Mandatory Caliber Home Loans pre-qual?

Question

On the MLS in my area of CT, I've seen several REO listings that state that in order to make an offer, the buyer must get prequalified through Caliber Home Loans.  We already have a prequal letter from another lender, but the seller/bank insists on the Caliber prequal.

Has anyone ever heard of this type of thing with REO offers (or with Caliber in particular)? I just find it a bit strange that they'd insist on that--if one has a valid prequal letter or POF, what should it matter, right? I'm just trying to have as little hard pulls on my credit as possible.

Jeremy P. · Answer

if you have all your ducks in a row, the house has been sitting for long time on the market, it doesn't hurt to reach out to the seller or Agent if there is one and see if they can work something out.

When I bought my Primary residence I made sure everyone knew I wanted to close in 30 days, (my Agent, Sellers Agent, Seller, & most importantly my lender.) I was kept in the loop with everything from my agent and lender. If any of them dropped the Ball I was on the phone figuring out what they needed to move forward. I also made sure I could sign electronically (very important, I was not driving across town to sign documents every time needed, definitely was not waiting for courier or USPS, FedEx, UPS, to ship it) what documents were legally allowed. There was a few that needed "wet" signatures. Easy enough to print sign and scan back to whomever needed them.

Jeremy P. · Answer

Maybe Caliber owns the home, its been sitting for way to long, maybe been under contract too many times with buyers not qualified.

I dont remember the exact verbiage but @J Scott had it in his book http://get.biggerpockets.com/flippingbook/. Most Sellers that are Realtors or have their License have more control of the Sale. They also have Lenders they work with specifically. In the book J Scott goes on to say a potential Buyers Lender held up the sale for roughly 2 months. After that he uses his Lender which has easier communication and the sale process can flow smoothly.

Reach out or have your Realtor reach out to the Listing Agent and find more info.

Ricky Hale · Answer

@Vonetta Booker how do you find REO’s list? Or get them from a bank?

Arthur Schwartz · Answer

I am dealing with Caliber on a refinance.  Six months after filing they are asking for more documents.  I will likely look for a new refinancer.  I would not recommend Caliber to anyone.

Vonetta Booker · Answer

@Matthew Olszak See, that's MY thing, Matthew. I had a couple of dings to my credit in the past year & I've been working hard to get things back into fighting shape. So I'm not having any more dips than I need to--and that includes getting prequalified AGAIN even though I'm already...I can't be just passing out hard credit pulls to any & everyone, lol.  That is very shady indeed, to require a preapproval and THEN state said preapproval's not applicable. Out here playing with folks' credit & whatnot.  Thanks for your feedback. :-)

Matthew Olszak · Answer

@Vonetta Booker Yes, and they left me with super-pissed buyers due to it. My buyers who were strongly preapproved by a well-known bank put in an offer and were directed to get prequalified by Caliber's lending dept. The offer wouldn't be considered without that. Fine, they did, were strongly approved again at an ever-so-slightly better rate.

Great, we thought. Offer gets submitted with that. A couple days later their offer was REJECTED BY THE SELLER - CALIBER - because they were concerned that a conventional loan (by Caliber themselves, remember) won't work with this property. What! I called the list agent and barked about why its not marked "Cash Only" in that case and then called the loan officer and asked her why the heck they had us get the preapproval if they weren't going to accept a loan anyway?? Her response was that they are totally separate departments (lending and reo) and they don't communicate.

Its a pretty dirty way in my opinion of generating lending leads by requiring a preapproval by the seller themselves and then saying that the preapproval isn't applicable to this specific property. The loan officer we dealt with was great, I don't fault her, but as a company Caliber has left a bad impression on me.

Vonetta Booker · Answer

Thanks @Jeremy P., that's an interesting perspective that I didn't consider. :-)

Mandatory Caliber Home Loans pre-qual?

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