To explain for those of you who are interested however, a 'brokered' loan transaction is one where the funds lent to the borrower for the closing of a residential mortgage come from a company other than the one that originally took the loan application. If the same company that took the application also advances the funds used for a closing, it is known as a 'correspondent' transaction in brief, a lender must first have the funds to lend). Sometimes we are asked if one type of arrangement is better or to be preferred over the other for some reason and the answer is, only with regard to one issue (in our opinion), and that is the fact that a company that has the ability to function as a 'lender' generally must be more established and financially sound than one that strictly handles 'brokered' transactions. Beyond that, it becomes simply a question of which type of closing benefits the consumer more. Mortgages Direct, incidentally utilizes both types of closings, based on which type of structure gives the best overall benefit to our customers. We are constantly 'shopping' the mortgage markets for the best rates and what we have found is that with mortgage rates constantly changing (much like stock prices) either type of structure can frequently offer some degree of advantage, but only one will be best at any given time. Therefore if better terms that may be available in the market at a particular time are based on us funding the loan, then we do. On the other hand if one of our lender partners with whom we have a 'brokerage' relationship has a better price for our borrower than we can obtain by funding the loan ourselves, then we proceed in that direction (unless other factors are present that preclude this for some reason). In short, at Mortgages Direct we do our best to be guided by what will yield a better result for the consumer. Incidentally, sometimes when we fund a loan by using our 'brokerage' relationship with a well-known lender, we occasionally are asked if the borrower couldn't have gotten a better deal by going to that lender directly. Generally, the answer to this question is 'no', because Mortgages Direct receives wholesale pricing concessions from those lenders that are usually at a substantial discount relative to the terms a consumer can get directly from them. In fact we often find that because of our efficient operation, a borrower that applies with us often gets a loan at even better terms than they would have gotten from the well-known lender directly. To clarify this a little, what seems generally to be the case in most instances is that larger lenders (Citicorp, Wells-Fargo, Bank America etc.) also generally have proportionally large expenses related more to their size and diverse operations (many times not necessarily having to do with their mortgage business at all) that prevent them from functioning as efficiently as they might if they were smaller and more focused. The result is that they often simply can't deliver their final mortgage products as cost effectively as Mortgages Direct, and can in fact buy loans from us more cheaply than they can process and fund these same loan applications themselves.