Well, what do you know! It’s time for another transaction to close (at least, that’s what the contract says), and once again the dog has eaten the loan processor’s homework.

I’m not the number one producer of North America or anything, so this definitely isn’t meant to brag, but in the time I’ve been in business, it’s fair to say I’ve closed a few transactions. Some day I should get out a scratch pad and try to review the percentage of times that the escrow didn’t close on time because loan docs didn’t come in. There is a crisis in veterinary medicine, as our hapless canine companions seem to have acquired a taste for loan docs, and are breaking into banks and loan offices around the nation to stuff these delicious morsels into their maws.

Over the course of the years I’ve heard lots of different valid reasons (and lame excuses) for why we didn’t get our loan docs, including:

• This was a hard loan to do.
• The buyer didn’t send their paperwork in on time.
• The title company fouled up.
• The Realtor® fouled up. (Attention loan officers: don’t try that one on me unless I really did foul up or unless you don’t like referrals).
• A power failure corrupted our data.

Now that I’ve been in the business for some time, I’ve begun to recognize an unfortunate duty to tell my buyers at the beginning of escrow that we’ll do everything we can to close their escrow, but there are a lot of people to coordinate, and if anyone’s late we may be a few days late. My buyers are generally understanding, but I hate telling them — it’s like apologizing for inevitable defeat on behalf of the industry. “Yes, I know moving is stressful and needs to be precisely coordinated, but underwriters have these dogs, see, and these dogs…”.

There’s no way to put it correctly and politely, because it isn’t right. Attention underwriters and loan processors: grow up and do your job.

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