Should Banks do Mortgages?

Are you considering refinancing your home mortgage loan with your bank or credit union?

There are several good reasons for considering taking out a new mortgage loan from your bank; however, there is one glaring problem with bank originated mortgage loans. Should banks do mortgages?

The following discussion about your bank’s dirty little secret could save you thousands of dollars on your next mortgage loan.

Should Banks do Mortgages?

What could be more convenient than making an online transfer from your checking account to your mortgage loan? Click, click…done. If you’re at that stage in your relationship with your bank and your mortgage loan you’ve probably already paid too much. Here’s why.

Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act

Also known as RESPA, the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act is a very important bit of legislation that protects homeowners in the United States from predatory lending practices. Except for one not so small problem: the Banking Lobby spent millions of dollars lobbying Congress to have the laws changed so that your banks and credit unions are exempt from having to disclose their markup and profit margins from your home loan…and they pulled it off.

Service Release Premium

If you’ve spent any amount of time reading the mortgage articles on this site or watching the underground mortgage videos available on this website, you’re already familiar with Yield Spread Premium. For the uninitiated, Yield Spread Premium is a kickback that lenders pay to your mortgage broker for locking and closing your mortgage loan with a higher than necessary mortgage rate. Think of it as a commission paid to your mortgage broker for overcharging you.

Banks don’t use mortgage brokers to originate their home loans because they fund their loans with the banks money, cutting out the middleman so to speak. This is a good thing right? No mortgage broker, no Yield Spread Premium right? Not exactly. ..

Banks don’t offer wholesale mortgage rates to their customers, but they know what rates are available from wholesale lenders including what mortgage rate you could get from their competitors; however, the bank charges you mortgage rates based on what profit they want to make selling your loan on the secondary market. This markup of what you could have had and what you got creates Service Release Premium, or a premium profit for the bank.

The bank will never tell you what they’re doing with your mortgage rate because they’re not legally required to disclose any of this about your loan. Remember that loophole in the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act? In a nutshell, this is why you should never refinance your home mortgage with your bank.

Mortgage Broker Banks

The successful lobbying of Congress to have banks excluded from RESPA legislation created a new kind of “direct lender.” Many mortgage brokers saw what the banks had accomplished for themselves and greedily decided they wanted in on the action. These brokers created a new kind of lender known as a “broker bank.” Instead of reselling loans from wholesale lenders these broker banks funded loans with their own cash and were therefore able to take advantage of the same loophole as your bank. You’ll see advertisements now and then for “direct lenders” that cut out the middleman when refinancing your mortgage.

Don’t be fooled by this bravado; the only reason for a mortgage broker to operate a business in this manner is to take advantage of their customers by exploiting this loophole in disclosure laws that are supposed to be protecting you from predatory lending practices.

How to Spot a Mortgage Broker Bank

How can you tell if the person you’re dealing with is operating as a broker bank? Ask them if they close in the name of their own company or the wholesale lender when refinancing your mortgage. If the answer is that they close in their own company’s name then you know that you’re dealing with a mortgage broker bank and would be better off finding someone else to refinance your home.

You can learn more about refinancing your mortgage with the right lender without paying this unnecessary markup of your mortgage rate or lender junk fees by registering for my Underground Mortgage Videos. Register today and you’ll be on your way to saving thousands of dollars on your next home mortgage loan.