E-Mortgages are the Future! Yeah, Right!

Online lending is booming and pretty soon all that paper jammed into the mortgage application packet is going to be a thing of the past. Yes, electronic mortgages are here to stay and consumers - as well as lenders - are taking to e-mortgages like fish to water. Yes, the future is now.

As Col. Potter of "M*A*S*H" used to say: Buffalo chips! The wife and I just finished refinancing our home and I'm here to tell you that the only thing we've done electronically is to e-mail messages to the loan officer. Did the loan officer encourage us to fill out an application online? No. Did we care? No.

In fact, while gas prices were spiraling out of control, our LO was kind enough to drive the loan application packet - about an inch thick and chock full of disclosures - to our house.

Who was my loan officer and which firm did he work for? No comment. Suffice to say he did a good job and I even referred one of my employees to him.

Now, let's talk about the loan process and why I didn't force the online issue with my lender. First off, we weren't exactly in a rush. It was a refinancing and the only thing I cared about was locking in a low rate. When I finally decided to pull the trigger on the lock-in I picked up that antiquated device known as a telephone (a land line no less) and I phoned my LO. No online nothing.

As for why my mortgage company didn't ask me to fill out an application online that's a different question, one that I didn't ask. But I thought about the process and the paper "app" and I came to the conclusion that the app itself wasn't the problem. Yes, I had to fill in a bunch of information (in ink) but it wasn't exactly "War and Peace." Quite a bit of the paper mountain was comprised of disclosures - Truth in Lending, HUD forms, take your pick.

I'm sure that within a day or two of my completing the application all the information had been re-punched by an office grunt, creating an electronic version in my lender's mainframe or server.