Tone, I am “hopefully” closing an escrow in Lemon Grove Monday that has been a nightmare. 100% financing and a FICO score in the high 600’s. I did not know the mortgage broker at all nor did I know the agent on the other side. Contingencies were removed on time. When it came time to get loan docs delivered we got a few different stories from the mortgage broker. We never found out what happened but it appears that the original lender punted on the loan. My gut feel was that the mortgage broker was a sheister and was overstating the buyers assets or the broker did not note that the lender may have had stricter standards then in the past. Somehow, someway he got the loan pushed through another lender. So here we are 2 weeks past the original COE and the loan docs were signed Friday and hopefully we will fund Tuesday. The buyers agent had to pay my sellers damages (PITI and furniture rental) because the buyer herself had no funds to pay them.
So yes while it is a high probability that once contingencies are released that things will close accordingly, it is not a slam dunk. In this case the buyer was hispanic and did not know english, the buyers agent was hispanic as was the mortgage broker. I am 100% sure that the two of them took heavy advantage of the unknowing buyer.
