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Not every homebuyer\u2019s experience is a smooth one, so we were happy that Morty was able to rise to the occasion and help this first-time homebuyer get back on track.
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Here, she opens up about how Morty\u2019s digital mortgage process offered the best of both worlds: an efficient, online experience paired with in-depth, knowledgeable expertise. Both were equally essential in helping her redirect her home buying process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Could you tell us a bit about your home buying journey? Why did you decide to own and how did you find the home you ended up in?
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We\u2019d been looking for about 6 months before we landed on the home we ended up buying. We had moved back into the area where we grew up in to be close to family and had had a child, so that\u2019s all pretty common and typical. My husband and I both work remotely and had a lot of flexibility in terms of location. Initially, we had been looking a little bit more outside the Philadelphia area and were actually under contract for a house there. We had used [an online lender] for that particular process, but the deal fell through after the inspection had found really significant termite damage in the home.
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What a nightmare\u2026.
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[Laughs] <\/em>Yeah, it was pretty crazy! It seemed fine\u2013the [appraisal] service\u2014and then it turned out that termites had eaten through the main support beam in the basement of the house, so\u2026..not a good choice for first-time homeowners for sure. We kind of went back to the drawing board. We honed in on the fact that what I really wanted was to live in a location that would be really walkable. The location that we\u2019re at right now, it\u2019s like a ten-minute walk to the train station. It\u2019s about a 40-minute commute into Manhattan, there\u2019s a small downtown area, we\u2019re literally like a 5-minute walk from a Whole Foods, and there\u2019s like a whole bunch of, independent restaurants, coffee shops, things like that. At this price point, we traded a little more traditional space in order to have more of that density that we wanted. That was definitely something that we were looking for. In a very \u201cmillennial service\u201d situation, a lot of other brokers were very much, insistent in trying to get me on the phone<\/em> to try to sell me on their products and services, and I was like, \u201cI travel, I\u2019m busy with meetings during the day. Can we just do email? Or can we just do it all online, and I\u2019ll get to it whenever I have a few moments to spare?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n So we started with [the other lender] and I was just not super impressed with their customer service throughout the process. When we ran into the issue with the termites and I was trying to go back and forth with them on that, it was difficult to get to someone who would speak knowledgeably on how that might affect things\u2014they had already done the appraisal and the appraisal came back fine. Everything just sort of fell through at that point. It was sort of a similar situation in terms of finding <\/em>the house. I was going to stick with [the other lender] through that process again, but they have a blanket policy against issuing mortgages for homes that are bank-owned. I felt like their customer service isn\u2019t really well built up yet. I called them up and was like, \u201clook, yes, it was a foreclosure<\/em>, but I\u2019m pretty sure this will appraise for the price that we\u2019re talking about. Even though it\u2019s officially bank-owned, it\u2019s in good condition, it\u2019s livable. And they just had no flexibility around that. The most important thing to me was to just be able to do all the documents\u2013securely uploading\u2013all online. You know, not to have to like, fax documents to anyone\u2014because, I was just not going to put up with that. So, in one of these slack channels within the tech community, someone had said, \u201cHey, if you\u2019re a first-time homebuyer, I just heard about Morty\u2014maybe you should check it out.\u201d So, that\u2019s when I went through the process and that\u2019s when I was evaluating your rates compared against a few other brokers that at least had online file systems that I could do that for. <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n This might be a little more of a subtle point, but in the past couple years with me being a first-time homebuyer as well as being a first-time parent\u2014there\u2019s just been a lot of areas where I feel like people would condescend to us in various ways\u2014they sort of dismissed questions or concerns that we had. Being in tech, I know that there\u2019s a lot of information available, and I think I\u2019m generally pretty good at sifting out what\u2019s reliable versus what\u2019s not in terms of getting baseline information of how things are supposed to work. So while having the overview of the basics is good, the distinguishing factor is when I have a follow-up question or a detailed question. A lot of people will just give an off the cuff answer without really thinking about it. It\u2019s a huge frustration when it feels like people aren\u2019t listening to us, because I\u2019m like, \u201cLook, I\u2019m prepared! I did my homework.\u201d
<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhat do you do at that point? How did you improvise or adjust your expectations in order to move forward?
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<\/p>\n\n\n\nSo some things worked out for the best. You had mentioned that things had fallen through with the original mortgage site you used. Tell us more about that process.
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<\/p>\n\n\n\nYou were pretty far into the process, having the appraisal completed.
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<\/p>\n\n\n\nThat can be pretty devastating to have found the house only to have to start over from square one. How did you cope with that?
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<\/p>\n\n\n\nAnd it makes sense that you wouldn\u2019t want to lose another house. How did you come to use Morty?
<\/h3>\n\n\n\nWhat was it like being a first-time homebuyer for you and experiencing this struggle?
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<\/p>\n\n\n\nDid Morty seem to alleviate that for you?
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