How to pick the best mortgage, loan officer and lender!

How to Pick the best mortgage the best mortgage company and the best loan officer. All this and more. Today on Indy's Real Estate Gurus.

Advisors Mortgage Group is proud to present Indys Real Estate Gurus hosted by Rick Ripma and Ian Arnold, the hard working mortgage guys, please contact Rick and Ian for all of your mortgage needs at HardWorkingMortgageGuys.com That's HardWorkingMortgageGuys.com Now here's the hard working mortgage guys, Rick Ripma and Ian Arnold.

Welcome, and thank you for joining us. This is Indys Real Estate Gurus. And I'm Rick Ripma, the hardworking mortgage guy with advisors Mortgage Group, and I'm

Ian Arnold with Advisors Mortgage Group. And if you missed our conversation last week, definitely tune in or our podcast Indys Real Estate Gurus. And then also, if you want to reach out to us if you want to talk about anything or if you just want to chit chat for a little while, go to HardWorkingMortgageGuys.com that it's HardWorkingMortgageGuys.com

If you know of anybody who's in the market to buy, sell, or refinance, please send them our way. Again, go toHardWorkingMortgageGuys.com have them just contact us from there.

All right, so Rick, what articles stood out to you this week?

Which articles? Yeah, I don't know. I you know, I was looking at my board. And I think this is this is the you know, it's always behind, you have to understand that that these numbers are always behind, but I like to walk you know, we like I always like to walk through the numbers. And the my board is a metropolitan Indianapolis Board of Realtors. They put out numbers and tell us what what went on in that month. So this is the month of August. Should have the September numbers here. reasonably soon, I would think but right now, the only numbers they have out are August, the median sale price was $285,000. I believe that was down from

Yeah, I believe in July was like 294.

Okay, yeah, some I knew something like that. So so the median price has come down. You know, some people say Oh, prices are falling, you know, the the value of our houses is coming down that has not that's really not what the at all what this is saying. This is more lower priced homes sold in higher priced homes is is what's happened. And so that this is not something that is ended up giving us an indicator of the value of homes or what's happening with with our appreciation. We had a close sales in August of 3461. Now that was up a little bit 1%. So we were what, just that 3400. So yeah, so basically, same number. Yeah,

yeah. And what we've noticed is it's been pretty consistent lately. In the last few months, it's been pretty close to the same. So which is kind of, we thought we'd see a bit bigger decline going after schools and stuff like that. So I'm waiting to see what September's looks like.

Yeah, me too. I think that's gonna be very interesting. I think those are going to be interesting numbers. The next number is year to date sales in the metropolitan Indianapolis area, and the surrounding counties. And year to date, there has been 24,500 sales. There's 29,791 year to date residential listings, and currently there's 3761 current active listings, that is nothing that is and if you think about it, have you ever gone and looked at an area you say, Okay, I'm gonna go on one of the sites let's say realtor.com Something like that. And you you look up an area and it brings up all the houses that are listed for sale? Yeah. And of those let's say there's 30 houses listed for sale, how many of them are houses that are under construction that are either haven't started or aren't aren't ready to lose? Or most of them? Right? So if they're saying there's 3761 It can't be anywhere near that number based on what I've seen correct. So there's not a lot of houses however, I was talking to a real estate agent and the agent a little while ago actually. And he was saying that it's easy to up fact we had him on our show not too long ago Jeremy page great agent out of carpenter better homes are not see that's showing my age carpenter real tours and our designs designs office great agent, he's saying that, you know, it is starting to be a little easier on the buyer.

Yeah. He said that, even during that radio show. He actually mentioned that people over bidding has come down yet which that's what that was the first thing you're going to have to see is and once that started dropping, then you're going to see when people start buying prior to buying the houses for asking price, then you get a lot more people that are going to really I think step into it because it's hard to over buy something

you Yeah, over bid you're bidding higher than the list price is what you're saying. Because you have so many people bidding the lower priced homes. I'm still finding I had one the other day that you know, it's it's in the lower price range and that area is kind of difficult still Yes. Because you know, it's it's there's a lot of buyers in that there's a lot more buyers than that as you go up in price. It's it's easing up. And you're you're, you're just not getting as many offers. And so it's it has slowed some in that area, which is really good for the buyers not so great for the sellers, but really good for the buyers, our month inventory it saying we have 1.2 months inventory, we were down to, what, seven months, six months, something like that. Yeah, it

was like, point 7.8. Okay, in June, I believe.

Yep. And again, there's a lot of homes in there that are that are being built that aren't ready yet. But still 1.2 months is higher than it was. But again, if you judge it by what we were, and the lowest times ever, it looks a little high, if you judge it by average, or what we ignore, you know, what we normally see 1.2 months inventory is incredibly low.

