Professionalism - Integrity - Technology - Ingenuity

In the mortgage industry, the acronym PITI refers to the four typical elements of a mortgage payment (principal, interest, taxes and insurance).

At CSM, it also refers to the four operational cornerstones that undergird our mission to be the most highly regarded mortgage professionals in the Puget Sound area.

Professionalism

Let’s face it; some mortgage transactions are never as easy as we would like them to be. There are many things that can hang up the closing process along the way so it is vital that all of the people involved in your transaction are competent and committed professionals. All of our employees are college-educated professionals with many years of experience in customer service management, sales management and mortgage lending management. We didn’t write this requirement into our job descriptions – in so many words. We simply demanded that all employees (whether they are answering the telephone or preparing your Mortgage Note and Deed of Trust) know how to persevere in difficult situations and desire that the customer be completely satisfied with their lending experience.

Integrity

Mark Twain once quipped in a letter to a friend - “Yes, even I am dishonest. Not in many ways, but in some. Forty-one, I think it is.” Everyone likes to believe that all of his or her actions and intentions are noble. We are no different. But we can also relate to Mr. Twain in his moment of candid self-reflection in acknowledging the challenge of maintaining a consistent ethic. At Cleveland Street Mortgage, we do wish to commend ourselves to you on the basis of a commitment to corporate and personal integrity and we want you to understand that our commitment derives not from a misguided self-assessment, but is rather an invitation to you to hold us to the highest moral and ethical standards in all of our business dealings.

Technology

Chances are the person who coined the phrase “All that glitters is not gold” had never seen a personal computer. When it comes to the mortgage industry, some of the technological tools are all glitter and others are positively golden. At Cleveland Street Mortgage, we bring only those solutions to bear that either improve the reliability and/or flexibility of the transaction, or if it saves our customers money, time or hassle.

We are especially pleased to be one of a small percentage of mortgage brokers who have been granted direct access to Fannie Mae’s Desktop Originator and Freddie Macs Loan Prospector which brings all four of our technological objectives together in one package. With Desktop Originator, we can offer our customers same-day underwriting decisions in our office, reduced costs in the form of lower level appraisals and reduced mortgage insurance requirements, reduced documentation hassles, and a more streamlined closing process.

Ingenuity

Real estate transactions come in all sizes and shapes and sometimes the difference between a real deal and no deal turns upon the ingenuity of your mortgage professionals. Consider this situation, the buyer is nearing the end of a whirlwind two-week closing and a $12,000 seller contribution is negotiated on Friday before a three-day weekend and scheduled Tuesday closing. Loan documents have already been drawn, funding has been requested and the moving truck is arriving on Wednesday. How would your mortgage broker react? We are pleased to report that we handled this not-so-hypothetical situation with a little ingenuity and a lot of hard work; and everyone was happy (except the seller of course, whose $12,000 initiated the crisis).

At Cleveland Street Mortgage, we’re keeping a close eye on PITI.

Shouldn’t we be working together?