“I owe $160,000, but They Want to Give Me a New $170,000 mortgage”

James was a referral by his neighbor who also happens to be an attorney, they actually live across the street from one another. He told me that he was working with someone that contacted him as a cold call. He was told it was not going to cost any money to close, but when he told his neighbor about this great deal, he got suspicious. He told James to give me a call.

I asked James if he had gotten any paperwork and if so, I would like to review the numbers. I told him the two documents to get me, which he finally got me after a week. Sure enough the closing costs would choke a horse, which is hard to do.

I now have an appointment to do his mortgage application. I explain over and over, there is no such thing as free. Somehow, there is a fee for everything. In this case the numbers were buried in the refinancing and James wasn’t savvy enough to understand, he was paying the cost by increasing his mortgage much more than necessary.

James is lucky that he happened to speak to someone that was savvy enough to understand there was a problem, not everyone is as fortunate.