So here's another way to look at it. And this is what I like. So last month, close sales, you already mentioned this was 30 461. All right, so current active listings is 30 761. There's a 300 300 house difference. So basically, every house on the market will be gone in a month, is what they're telling you. If you look at that, that is what is crazy. Yeah, that is me. And that just still it's the same thing. We're just talking about 1.2 months. I mean, that's that's pretty darn quick.

Yeah, that's it, it's not. Now they have a price range here and quite honestly, and you're gonna have to set tell us what it says because the writing is way too small for me too.

So basically, it's it's this, these numbers really don't change too much based off of the indie market. I mean, most of the houses that are sell that have sold are between 100 and about 400,000. And that's just normal, because the average median home price is 285. I mean, so you're going to have most of your houses sell within that time period. Now, you still do get to have that 1 million home sell dollars. I mean, there's a couple of guys, I live close to there. So a couple of those I just glanced at. But those went off the market really fast, which shocked me because of the way the industry is right now. I figured those might sit a little bit longer. Now they were like one one was 1.51 was 1.7. They sold within a few days. Wow. And I was like That is crazy. But that again, adjust that medium price, as we were talking about are there. So yeah, I mean, most of the houses that are going to sell here in Indy, are going to be between that. And I would say two to 400,000. Yeah, you know,

to that point on the high end and homes, I do a lot of bike riding I love to ride. And one of the neighborhoods I've talked about before I like to ride through is the villages of West Clay Hill, because I like the neighborhood. But it gives me a really good sense of what's going on because they have a variety of price ranges in there. Now they're they start reasonably high, but they have they have condos in there, they have townhomes in there. You know they have apartments in there, they have, you know, ranch homes, they have, you know, decent size, larger homes, and then they have really big homes. And one they had 1.5 and $1.7 million home that were like four houses apart one of the one of which sold, I believe it was the higher one, but I don't remember, but I just noticed it was off the market. The signs gone. So I'm assuming it's old. But some others have come up, but it's still very, very low inventory. And that's really what I'm noticing what we read in here. That's why I like going out and riding riding on my bike when you ride on your bike. Or at least for me, I noticed a lot more because I'm going much slower than I do in a car.

Oh, oh, are you not going 70 miles an hour on your bike?

I'm not I only do 20

You're no Lane Lance arms. No, I'm

not. No, he's, he's, he's a lot better than I was. But anyway, it's just amazing to me to see that. You know, the other thing I wanted to talk about was the conforming loan limits, which we've talked about before, but it's still something that I think we need to make sure people understand. And it really add something to what's really, you know what you can buy and stay in a conforming loan limit. The conforming loan limit means this is what you can borrow up to on a conforming loan. So what most people have 30 year fixed that type of thing. It right now it's at 640 I don't know I keep forgetting 643 644 Right in there. And it's going to 715 January 1 A lot of people I believe advisors has we've we've changed it already. We'll we'll go ahead and do loans at that but it's going to 715,000 which means you're putting 20% down, you know and buying a what a 900,000 dollar home, you're a conforming loan.

Yeah, which is that's very good right now, especially the way the market is going for houses going a little bit more than what they were two years ago.

Right. And it's an it's a direct reflection of the values of our homes going up. That's it's all about a percentage of that. Now, here's the other thing, let's say you're looking at buying a two unit home, that limit is 916,000. The three limit this blows me away is 1,107,004. Unit, if you bought a four unit, say home that you're going to live in primary residence, it's 1.376 1,376,000 is the limit.

So people in Indiana should not have an issue getting conforming loans,

not if you're buying 123 or four. Now, the here's the thing, it's, there are going to be people who, and there's houses, like those $1.7 million homes you're talking about, if they aren't putting a bigger chunk down that bigger chunk down, then they may not be a conforming, but what I found is those type of loans, those type of buyers, they tend to be putting up quite a bit of money down and many times would be in that conforming loan limit, which I think can be a huge benefit. It's generally as an easier process that generally gives you better options. Not always, but generally it does. Again, it's one of those things you always want to talk about it you know, any any loan has to be talked about with with the borrower, you know, we have to go through what's going on the total situation so we can really help them make the right decision. And that's just one of those. So it's one of those things, contact us at HardWorkingMortgageGuys.com . From there, it's really you go there to see all our information, then you can contact us from their phone numbers, or email addresses. You can contact direct from the website, just go there that that would be the easiest way to get a hold of us. After the break, we are going to talk about how to pick the best mortgage, the best loan officer and the best mortgage company.

