Should I work with a mortgage broker or a mortgage lender?

Depends-primarily on who you feel comfortable with. Let’s be honest, this is the largest transaction most people ever take on in their entire life and should be handled with somebody who knows what they’re doing. A mortgage broker does not control their own money. Instead they act as an intermediary between you the borrower and the lender and as such, charge fees to do so. A mortgage broker used to have a massive product offering pre-2007. Ever since, the wholesale lending environment is a fraction of what it used to be and the banks have stepped up their retail offering direct to the consumer. Enter the mortgage lender. The mortgage lender unlike a bank only focuses on the origination of mortgages not all the other ancillary banking products IE credit cards, auto loans etc.

The mortgage lender does lend their own money and they get to make credit decisions as they take all the risk unlike a broker. The lender has several distinct advantages;they also control the pricing of their loan allowing them to be flexible on the rate and fees, and can handle the loan application through funding in one streamed process. A mortgage broker does act similarly with the proces,s but they do not control the underwriting decision -where the lender does.

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