’s not going to wave a magic wand and make bankruptcies, foreclosures, short sales, etc., go away.   It’s sort of a bittersweet development.   Let me explain: Many tax liens and civil judgments will be removed from people’s credit reports if they don’t include a complete list of a...
Post a Comment
Read more