First Rule of Lending: Never Put the Borrower and Lender Together

 This is the number one reason why a good broker is essential in the loan process. The first rule of lending is, never put the borrower and the lender together. This was a hard lesson for one of my borrowers to learn. The investor was ready to fund the loan. The borrower was trying to reach me while I was at lunch and I was unavailable. The borrower couldn’t reach me, so he found the investor’s phone number in an email thread from the Title company. The borrower decided to call the investor himself to ask about a fee on the settlement statement.

An hour later I received a call from the investor/lender. He told me that the borrower had called him directly and the investor seemed very irritated by this. I was shocked and asked him, “How did he get your number?” Of course the investor was also clueless about how the borrower had obtained his contact information. I later discovered that the investor’s phone number was included in an email thread to the Title company. This email was mistakenly forwarded to the borrower by the Title company in a much later email. Another lesson, don’t just click reply all or forward an email without double-checking its contents!

After speaking to the borrower, the investor discovered some information that made him uneasy about making the loan. He discovered that the borrower was going through a brutal divorce. Read about how this story ended here: http://www.thenichereport.com/category/blog/