Advisors, mortgage brokers licensed by Indiana Department of Financial Institution equal housing opportunity. NMLS 33041 Rick Ripma NMLS 664589

Hi, I'm Rick Ripma. With the hard work and mortgage guys and advisors Mortgage Group where we believe delivering the best mortgage for you is why we exist and it's how we all succeed. We believe

honesty, kindness and hard work on how we honor each client at hard

working mortgage guys. We believe in custom tailored loans, not the one size fits all approach.

We believe in always presenting you with all your options. So you get the loan you want the way you want it. We believe in continually monitoring the rules, rates and market trends. So you don't have to we believe in working hard to meet your closing date so that your entire plan isn't upended. We believe in offering the same quick online process that the bookstore mortgage companies brag about whether you're refinancing or buying your first home, we believe

there is the best mortgage for you. And we believe we are the team to deliver it find us online at hardworking mortgage guys.com.

Brought to you by advisors Mortgage Group, where we believe the more you know about financing a home, the less stressful buying and refinancing will be.

Welcome back and thank you for joining us. I'm Rick Ripma, your hard working mortgage guy with Advisors Mortgage Group,

and I'm Ian Arnold with Advisors Mortgage Group too. And we're

both hard working mortgage guys.

Yes, we are. That's right. I don't think I've been hired if I wasn't hard working. No, that's

That's funny. And you know, not on the subject, but a little bit off. And I know we got to get to the question of the week. But the way this happened is I was talking to somebody in marketing. And we were talking about you know, my values and my you know, and he the he came up with the with that tagline, the hard work, of course guy because that's my value. I I don't mind working. So I work and I want people that that work also. So that's how it came about.

All right. So yeah, so since you got me off my little topic there. But if you didn't miss our first 15 minutes, go to our podcasts Indys Real Estate Gurus. And then you can listen to us as much as you want. We want to stop you and then catch our past episodes and everything. So now it is time for question of the week.

Now it's time for questions with the gurus.

The question of the week is brought to you by the reducer mortgage. It's our inflation fighter with a price of everything going up. Call it today to see what we can do to help you reduce your overall payment to help out your bank account. And that just a lot of times that could mean decreasing other debts and stuff and including them into a mortgage, which can overall Lower your payment, which we've done that and reduce people's overall payments by 700, even over $1,000,

right and going into a time like we're in and going into, that monthly payment savings can be a big deal correct.

And with the holidays coming up where you know, you're going to spend a little excess, we're especially on Christmas and stuff like that. Go ahead and get that done early. So you can have that access already saved up, right. All right. So last week's question was, I travel all around the world, but I never leave the corner. What am I it's a stamp. Always in that right hand corner, if you don't know how many people still mail stuff out anymore. But anything that's going down?

It is I know, in my mailbox, I don't get much mail unless it's once in a while I'll get a letter, you know, somebody, you know something. But most of the time, it's just junk. Yeah, I take I end up at my recycling bin, I pick up the mail, I end up my recycling bin and I throw all this stuff away. That is things I don't want. Because otherwise I carry him into the house. And then I have to carry him back out and throw him in there. So I might as well just throw them in there right away.

Why waste the extra step? That's right. All right. So the new question is, how does a B get to school? And tune in next week for that answer? So Rick, we are talking about there's gonna be a lot of people out there out trying to decide what mortgage company they should go through. Also, who should they work with? I mean, and these are two big questions, because you want to make sure you're working with the right people. So I've actually listed a few of these things out, and I wanted to hear your opinion. So my first thing is always communication. Like, how do you get How soon is somebody get back with you?

Yeah, and what you're talking about as a loan officer, yes, the loan officer getting back to to, if if I'm a borrower, I'm looking to buy a house refinance. And I leave a message, the person isn't able to pick up which that happens. But I leave a message or I email them and I leave a message, how quickly can they get back to me? And, you know, I'm one who, let's face it, there's times when you can't get back as quickly as other times correct. But I learned many, many years ago, when I bar attended, that, the number one thing I had to do in a busy bar is acknowledge the person when they got there. It may be a little bit before I got to him, but I got to acknowledge him. Same thing here. And I happen to personally have a very high sense of urgency. So I think people need to get back with you. Very, very quickly. For me, it's an hour or two. But some days, that's not pot, you know, it's just not possible. You can't do it. So what do you do if you know, but you try to and you want somebody who's going to get back to you. But you also here's the other thing that happens in today's world, you send an email, or you leave a voicemail, let's take a voicemail, you leave a voicemail, I'll get a voicemail, and all I hear is static. I don't know who if it's on my main line, not myself. I don't know who called and so you don't get back with him. So you can't just delete somebody because they didn't get back but you got to you got to understand there could have been a problem you need to try again. You know, you might want even follow up with an email. But to me you want somebody who's going to get back with you quickly. And, and accurately on the information. But it's to me a couple of hours during the week, a weekend, it may be Monday or you know, Monday. Yeah, but on Monday is gonna be busy for

