The waiter delivering cold food

I just got an email from a client. It's tough to be a salesmen for a mortgage company these days and the latest example is from a client who is asking for a transaction to be approved a certain way. In the old days, I think this deal would be declined anyway (the issue is whether the client plans on occupying a home).

Do I believe the client? Yes, but those are my PERSONAL feelings, not my professional feelings. As a salesperson, we have to take what we are given by operations and spin or use it the best we can. I can see operations point on this transaction, but when do we have to say, an underwriters feelings or the mass opinion on a conference call does not contain personal feelings. Operations personnel make decisions based on facts, but do their personal animosities and personal agendas creep into decisions? You'd have to say yes, sometimes they probably do. For what one persons goals may sounds totally unrealistic and ridiculous to another. And if your underwriter doesn't think what YOU are doing jives with what THEY would do, the potential for conflict arises.

I've long heard inthe news about financial institutions making decision based on race, creed, national origin etc. But I have NEVER personally seen it. I'm a salesperson, I believe and sell what the client tells me. Have I ever looked at the government monitoring and said, wow this guy is black, we better not give him too much money, not even close. I don't care if the client is purple. There is a loan to fund and I want to get paid. So then if any discrimination is being perpetrated, it's being done by the people who generally hold themselves out to be the righteous protectors of credit standards. But they are just people too.

But when operations effectively calls a borrower a liar, what course do you take. There is no other course but the truth. When there is no data or facts to discpute the borrower and no reason exists not to trust the borrower, shouldn't we then believe them?

It's a sad indictment on our profession, but these are precarious times and loans are being funded and repurchased and bought back and repacked again...and then someone finds something wrong and the loan is a buyback? It's almost dizzying. Why would anyone even grant credit- well money of course, but there isn't even enough of that these days. At least not in my pockets.

Sometimes, more often than before, it makes me wonder why on earth I have choosen this profession.