Its been over 31 years since I last sold R.E. as an agent. Tell me which house it was today and I can still generally remember the concessions involved. That guy must be a super successful agent doing dozens of deals a year….then again, maybe he can’t remember how many he sells either. Sad response.

I called an agent yesterday on a review. Retro value 02/2017. Involved pro forma rents reported for an income property. He still remembered the details; and opined that while supported-they were at the upper limit then. (Appraiser concluded $400 per unit above those). Good agents are worth their weight in gold. Bad agents aren’t worth their weight in …something else less pleasant.

I concur with your conclusion re a LENDER credit. Concessions are something else though it’s easy for them to be conflated with each other in the marketplace.

Traditionally a seller paid ‘credit’ in escrow affects cash equivalence to the seller and originates from proceeds that would otherwise be paid to the seller, absent the credit.

Third party payment or assistance was perceived to affect the disclosed ability of a borrower to come up with the full downpayment and closing costs.

Conventional lenders cared about it – VA did not. FHA rode the fence.

Financing closing costs makes sense. The ‘credit’ part of the above article is a miniscule bookkeeping amount. The overestimation of closing costs.

I wouldn’t mind financing all closing costs IF it meant raising appraisal fees to a more reasonable $1,000 (net to appraiser) per non complex FNMA assignment and assuming we could eliminate the contingent nature of escrowed fees being dependent on closing.

Presumably lender ‘assistance or credits to borrower’ have been funded into the loan (principal) and need to be refunded. The term ‘credit’ is a another poor choice of words by FNMA guaranteed to cause easily avoidable confusion.

The TRID disclosure document would have to spell this out. Why not start requiring copies of the TRID to be provided by the lender with the appraisal order? You know…the same one that’s used as an excuse to say we cannot raise the appraisal fee!

And why do they want appraisers to go extinct….hmmmmm.