you always have to keep in mind is, especially on the weekend, sometimes you don't know if somebody went out of town or something like that, and you lose sales service and stuff like that, right. But I know, something you and I have always done is say we're on a Zoom meeting for our company. I mean, we're not talking so it's not that big of a deal. But we're listening, they're listening, and somebody were to call or send us an email. Hey, look, I can't answer right now. But I can call you here in about an hour. You know, and that quick response is so good for customers, because they're like, Wow, that was fast one you just got back with me. And two, it wasn't able to instrument but guess what, I have a time now that I can be ready for him.

Right? It's very important that they do that. And I just I just believe that that's that's you know, it's I've set my team up that way because I think it's vitally important. And it's one of the complaints I used to hear about other loan officers is that they didn't get back with me or they didn't get back with me in a timely fashion. So I if it happens with me it's it's either I just made a mistake and just a stupid mistake or For some reason I did not I didn't hear it, or I didn't receive it, sometimes an email you don't receive the email goes into your spam. And you don't, I don't know about you, I don't look at my spam. I don't get much in, you know, just not much goes to my spam.

And the next one, I think with communication, I think this one's even somewhat bigger than that. One is making sure people understand what you're talking about. And then what I try to tell people, there's different lingos, you and I use when we're talking to each other. Because we understand the business, we understand what we're talking about. But it's basically and I don't mean to say there's bad ways it's dominant down, because if I say certain terminology to you, you'll understand but if I say certain terminology to a customer, he's basically looking at me, as he has no clue. I mean, you got to make sure the customer, you got to break it down for a customer, so they understand what you're talking about.

Right? And that's to me, the customer. I know that that's vital. You go I went to buy a computer years ago, and the person was extremely nice and knowledgeable and computers, but I didn't understand the thing they were saying, and they could not explain it to me. To me, an expert is somebody who can take a complicated, something I don't understand it's fairly complicated and explain it in such a way that I understand the basics of it. And that's what we work to do. And I think that's important that your loan officer can do that. First of all, for them to do that they have to understand Correct, right. And then they have to be able to communicate it to you. So you understand. And I don't really consider it dumbing it down. I consider it being considerate of the of that person. It's, we talk in a lingo. That is just different. Everybody has it in their industry. Correct. You can't do that to somebody who's not in the industry. So we tried desperately need to do we make a mistake? Absolutely. We're human. Yeah. But we tried desperately not to. And I just hope that it's, you know, for me, I hope somebody says, Hey, listen, could you explain that a different way. But it is important that if you find a loan officer, that you can understand what they're talking about if you can't move on?

Yep. And then the last one, I think is, do they actually listen to you? So we've all seen it, where you say something to a salesperson, and he's like, Hey, this is what I'm looking for? Well, he only knows what he wants to sell, you know, no, look. And that's one thing I think you and I do quite well is we we stopped listening and was like, alright, so these are your needs. These are your ones. All right, so here, how about this, I'm going to tailor a plan to help you and what the nice thing with you and I is we'll do three different plans and three different options for people. And just to break it down. Because what you might think right now is what you want exactly do but then you didn't know about option C that might actually be more beneficial for you. So I think that that's one thing we do quite well is we try to give people you what you want. And then we'll show you other options.

You're exactly right. The different The thing is, is that it's just like me going to talk to somebody about a computer. I know what I want the computer to do. I don't know necessarily how I'm going to get it to do that. And there may be things that computer can do that I don't know it can do so it's not on my watch list. Correct. And it's just like buying buying a home or getting a mortgage. There's things you may not know that I know you know your real estate agent may know that they can all sudden you're like yeah, I I need that. That would I would like to have that so it really that's what we want to do. Yep.

So after communication which is I think always the biggest one of the biggest ones now then you got to do the tangible object the costs so definitely you want to price people out because not everybody's costs are going to be exactly the same especially when you're talking about going which mortgage company to choose from and I found that out when I first started shopping for a mortgage I first place I went closing costs are like seven grand I was like Wow, I did not expect this I'm already putting down 20,020% I don't want to worry about I only think closing costs were going to be almost the exact or half of what I'm putting down right. And so that is something you definitely need to price out.

