Hello all,
@Carley M., we are now connected. Thanks!
Just so everyone is aware, I do routinely monitor Bigger Pockets and will chime in when I feel it's appropriate. As such, any questions that are specifically for me can be posted here and they will definitely find their way to me.
We are certainly aware of the situation of which you write. As most of you already know, NACA is an extremely detailed and thorough process. Long story short, we have in the past had occasional issues with taking longer than anyone (including us) was comfortable with to get a loan closed. As a result, the hesitation has mainly originated from realtors who were not willing to wait for the deal to close under our exacting standards.
We have actually addressed this issue over the last year, making several steps to streamline our process, but never to the point of compromising our values. Our target timeline is now 28 days from contract to closing and 16 days from submission of the actual bank application to closing, and the vast majority of loans are closing within that timeline. The only things that are holding up files at this point are if there is a challenge to the appraisal amount, which can add about ten days to the process, or (more commonly) things simply being backed up at the bank because of the volume of loans we are sending them right now.
With regard to a possible violation of the Fair Housing Act, I'm by no means an attorney either, but I did speak with one of our attorneys a few months ago on the topic of refusing a NACA loan being possible discrimination. Since refusing the loan because they are afraid of how long it may take is not actually an act of retaliation against NACA, it would not meet the law's definition of discrimination.
It stinks, it's not fair, but it's not illegal, even though it should be. As long as you have a legitimate source of funding, a seller shouldn't be able to refuse to sell to someone just because they happen to not like the source or have heard negative gossip about it. But until a rejected buyer sues a seller over the issue and wins, they can get away with it.
For now, the best defense is to point out that a NACA Qualification Letter is in fact a much more reliable source of funding since it has already been approved by an underwriter as opposed to the bank's pre-approval letter that is little more than a guess at what the buyer can afford. You can also show the our 28 day Contract to Closing Timeline which is pages 23 through 27 of the presentation at:
https://www.naca.com/Scripts/pdfviewer/web/viewer....
Hope that clarifies things a bit. BTW, thanks to everyone for being so welcoming of my input here!
Tim Trumble
Online Operations, NACA
