We Can Compete with Big Banks
And Give You Better Service

My great-grandfather, James Robert Diehl, of Conover, South Carolina, was a hardwood floor layer of German descent. His motto was "A Good Diehl More for a Good Diehl Less." You see, "Diehl," a German word for flooring wood, is pronounced the same as "Deal."

We Can Compete with Big Banks
And Give You Better Service
by James Robert Deal
Mortgage Broker

My great-grandfather, James Robert Diehl, of Conover, South Carolina, was a hardwood floor layer of German descent. His motto was "A Good Diehl More for a Good Diehl Less." You see, "Diehl," a German word for flooring wood, is pronounced the same as "Deal." Eventually he Americanized it to A Good Deal More For A Good Deal Less. My grandfather Albert Deal put the same motto on his flooring trucks in Memphis. The motto runs in the family, and I claim it as my own.
As a small company can we compete with the big banks on rates and pricing? The answer is YES, we definitely can. I will outline four reasons why, but first I should explain a little bit of mortgage terminology:
Pricing is what you pay to buy an interest rate down to a certain level. Rebate is what we receive as a reward from lenders if you are paying a higher interest rate. It's also called Yield Spread Premium, YSP, or Service Release Premium, SRP.
1)     We can compete because the cost of money is the same everywhere. It is set every day by the markets. We broker for big lenders. They give us the same wholesale rates they give to their branches. Why is that? Because they get more loans from mortgage brokers than they do through their own branches. They don't want to price us out of business. These are some of the lenders for which we broker:
Accredited Home Lenders, American Mortgage Network, Aurora/Lehman Brothers, Bankers Express, Bear Stearns, Chevy Chase Bank, Countrywide, First Bank of Arizona, First Choice Mortgage, First Franklin, First Horizon, First Mutual Savings Bank, First NLC, Freedom Mortgage, Fremont, IndyMac Bank, Lime Financial, SCME Mortgage Bankers, MortgageIT, Plaza, Washington Federal, Washington Mutual, Wells Fargo, Wachovia/World Savings, and many other lenders.
These lenders offer many different kinds of loans at many different rates and prices. If you go to your local banker, you will find that he has a relatively limited choice of loans to offer you. We shop and compare for you and then let you choose.
Take good old Washington Mutual, one of my favorite lenders. Washington Mutual Retail is separate from Washington Mutual Wholesale. They compete with each other. I often can beat a Washington Mutual Retail loan--from one of the branches--with a Washington Mutual loan from its wholesale side.
2)    We can also save you money by giving you a flat fee quote and through our transparent pricing policy. With banks, pricing is not transparent.
3)    Another way we can save you money is by delivering you "A Good Deal More," and by that I mean better service. Read the About Us page of this web site. Although I do not practice law anymore and do not represent you as your lawyer, the fact is that I have been a real estate lawyer for 27 years and I was an escrow officer for 20 years. It is easy for me to call on that experience to identify problems and suggest solutions. I do the Quality Control around here.
4)    Finally, we might save you money by putting you into the right kind of mortgage, when another lender might put you into the wrong kind of mortgage.  Sometimes, for example, you will save money by getting a new second loan instead of refinancing your first loan. We make less money when we do seconds, but that's okay. We want to do what's right for you.
An example of putting borrowers into the right or wrong kind of loan: Consider the person who plans to sell and move in one year but is given a 30-year fixed loan. A 1-year ARM with a much lower rate would have been a better choice.
Another example of putting borrowers into the right or wrong kind of loan:  Putting unsophisticated people into one of those option ARM loans.
An example of putting borrowers into the right or wrong kind of loan: Helping a borrower to decide whether to pay his or her closing costs or to go for a no or low closing cost loan. A no closing cost loan sounds like a good thing. But bear in mind that to lower the closing costs, the lender jacks up the interest rate--sometimes an entire point. And you pay that higher rate for the life of the loan.
It is always prudent to get a second quote from another money source. Fax me your good faith estimate and your credit report, and I'll tell you whether you are getting a fair deal.
Call us at 425-774-6611 or 888-999-2022 for further information. Or e-mail me. The fax number is 425-776-8081. Click here to sign up for our e-mail messages, our printed mailings, or to request a call back.
(This is not a solicitation to make a loan to any person and particularly not to any person in any state in which we cannot do business.)
Copyright © 2008 James Robert Deal. All rights reserved.