Where should you start to get a home loan?

It's a mistake to entrust your financial future to mortgage sales websites that see you as a profit source. Without a seasoned guide, buyers — especially first time home buyers — who try to navigate the mortgage loan process alone online are at risk. You could find yourself attracted to marketing ploys promising the best deal, only to end up in the hands of unscrupulous brokers more interested in enriching themselves.

Learn why online mortgage rate quote calculators are misleading, and a risky way to shop for something as important as a mortgage loan. What you see is often the lowest, most unattainable rate — or bogus information designed to mislead. Only a consultation with an experienced mortgage consultant can give you honest, useful information.

The first concept I want to convey in my Mortgage 101 education sessions is that mortgage lending makes zero common sense. It's a system of arbitrary rules and guidelines that risk managers publish, that the bank underwriter has to meet in order to release the funds of the loan to the home buyer.

The rules of mortgage lending are there to protect the lender, not to help you buy a home.

The bank underwriter's job is to look for any risk to their employer — so essentially they are looking for ways to kill a loan. They are not in the business of helping buyers learn about mortgage loans and make good loans. In other words, their job is to find a reason not to release funds to the borrower, to protect their employer.

This means that retail banks are busy selling whatever mortgage products they have that will make the bank money — that is their priority, not getting home buyers a great deal. They aren't governed by the Department of Real Estate the way independent brokers are.

When you buy a car, you might ask a trusted mechanic to check it out. When you buy a home, a much larger investment, it makes sense to have an independent broker on your side who is going to educate you about mortgage loans and get you through the process with the outcome you want. As an independent wholesale mortgage broker, my job is to understand the arbitrary industry guidelines as well as the bank's underwriter — and then to structure your application in such a way that the underwriter doesn't have to do too much thinking to say YES.