A lot of my clients are first-time-home-buyers. I like that. I like being able to help people and educate them at the same time. See, people who have purchased or sold homes before think they’re not allowed to ask questions, so they don’t. I make sure they understand that they’re welcome to ask any question that may come to mind. If I don’t know the answer (which I tend to, don’t worry) then I know someone who does.

Great.

Now who has my answer? Why would we wait so anxiously for President Obama to help those who need to buy homes, support his efforts to provide us with a tax credit instead of a loan for first time home buyers, and promote this to our clients who were on the fence to buy something, if we knew that lenders would just go and raise the minimum credit score?

Talk about counter-productive.

Now, before you go and get all riled up screaming “Danny, they’re trying to avoid what happened before with sub-prime lending,” I know. I understand. Truly, I do. Which is why other factors should be considered when lending (if possible, and of course if it’s legal): type of employment (teachers, doctors, self-employed for a set number of years, etc.), liquid or semi-liquid assets that can provide stability in times of difficulty, and military income (retired, educational, etc.).

Obviously I’m not a mortgage lender and don’t know all the intricacies of their industry. That’s why I employ the services of ridiculously smart people like Rene Perez at Pilgrim Mortgage and Cyrena Durkee at WR Starkey. They get the job done right, on time, and without hassle. But these new rules are making it hard for me to help my clients in a timely fashion. Now I’ve become a semi-guru at credit repair and coach my clients about who to talk to about cleaning up their credit before trying to get into a house. Yeah, it’s an extra step, but it’s the difference between a real estate agent and a great Realtor®.

Questions? Comments? Concerns? Care to discuss this further? Wanna talk to me about credit repair and the folks I’ve helped? Email me at dcharbel [at] kw [dot] com.