You’ve been thinking about refinancing for a while now. You have no doubt been flooded by an avalanche of offers to refinance your mortgage. But who do you listen too? Who has your best interests at heart? Did you know your loan officer is under NO LEGAL obligation to get you a loan to fit your needs? In fact their only goal is to sell you the “loan du jour”. In other words sell you the loan which makes them the most money. Better yet you are promised something they can not deliver. You are told things like “There are no closing costs on your loan” or “Yes your loan is definitely a fixed rate”. They will tell you whatever it takes to get you to the closing table and then WHAMMO, you find out the real story at closing. Maybe you’ve heard stories like this or worse yet it has happened to you. While there is much wrangling going on in the senate and in congress, there are no laws on the books to protect you the consumer. Certainly there are laws limiting the amount of money you can be charged on a loan but even those laws are easy to get around. If you have perfect credit and perfect income and fit into a nice neat little box, you have many more options available to you. But even there you have risks. Predatory loan officers, brokers and lenders are still peddling the Option Arm loans with a low initial teaser rate of 1.5% or 2% and low low payments. Just the other day a client came to see me who had started a loan application with a different broker. He was promised a 30 year Fixed rate loan, but when he showed me the other guys paperwork it was plain to see he was in an Option ARM. Plain to see at least for me, he was hoping I would be able to get him a lower payment with a fixed rate. When I explained to him the loan program he was in he nearly fell out of his chair. “I didn’t agree to any of those terms” he told me. I explained how common it was for unsuspecting consumers to get bamboozled into these types of loans. This loan officer was making a hefty commission on this loan for ripping of his client. Now, there is nothing wrong with the fee he was charging, providing he was truly providing a good loan and service to his client. Unfortunately that was clearly not the case. With all the trouble going on in the mortgage industry, loan officers, brokers and lenders are more desperate than ever before to sell loans. It is even more critical for you the consumer to be careful of who you work with. Look to one of the local or national associations for a recommended loan officer. The one I recommend the most is The National association Of Responsible Loan Officers-NARLO. NARLO has a very strong review board and offers the consumer arbitration against any loan officer that is a NARLO member. For more information about NARLO visit their website at www.NARLO.com. Whatever your mortgage needs may be, today’s difficult mortgage environment is wrought with dangers. Just remember who’s best interests most loan officers have concern over. I guarantee you, it isn’t yours!