Things You Should Know Dealing with WAMU

WAMU just recently established new guidelines in terms of what items and how much their willing to pay for different items on the HUD. I just found this out a few days ago during my negotiations with WAMU on a property.

Most importantly, WAMU has taken the stance that they will not pay ANY of the closing costs if an investor is purchasing the property. How do they know it's an investor? Because an LLC or Corp. is making the purchase. This could easily cost you another $5K or more in the deal based on your purchase price (it cost me about $6K). Sounds kind of ridiculous doesn't it? So what if an investor purchases the property - what if the investor is unwilling to pay all the closing costs? Is WAMU really going to let the property foreclose? Personally, I didn't push it as there was plenty of room in the deal and I just wanted to get it closed.

WAMU also won't pay any seller concessions if it's an investor puchase. This can mean $erious dollars. They have taken the stance that investors aren't living there and must buy the property as-is. Of course, you can simply adjust your purchase price to take into consideration any concessions you planned on asking for. But remember, your offer still needs to fall within the lender's delegated authority percentage. Could you scream, waive your arms and put up a stink about this? You could, but again, it's a numbers game. If you reverse-engineer your deal to meet their required delegated authority percentage, these things don't come into play.

Other WAMU quirks:

- No loss mitigation fees of any kind
- If two agents on the deal, then 5%
- If one agent on the deal, then 3% up to $300k purchase price; only 2.5% if over $300k
- Will pay second lender up to $5K without a problem. I even had the second lender down to $3K but the payoff extension is running out. I was told that if it runs out before escrow closes to just tell the second lender they'll get $5k to close the deal.

Overall, my first deal with WAMU has been better than most lenders. They moved quickly in ordering the BPO (10 days), assigned a loss mitigator two weeks after that, and then countered my offer a few days later.