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Comment by MikePlacid | Hacker News Reader

How this downsizing looks from a client's point of view:

I have almost finished a 4 months long process of buying a summer house (including one failed deal), and my first financial agent - a very bright and fast girl - was fired right in the middle of my first transaction... and nobody told me a word about it - neither the manager, not the new agent, so I was sitting in the dark for a week or so. The agent that I got instead of a fired girl was very slow and unresponsive, so I've changed the financial company. Guess they will need to continue to "downsize"...

Why would anyone want to fire a nice worker and keep a worse one is beyond my understanding.

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I tried using Rocket last year for a mortgage and had a similar experience, aside from starting with a helpful employee. The folks I tried to work with were unresponsive and extremely unhelpful.

One thing that blew my mind was how terrible most mortgage companies I contacted are. I lost count of how many places I contacted that were slow and unhelpful about everything, and it kind of blew my mind. I was reaching out to companies offering them thousands of dollars in business and the usual response was "meh". There must be some pretty large moats in this industry because most shops are clearly not competing on competence or customer service.

I can't speak for the places that you contacted, but I know where I work there was a large amount of work for a staff that hadn't ramped up to meet the demand. There were people who coordinated closings that were working 80+ hours a week for almost a year in order to barely keep up with demand.

"There must be some pretty large moats in this industry because most shops are clearly not competing on competence or customer service."

There is. It is a capital intensive business that has licensing requirements for every state that you do business in. There are mortgage companies that will loan you the money and then turn around and sell that loan to an investor who would then service the loan. There are also mortgage companies that will loan you the money and also service the loan for its entire lifetime. In the case of the former, you can make your money back relatively quickly as you should be trying to sell the loan to an investor around the time of closing but there is risk in doing so. If you haven't done your due diligence about the borrower and something negative about the borrower comes to light (such as borrower lying about income) then the company that is buying the loan can pull out and now you are on the hook for a large loan that you issued to somebody who may not be qualified. With the latter, your income is going to be slow at first since you would only be making money from monthly payments.

I think this is because many mortgage processes are still old timey and rely on manual interactions by telephone and e-mail. So if they are busy and overwhelmed, they can’t respond. Even when people try to dump new business on them.

I refinanced in fall of 2020 and contacted a few companies off bankrate. Some send spam automailers, but better.com had a quick first contact and everything else was automated and quick. The estimates were autogenerated so no waiting on a loan officer to create spreadsheets and fill informs. And all the underwriting was tracked through a web site so no manual emailing or scanning or anything.

It was a pretty efficient process and it was nice to not have to wait on humans. I did have to cal once or twice and they were very responsive.

Pro tip: Ask your realtor who they recommend. Every serious realtor has a small group (1-3 max) mortgage brokers who they they have vetted. They periodically refresh their list if someone isn't getting it done for their clients as expected. There are lots of mortgage brokers out there, the realtors know who is good and who isn't because they work with them every day.

Also FWIW: Even here in small town America, lenders are dealing with tens of millions in volume every day. You will build a relationship with them over time, not on. any single deal.

they put up a non-adult to do these transactions? what the hell?

Why do you think that person wasn't an adult?

Because it is very odd framing, to say the least, to refer to someone in a professional context as a "girl."

I'm 30 and I use "girl" as a female equivalent of "guy."

Just sounds informal to me, nbd

I didn't read it that way. Is HN a professional context?

In this casual retelling I read it as a neutral noun describing gender.

Substitute the equivalent here with 'guy' and we wouldn't be having this discussion.

Thinking harder, I guess 'gal' would have been more appropriate. But in any case I feel this reveals more about the reader and their proclivity to engage in 'culture-war topics' than anything substantial.

> Is HN a professional context?

I think the parent was referring to "financial agent" being a professional context, not HN.

> But in any case I feel this reveals more about the reader and their proclivity to engage in 'culture-war topics' than anything substantial.

You are, of course, free to assign any motivation to me that you like.

However I am on the older side and the only times I ever heard "girl" used were as a pronoun for a younger person or as a diminutive for a person seen as lesser than the speaker.

For example, my older family members would refer to "the typing pool girls" or "the makeup counter girl" or, by comparison, "the woman at the county clerk's office."

So it is a bit astounding to me, especially now, to hear someone casually refer to someone who is providing a professional service to them as a "girl."

Apologies.

Taking the poster's statement in isolation, interpreting it as a younger/diminutive person is a fair reading as well.

In this case, the full context is of a casual/informal retelling here on HN so it changes how it should be interpreted (or at least, put in consideration).

Plus he was complimenting her; makes the diminutive interpretation less likely.

All nitpicks in the end as result of lossy text comms over light, no big deal :)

I am sorry if my choice of words has caused some misunderstanding, but English is my third language, so I am not able to put too many subtle nuances in my messages or to follow the latest language fashion trends.

Still, there is a definition in Merriam-Webster’s: “girl (1c): young woman” - I wonder - is it outdated?

Upd. Also this: “a person seen as lesser than the speaker” was impossible in the culture I’ve grown up in. So if there is a subtle nuance in my choice of the word “girl” it is “I felt pleasure each time I heard her voice”, not “she was lesser than me”.

Cultural differences…

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