What the first call is like

The question that decides the money

Montgomery County is sixty-two municipalities sharing a courthouse, so the first thing asked on the line is which one the house is in. The township or borough on the deed, rather than the town on the envelope. That line sets the millage, the school district and whether there is an earned income tax to budget for, and between them those three move a monthly figure further than most people are expecting.

The clearest case of it sits inside a single mailing address. A house in Ambler Borough is taxed at 42.367 mills. A house a short walk up the road in Upper Dublin Township is taxed at 54.4758, off the same 1996 assessment base and the same 3.36 Common Level Ratio factor — roughly $2,558 a year of difference, almost all of it the school district rather than the municipal line, on two houses with the same postmark.

Transfer tax is the one exception worth carrying around: a flat 2.000% at every address in this county, with no municipal deviation anywhere in it. That figure travels. Very little else here does, which is why the township gets asked about before anything to do with credit.

The two businesses, and only one of them lends

Mortgage Montgomery County, PA is a lead-generation and marketing business, and nothing beyond it. We pay for the domain and the number, write these pages, run the assistant that picks up, take down what you tell us and keep the record. We hold no mortgage license, we are not a broker, and we are nobody's financial adviser. No application is taken here. No rate is quoted here. No credit decision is made here, in either direction — that sits with the lender and stays there.

The lender is a Pennsylvania mortgage company holding its own license, independent of us. Advice comes from there. So does the pricing, the credit pull, the application itself, the appraisal order, the disclosures, the underwriting and the closing. None of that is ours to reach into, and the reason is a license rather than a preference — originating a mortgage loan needs one we do not hold and are not chasing. Ask the assistant what rate you can get and it will tell you a licensed lender answers that, because it is the true answer rather than the polite one.

Where an inquiry travels

Who answers, and the four things it will not do

An automated assistant takes every call to (610) 735-7774. Every hour of the day, weekday afternoons very much included. The opening line says the call is recorded and asks whether that is all right, which is what Pennsylvania wants settled before a recording starts. Ask whether there is a person on the line and it will say plainly that there is not — it does not raise that unprompted, and it will never pretend otherwise. It writes things down, takes questions about programs and about what things cost around here, and before you hang up it reads the callback permission aloud, whole.

Four things it will not do: pretend to be a person, put a number on a rate, call a loan approved, or take a Social Security number. Calls get checked afterwards against precisely that list, and one that trips it gets read here by a human. This number takes calls and does not place them, so nothing described on this page begins an outbound marketing call to you.

What decides who rings you

Usually there is one licensed Pennsylvania lender and nothing at all to decide. Where there is more than one, an inquiry moves on the facts of your own situation. What sits in our contract has no bearing on it, and here is the whole of what does:

• The municipality the property sits in, set against where that lender is licensed and actually working
• The loan you described: FHA, VA, USDA, jumbo, a conventional purchase, a refinance, a cash-out, a condominium, a two-to-four unit, self-employed income
• The property itself, and any program you named by name
• Whether that lender can pick up the phone today
• Anything you said you wanted, which beats all four of the lines above it

Money is not on that list and does not join it. Nobody buys extra volume, warmer inquiries, a better position, or a mention anywhere on this site. The reason an introduction went where it went gets written down at the time, so that "why did I end up with this one" is a question with a written answer behind it instead of a shrug.

None of this is a shopping service and we do not dress it up as one. No ranking, no scoreboard, no claim that a market was searched on your behalf. Ring a bank you chose yourself and get a second quote; that is a sensible move, and making it costs you nothing at this end.

Who pays whom

The lender pays for marketing and technology work: the phone number and the assistant on it, this site and the local research inside it, the search work that puts it in front of anybody, the systems that carry a set of notes from here to there, and the reporting that comes with all of that. You pay nothing, at any stage. What the lender pays is fixed against the work — it does not rise with your loan amount, move with your rate, follow the fees you are charged, or turn on whether you ever reach settlement, and nothing you eventually pay your lender is shared back to this end.

Federal law is why it is built that way round. The Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act forbids paying for a mortgage referral, so what a lender buys is the marketing operation, and the introduction itself is not for sale. It is also the reason nothing here is arranged to push you in any direction.

What to do next

Find the municipality on the deed or the parcel record before you find anything else, then ring (610) 735-7774 and lead with it. Typing it into the form lands in the same place about a minute later. If you would rather none of this happened, privacy requests stops the calls and, if you want, stops the notes moving at all; the wording you agreed to is on communications consent, and the remainder of the arrangement is in the terms of use and the privacy policy. Sixty-two municipalities is a lot to guess at, and one of them is on your deed already.