In four short years in the mortgage loan business, Dave Couk, a mortgage banker with Integrity Home Mortgage Corporation, has seen it all. He entered the business in 2010, when the real estate market was reeling from the effects of the Great Recession.
“The real estate market had nowhere to go but up, and it’s been a steady improvement ever since,” Couk said.
He has seen marked betterment in the market.
“One of the biggest differences when I got in in 2010 was that agents were having a real problem getting deals to the finish line because appraisals weren’t meeting the sales contract,” he explained. “People were still expecting to get more for their house than they were able to, and the comps weren’t there because there were so many foreclosures and short sales that were being used as comps in their neighborhoods.”
Inventory problems
That situation led to a noticeable refusal by sellers to even list their homes.
“Oftentimes the (potential) seller would say, ‘I’m not going to sell for that,’” Couk remembered, “and we were hearing a lot of complaints from agents that there was a lack of inventory. There just weren’t enough listings.
“There were people out there that still had good credit,” he continued. “I saw a lot of first-time home buyers – you know, good jobs, good W-2 income, and they hadn’t gone through a foreclosure or short sale – and they were looking to buy, but there was a lack of inventory.”
Now, however, the market is correcting.
“I think that we’ve seen a shift where it’s become closer to equilibrium so the seller doesn’t feel like they’re giving it away, and the buyer doesn’t feel like they’re paying an arm and a leg. There are fair deals out there, so you’ve seen more people come out of the woodwork to list their house, whereas a couple of years ago, it just wasn’t going to work. Now they see that their neighbors house sold for X, and they’re saying, ‘Shoot, if I can get that, I’ll sell mine.’ Inventory has come up a bit for agents.”
Couk notes a change in the way that buyers approach buying a house these days. Often pre-recession buyers looked to buy the biggest house with the biggest mortgage they could qualify for. Now, there’s a difference.
“The loans I’ve been doing, people seem to be a bit more conservative in the size of a house that they’re buying,” he said, plus, you’re able to get a lot of house now than you could get six years ago. You can get a lot of house. There are deals out there. The ability for a new home buyer to buy plenty of house at a reasonable price has come back to us.”
Speedy return
Couk said that his company specializes in getting loans closed on time.
“I just closed a loan in 12 business days. That’s a rush job. Normally we like three weeks,” he related. “You try to anticipate every challenge, but so many times out of ten, there are challenges that you just don’t foresee, and it becomes panic mode because we’re working in the 11tth hour to try to make it all come out smooth at the finish line. That’s the goal.”
Corporate headquarters for Integrity Home Mortgage are in Winchester, and they have offices in Maryland, all the way down the Shenandoah Valley to Harrisonburg, in Culpeper, and one soon in Fredericksburg.
“Our underwriters work in the corporate building, and they know that their responsibility is to try to help us close loans,” Couk said. “They will talk with you and tell you what the problems are and be very frank with you. ‘Here’s what we need to get this qualified.’ There’s a lot of working together to get this to the finish line.
“Our president prefers to spend money beefing up our support staff so that our underwriting and processing staffs are never stressed at more than 80 percent of capacity, so that we can keep the turnaround times that we have,” Couk added. “We have a lot of underwriters for our size.”
Couk said that he doesn’t regret making a career change four years ago, and he likes the company he works for a lot.
“We’re known as the company that gets loans closed, and most of our business is referral business,” he said.
Dave Couk can be reached at (540) 219-9189
By: George Rowand