Refinancing

Some businesses get it. It takes about 2 seconds to order something from eBay, and it arrives in the mail a few days later. No hassles, no paperwork, and you get what you paid for. If you go into Taco Bell and order a cheesy double-beef burrito, chances are excellent that you'll get what you asked for, and it will cost what the menu said it was going to cost. So why does the mortgage industry work SO differently?

Short answer: because the government is involved. (Well, at least that's part of the problem.) Or maybe the answer is "because we let them get away with it." But whatever the cause, the fact is there's no reason at all that refinancing your home should take more than a Google search and couple of mouse clicks. But that ain't the way it works, my friends. And I'm afraid with the recent industry meltdown and the attempts of our valient Congress to "fix" things, it's going to get worse before it gets better.

I did find one place, ING, where the process seems to be reasonable and accomplished with minimal hassle. But they didn't offer the type of loan I needed, so I couldn't use them. Instead, I looked at other online vendors (QuickenLoans, etc) and local lenders. They all had closing costs out the wazoo. I mean seriously, why does it cost $800 for a "title search"? For 800 smackers, I expect Indiana Jones to have to wade through snakes in order to get the info, but you know that it's done in 20 seconds by a minimum-wage clerk by pushing a button on a web page somewhere. I know the companies have to make money for what they do, but why fluff it up with all the BS about mythical tasks that I don't care about (eg, $50 for "addtional endorsement")? They should present you with just two numbers: your interest rate and the amount you're going to have to pay up front to get the loan. Or better yet, just the interest rate, and let them make ALL of their money from good old-fashioned usury, not from "processing".

Anyway, it would take a chartered account to make sense of all the figures. So despite the fact that I was in so-called "Honors" math classes in high school, it required considerable effort for me to sort through the apples vs. oranges comparisons necessary to select the vendor I wanted to work with. I finally made a decision, though, and began the tedious process of filling out the paperwork.

And THAT, my friends, is when you really want to join the Libertarian party. It turns out that there are no less than 27 separate forms requiring signatures, all "required by the government". They say nothing useful (no one actually reads them anyway), and they exist for no other purpose than making the file folders thicker. But by golly, a signature must be applied to each and every one, sometimes in multiple places, with initials, dates, and a variety of secret Illuminati code symbols. I suspect that the real purpose of all these forms is to wear you down so you are happy to finish the process, and therefore likely to succumb to the broker's attempt to convince you that your happiness is due to joy of having successfully applied for a new mortgage, rather than the relief at the fact that the piranhas have finished this stage of their feeding frenzy.

Of course, that's just the beginning. After the application, you still have to go through the Captain Dunsel appraisal, the dreaded submission of forms, and the gawdawful ordeal of "closing"...which is just another word for "Fill out all the same stupid paperwork again, only this time, bring money." If I survive it all, I'll be sure to share my delight with you. Maybe I'll post some photos, too. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, be sure to read the fine print...and have a great day!