Paid $900 for a loan consultant just to tell me what my spreadsheet already said

Last month I was closing on a duplex with two separate mortgages plus a HELOC on my primary, and I got so tangled up I hired a "structured finance advisor" at $225 an hour. Four hours in, he printed out my own amortization table, circled the interest column, and said "you're paying more upfront, that's normal." Then he charged me for the printer paper. Has anyone else paid a specialist just to get a fancy version of something they could've did themselves? Is there any situation where these guys actually add value, or are they mostly for people who can't read a GDS/TDS ratio?

1 comments

1 Comment

charles_kelly4329d ago

Man that's brutal, $900 to have a guy point at numbers you already typed out is like paying a chef to reheat your leftovers. Honestly the only time those finance people actually earn their keep is when you've got something weird like cross-collateralized loans or seller financing with a balloon payment, where the legalities get so tangled a spreadsheet cant even model it right. Even then though, you're better off finding a good real estate attorney who charges flat fees instead of hourly, cause at least they catch the stuff that actually gets you sued later. But for plain vanilla mortgages and a HELOC, yeah, you just paid for a fancy lecture on basic math. Next time just post your numbers on Reddit and let strangers fight over it for free, same result and way more entertainment.