Military Loans Information

"A thing is worth only what someone will pay for it."

If you want to know how much your car, house, or dog is worth, put it up on craigslist and see if you get any bites.  We always tend to think our possessions are worth more than they really are, and we're surprised when no one wants to buy our shiny new Hummer for the edmunds.com private party price.

The only real way to see what kind of military loans you can get is to go shopping.  See what offers you get.  We can put up target rates all day long, but until you price them out, it's all fantasy.

When I went shopping for a home loan the first time around, I physically visited about 10 locations in Colorado Springs.  This was in 2004, when the real estate and mortgage industry was rapidly expanding.  I recall one mortgage broker, who had to be about 18 years old, who had no idea of the concept of the 'time value of money'.  Wow.  Fortunately for her, she was attractive so surely that encouraged transaction.

I narrowed that group to the two with the best APR.  You're not supposed to do this, but I played them against each other.  I had to be subtle about it, because if they sniffed that I was playing them against each other, then neither would play.  So I built a relationship with each, and led them to believe that I had settled on them.  To get them to compete, I would say that I got a call out of the blue from the other guy with a better offer.  I could only do this once or twice and then they would know the gig was up, and that's eventually what happened.  One of them said they couldn't match the other's lowball offer.  Yay!  Game over.  I win.  But geez, did he get pissed when I told him the other guy undercut his offer and 'would he like to match?'  His rabid anger-foam leaked through the phone receiver, it was kinda gross.

This time around there are better tools.  Bankrate.com was around in 2004, and it was useful then as now, but there are tools these days like Zillow's mortgage market that allow several interested lenders to e-mail you a personalized quote, so you can get a good idea of what you can actually get into.  I know Zillow's concept is not revolutionary, but if you try it out, you'll see why I like it so much.  While I think it's a good concept, I'm still reluctant to use a broker or bank that I can't physically visit in the local area.  I would use the Zillow quotes as a baseline for shopping the local market--unless you trust a remote broker.  It's hard to know who you can trust, and hopefully in the future we'll be able to provide that service to you at Military Loans Information.