Mortgage Professional America: Are brokers really lazy? Here's what an industry giant says
One of the biggest lenders in the mortgage industry has sounded off on a comment made on the MPA forums.On Tuesday, MPA forum poster Michael responded to a story about broker involvement by saying that “brokers have always been and always will be complacent and LAZY!!! They just will NOT get involved, they want someone else to do it for them. This has been their history during the 30 years I have been in this business.”
The comment ignited a firestorm on the forum; even NAMB President John Councilman chiming in to defend brokers. “My take is that people are so busy disclosing, re-disclosing, processing and reprocessing, that they can't spend a lot of time on anything else,” Councilman wrote.
And the head of one of the country’s largest wholesale lenders reached out to MPA to chip in his two cents.
“I disagree strongly,” said United Wholesale Mortgage President Mat Ishbia. “Brokers aren't lazy. They’re hard-working small business people who are the very fabric of our country. … We have brokers who are harder workers than anyone else I know. They’re out there on the street, working in their communities. Without them, we’re not going to be successful – not only (UWM) as a company, but all of us as an industry.”
For supposedly “lazy” people, Ishbia said, brokers do quite a lot that other mortgage professionals don’t have to.
“They’re the most educated mortgage professionals, especially now. They have to go through all the licensing, all the testing,” he said. “Banks don’t have to have their loans go through all that testing. They don’t have that scrutiny. The ones that are around today, especially – who’ve been through QM and all the regulatory rules – are some of the best mortgage professionals around.”
Ishbia said he believed strongly in the broker model – not only professionally, but personally.
“The best place for a borrower to get a mortgage is at a broker. Brokers have more options than any mortgage bank. Mortgage brokers have all different lenders they can try,” he said. “When I have a friend who needs a loan, I always refer him to a broker, because that’s going to be where he gets the best deal. Consumers want the best deal for them, and mortgage brokers are the best way to go.”
-- Matt Ishbia
President of UWM
