First let's eliminate some of the ways borrowers typically choose a mortgage broker. This may just remove most of the problems before they occur.

How Not to Shop for a Mortgage

As a lot of people do, you could go to the Internet and call the first few mortgage brokers that pop up, check the local Sunday Real Estate Section to see who has the best rate, or call someone from out of the Yellow Pages. However these should be defined as ways NOT to shop for a mortgage:

Searching On-Line

Most every mortgage broker is listed on the Internet. While it is a great resource, it is not the best way to shop for a mortgage. It may be obvious to some, but just because a mortgage broker's Web site shows up high on search engine listings does not mean they have the lowest rates or have the best service or are even reputable. High search engine rankings do not speak to these factors, but rather to the fact that the webmaster who built the Web site probably spent hundreds of hours building and fine-tuning their site to show up on the Internet listings when you type in certain mortgage "keywords". Search engines do not rank listings by the quality or reputation of a broker but more by the amount of other similar Web sites that link to that Web site, the amount of visitors it receives, how much the broker may have paid to be listed there and many other factors.

Once I had a customer call me and say "You must be reputable as you showed up #1 in Google." Yes, I am reputable, and I do like to think we offer very good service and low rates, but that is not why my broker was listed at the top. (Number one out of over 275,000 listings for the term "atlanta mortgage".) It was because the webmaster spent hundreds of hours building and fine tuning all of the pages within the site to show up with high rankings.