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That always made me a little nervous. We have all these new safeguards in place around mortgages since the last crisis, and I wonder how things like this are o

That always made me a little nervous. We have all these new safeguards in place around mortgages since the last crisis, and I wonder how things like this are ok to leave up to back-channel conversations. Not knocking you or your situation specifically, but in general if someone is not a great risk, but that goes away if they get someone to make the right phone calls, is that a good thing in the big picture? Not judging, just posing the question.

hueving 11y ago
It sounds like the risk wasn't quantified correctly in the first place. Being a highly-skilled tech worker, working for a well-funded startup should have nearly no impact on the probability of you being able to pay your mortgage. Even if the thing collapses, you can have another job within a week. If the whole industry collapses in a dotcom bust style, established companies will be heavily impacted as well.
- sokoloff 11y ago
  I had a similar situation when buying my house. Tech employee, fairly high percentage of compensation was stock options (we'd gone public ~18 months prior) and the standard route wasn't working (as there was no place to put the variable/incentive comp). Mortgage broker got it done very easily (albeit with Countrywide, not exactly known for the strictest of standards :) ). Never missed or late on a payment on that loan.
rconti 11y ago
Different companies offer different products. Some lenders were doing 90% LTV up to 800k, some were doing it up to $1m. Some lenders might give 30 year fixed rate loans on certain high LTV loans, others might only do ARMs. Every business makes a calculation about what kind of business it wants to do. I did not use a mortgage broker when buying a house. My reasoning was that they compete on price enough that the interest rates aren't worth shopping around for. The PRODUCTS may be. If I was doing a bridge loan to buy a 2nd house, I might shop around. If I'm doing a straight-up financed purchase on 2 stable well-documented incomes, I'm probably going to get about the same product and rate no matter what bank I use.

hueving 11y ago

It sounds like the risk wasn't quantified correctly in the first place. Being a highly-skilled tech worker, working for a well-funded startup should have nearly no impact on the probability of you being able to pay your mortgage. Even if the thing collapses, you can have another job within a week. If the whole industry collapses in a dotcom bust style, established companies will be heavily impacted as well.

sokoloff 11y ago
I had a similar situation when buying my house. Tech employee, fairly high percentage of compensation was stock options (we'd gone public ~18 months prior) and the standard route wasn't working (as there was no place to put the variable/incentive comp). Mortgage broker got it done very easily (albeit with Countrywide, not exactly known for the strictest of standards :) ). Never missed or late on a payment on that loan.

rconti 11y ago

Different companies offer different products. Some lenders were doing 90% LTV up to 800k, some were doing it up to $1m. Some lenders might give 30 year fixed rate loans on certain high LTV loans, others might only do ARMs. Every business makes a calculation about what kind of business it wants to do. I did not use a mortgage broker when buying a house. My reasoning was that they compete on price enough that the interest rates aren't worth shopping around for. The PRODUCTS may be. If I was doing a bridge loan to buy a 2nd house, I might shop around. If I'm doing a straight-up financed purchase on 2 stable well-documented incomes, I'm probably going to get about the same product and rate no matter what bank I use.