What are your favorite HELOC scenario wins?
There are a lot of professionals here and I would love for you to share some fun wins here as well, for the good of the group. I see a lot of great questions here, but it is hard to reply to them all.
I have a friend in the industry who refers me all of his HELOCs and prefers to just do the purchases himself. I've probably had close to 50 from him over the past few years. Most of the scenarios usually start something like this.
His buyers are in contract on a $775k purchase relocating to NV from Granite Bay, CA. The departing residence was in contract to close for both transactions to move smoothly, until it wasn't. Departing residence fell out of escrow less than two weeks before the new purchase COE. Seller was notified and immediately informed the listing agent to accept a back-up offer if this challenge is not resolved in the next 5 days. Simple text from my friend and had the client approved for a 5 day HELOC through FIGURE in 3 minutes. We only needed $85k to resolve the issue, which funded right on day 5. New purchase closed without any hiccups. Departing residence was put back on the market and within weeks received a cash offer above the original offer that fell out. Happy clients, happy branch manager who referred it. Once the departing residence closed escrow the HELOC was paid off before the first payment was even due. IMPORTANT NOTE: If you mark a FIGURE HELOC application that it is currently listed for sale, it does make the origination fee higher to avoid an EPO. A small price to pay compared to having to go through the normal and long process with banks or credit unions which would have absolutely blown the entire deal up completely. At best, had they done this another way, their EMD was long gone as all contingency dates had passed.
Most of the others I see have already been declined by FIGURE for various reasons, but I've been able to get almost all of them approved by completing the application correctly myself. The most obvious reason is simply data entry error on the income section when the borrowers are completing the app themselves. People enter the net monthly income instead of the gross annual household income and when I complete it correctly they are approved within minutes.
Please share any wins you have as well. They may help others find easy solutions to things like this that we all run into everyday. Don't underestimate the value of referrals from other lenders, who simply don't do them. Many have been burned in the past and don't want the hassle with them again. It is far easier to get a referral from another lender to save a loan for them than it is from realtors.