Does your Listing Agent need to Understand Loan Underwriting Guidelines

As you know, this is tough selling environment, and as such, your listing agent really needs to know how to know their buyer profile, what they're looking for, how to get them to notice your property, and how to excite them to buy.

If you do that well you'll get offers on that property within the first 2 weeks if not sooner, however, before you accept that buyer's contract, and label the property pending, you want to have done your home work on the buyer's qualification.

Given that most deals fall apart because the borrower couldn't obtain financing, your listing agent should know how to judge a borrower's financing approval. If you listing agent isn't able to do this, you could be wasting time with buyer's who have little or no chance of closing the transaction.

It's not enough to simply rely on a pre-approval/pre-qualification letter. You have to talk to their loan officer, and confirm what they've done, what's left and ask to review their automated approval. If the conditions remaining are insurmountable just so no to that buyer.

I always advise my clients against accepting an offer from a buyer, who's loan officer hasn't done the basics. Some loan officers won't do any work on a client until their in contract. I think that's ridiculous. It doesn't take much effort to qualify a person. I know that guidelines keep changing, and those changes can disqualify a marginal buyer, however that's not an excuse to confirm and let me know that they meet the parameters to qualify today.