Yes, but you have to understand to when you do that. You want somebody who gives you the honest numbers correct because closing costs can be Believe it or not, even though there's very strict laws, every company seems to have different things that they they put in so you want to know and maybe go beyond closing costs into what am I going to need? You know what, what is what does the lender charge me? What does the title company charge me now the lender has no no ability to control the title companies fees. So really for when you're shopping a lender you want to know what the lender fees are, what is the lender going to charge you? And what is what is the appraisal going to cost lender has some control over an appraisal but not very much but mostly What's the lender gonna, that's how you shop it, you want to stay with somebody who's very reasonable in that area like we are, we're very reasonable, we're lower than the vast majority of lenders. And then beyond cost, you want to make sure that they have the ability to do the job. You want people who have experience and knowledge and understand what, what what they're doing, because I've had and listen, there's a huge bank, I had a customer, they were they were financing with a huge bank. We, they had been trying to close for over seven months, the bank wouldn't get back with them anymore. That came to me. I got them approved, and I closed them in 30 days. And a week after we close, they called me and said, Oh, they were laughing. And they said you won't believe it. I just got a letter from big bank. And that said, we turned your loan down. We had already closed them. Yeah, that's crazy. Yep. So you want to make sure that they know what they're doing. That's very, very important. I know we're gonna we're kind of getting short on time. All right,

we can sum up some of these other ones. I mean, I know the thing for like mortgage lenders and stuff is you want to make sure that when they do things online, or they want you to come into the store, what steps and stuff and I know a lot of times right now is everything can mostly be done online. Now it just finished how you feel comfortable. I've had some people that don't want to come in, don't want to do everything online. And because that is a lot of personal information. So they come into the location, well, some of these bigger places that do everything online, you might not have that option. So do keep that in mind that especially around here in Indy, I mean, it's not too hard for us to work together. Another one is How long can you rate lock a rate? Most people if they're closing on a house in a month or two that most places can do that. But sometimes you need to extend. And another big one, I think is are the upfront from the beginning, you basically talked about that earlier, you just want somebody is going to tell you exactly what it is. I've seen some loan officers and mortgage companies, they tried to not tell you all their costs, and they keep holding off and holding up and that doesn't do anything good for the customer. Right? You want things at a reasonable time. And then always make sure you're comparing apples. I know that sounds like a little thing you tell hard to do. But there are some places out there that will do weird things and will not compare you're not there, you'll then you're looking at something you're not comparing apples to apples. So definitely make sure that you are comparing the right thing.

Perfect. Well, to contact us go to HardWorkingMortgageGuys.com . And we appreciate you joining us today. I'm Rick Ripma, your hard working mortgage guy with advisors Mortgage Group,

and I'm Ian Arnold with Advisors Mortgage Group and Rick, what are we talking about next week.

Next week, we're going to talk about the top reasons homeowners are selling their homes right now.

Brent NMLS number 33041. Rick Ripma NMLS number 664589. Ian Arnold's NMLS number is 1995469 equal housing opportunity, some restrictions apply?

Well, first off, thank you for joining us, Danielle. I appreciate it. And I just was curious, how did you come to find out about Rick Ripma and advisors mortgage? Well, I was looking for a mortgage for myself for a brand new home that I was building. And I wasn't sure the direction to go, I didn't have anybody in mind. So I kind of just spoke to whoever I could speak to, I got their number and everything seemed to be exactly what I was looking for. So I went with them. The thing I liked the most about Rick and his advisors mortgage is that I could go and upload things online. And I didn't have to always be on the phone with them or sending them documents or trying to look for certain things that I needed to get the process going. Which was really great for me, I had a processor named Mark Coleman, who really helped me out in making sure I had everything I needed because I I didn't know the first thing about having a mortgage. So it was awesome to have so much help. I think probably what I benefited from the most is really just the understanding that sometimes I would get busy and maybe I forgot to upload a document or I forgot to do a certain part of the process in a timely manner and they would get right back with me and it wasn't like a hey, we really need this right now. It was always Hey, just wanted to make sure you still remember that we need this. Well you don't get that too much. In this day and age. It seems like most people are either, you know very demanding of something they need from you and they need it right now. And, and I agree I've seen that in Rick's attitude with us over over the last 10 years that he's very patient but also helpful to get the right things he needs. So exactly. In conclusion is Rick Ripma and advisors mortgage somebody that you would use in the future and or tell your friends and family about Oh absolutely and I just want to thank them for all the effort they put in to help me find my dream home

ranch NMLS number 33041 Recruitment NMLS number 664589 equal housing opportunity some restrictions apply I'm Rick

Ripma You can go to hard work your mortgage guys.com