If free pamphlets and generalized free mortgage advice work, why are so many mortgage borrowers still feeling their way in the dark when it comes to understanding available mortgage options and determining mortgage suitability? Even with all of the free information available to homeowners, there’s still no shortage of headlines and articles concerning the potential fallout and financial devastation to homeowners resulting from choosing mortgage products that they can’t sustain over time or of ongoing homeowner confusion regarding what mortgage choices are best, when they’re best, when they should be changed, or when they should be avoided altogether. Not to mention that homeowners are still left wondering how to balance their mortgage against their short and long-term financial needs and goals.

Even with numerous websites and countless advice columns, what’s still missing is personalized mortgage advice and representation. There’s a Latin saying: “Generale nihil certi implicat.” Its English translation is “A general expression implies nothing certain.” In other words, if your specific situation and needs aren’t addressed, then they may not be talking to you.

The disclaimer that often comes with general advice directs the reader to seek the advice of a professional advisor to determine what’s best for their particular situation.  Now exactly who is that advisor supposed to be? Generally, financial planners neither address mortgage suitability nor do they study how to assess the financial impacts of the myriad mortgage options available and how to balance those options against the short and long-term financial needs and goals of their clients.  In other words, the typical financial planner hasn’t been trained to act in the capacity of a Mortgagor Financial Representative™.  So the homeowner may not be able to find much help from that particular segment of the financial services industry.  Also, many financial planners have started following a marketing scheme that encourages homeowners to pull out home equity to invest in products being sold by the financial planner, which intensifies the bias in any mortgage advice they might provide.

Because of the working knowledge and experience of mortgage originators, with additional training, they offer the best option for providing homeowners a source of personalized objective mortgage advice and representation.  However, what mortgage originator has an incentive to provide truly objective mortgage advice if they only get paid for originating loans, even if it’s an origination fee that’s negotiated upfront? After all, who doesn’t want to get paid?

Overtime mortgages cost the homeowner multiples of the home’s purchase price and mistakes in mortgage choices sometimes come with a very hefty price tag.  Underwriting standards are always being adjusted. While it maybe getting easier and faster to qualify for a mortgage, it’s not getting any cheaper or less costly to get out of.  The mortgage market is no longer plain vanilla the way it was forty years ago.  The mortgage industry has answered consumers’ needs by providing many more product choices, but with the increase in choices comes the need for more consumer responsibility and vigilance. Not knowing how to respond to the changing mortgage market place, many homeowners are at this moment hanging from a precipice waiting for the impacts or aftershock of non-traditional loans or poor mortgage choices.

We at MIFSP (www.mifsp.org) are devoted to providing homeowners the professional mortgage advisor they are directed to seek in the disclaimers of general advice columns. And in so doing, we have developed an innovative way for homeowners to get the personalized objective mortgage advice and representation they need by creating a business model that compensates the truly personal mortgage advisor for the mortgage advisory services they render. Just as homeowners have come to recognize that they must be vigilant by paying for a home inspection before a home purchase, they must realize that they have to be just as vigilant when it comes to the evolving mortgage market. And hiring a Mortgagor Financial Representative™ guarantees the certainty of receiving personalized objective mortgage advice and representation. 

By taking one comprehensive course in Mortgage Based Financial Planning™ at MIFSP (leading to the Residential Mortgage Planner® or Certified Mortgage Evaluator designation) mortgage professionals expand their existing business into a Multi-Service Mortgage Practice™.  By building upon what they already know, mortgage practitioners prepare themselves to provide the fee-based mortgage advisory services on which homeowners must come to rely.  As more and more homeowners find themselves ensnared by a mortgage trap of their own making, fee-based mortgage advisory services will become the norm because more often than not, “there is no such thing as a free lunch.”