lender

[luvmyfam444]

How did you choose your mortgage lender? Which one did you use?

 

[ronandannette]

We worked with a broker. No fee to us and he did all the legwork for finding several options that offered lower interest than our bank and had favourable terms. We picked the one he most recommended, even knowing it was probably the one that paid him the most commission. We've been very satisfied with the lender; when our initial 5 Year term was up a year ago we re-shopped it and our current lender still stacked up very well. I won't bother with the name because I'm in Canada so it wouldn't help you there.

 

[luvmyfam444]

We worked with a broker. No fee to us and he did all the legwork for finding several options that offered lower interest than our bank and had favourable terms. We picked the one he most recommended, even knowing it was probably the one that paid him the most commission. We've been very satisfied with the lender; when our initial 5 Year term was up a year ago we re-shopped it and our current lender still stacked up very well. I won't bother with the name because I'm in Canada so it wouldn't help you there.

thanks - how did you pick him? reviews from somewhere? A friend?

 

[GreatLakes]

My realtor is family so we went with who they recommended for the initial loan and the refi.

 

[tvguy]

Our Realtor had us pre-qualified with a Broker she worked with for our first mortgage. We refinanced with the same lender, not the same broker several years later. Second refinance we went to a Broker, different that the first one I don't remember how we found him since that was 30 years ago.

 

[Southernmiss]

Found good rates online and contacted the bank.

 

[ronandannette]

thanks - how did you pick him? reviews from somewhere? A friend?

Longtime business connection. DH and I are both in related industries. I do recommend brokers if you aren't too confident in being able to do all the necessary research yourself or especially if there's anything even slightly out of the ordinary about the deal itself or the ability to qualify. Caveat on this: it might be different in the States but in Canada every borrower must qualify under federally-mandated terms; there really is no such thing as a sub-prime mortgage here.

 

[Praying Colonel]

Our realtor recommended a mortgage specialist, she worked for a bank that does not sell its mortgages. We liked her and liked that we'd only have to deal with 1 bank.

 

[kymom99]

Both times our realtor recommended a broker. Now we are building and our builder had a list of recommended people for the construction to permanent loan. So far she has been fabulous.

 

[EACarlson]

I'm eligible for a specific loan type that only about 100 banks nationwide are certified to issue. I chose the nearest one of those, about 40 miles away.

 

[kdonnel]

Recently I have just used lendingtree.com and better.com.

There was an Amex offer with better.com that gave a $2000 statement credit for a mortgage completed at better.com but I found better terms at lendingtree.com that more than made up for missing out on the $2000.

 

[DisneyHardin]

I just used the mortgage person at my bank.

 

[TippyThomas]

I used my credit union.

 

[_19disnA]

I would ask your realtor since likely they have a lot of experience with this. Make sure to compare total costs and not just the loan rate. Honestly, after you close on the house, you will likely have very little further interaction with the lender.

 

[LuvOrlando]

Do your research and avoid anyone who has a history of getting in trouble, no matter how good the rates are or terms look. I always worried about reputation for investments but not borrowing now realize a lender can do more damage than I expected, thank goodness it's been small but the potential is enormous. My mortgage is fine but we have a small Home Equity out of a local bank as backup for college. This local bank was bought by a bank in Georgia that was run like they are day drinking and then this bank was bought by another Baltimore entity which seems the same with a new name. Last year they screwed up my account in a way that made it look like I was paying late, which was resolved when I reported it through Experion. This year, from July through November none of my principal payments went to principal & were instead manually moved to interest when I ask for corrections they tell me they are afraid of touching things, may need to report the discrepancy again but I would suspect this is a known thing. We are in the middle of moving everything to a better rated bank for the entire family.

 

[soccerdad72]

We were limited to a handful of banks when we were looking for our initial mortgage, based on banks in our area that were not clients of my wife's firm (independence issues). We chose the one with the best rate.

 

[Moliphino]

I used my credit union. I got a pre-approval through a different bank online to show when putting in offers, but my credit union rates were the same when it actually came time to buy and it seemed easier to keep things at one bank.

 

[kdonnel]

Remember that your loan may not end up being serviced by the loan originator.

Mortgages are very often packaged up and sold to a different loan servicer, some with much better customer service than others.

Sadly you have very little control over this happening.

 

[Moliphino]

Remember that your loan may not end up being serviced by the loan originator.

Mortgages are very often packaged up and sold to a different loan servicer, some with much better customer service than others.

Sadly you have very little control over this happening.

With my credit union, I applied through them then they outsourced the whole application and approvals process to another company, then it was sold back to the credit union after we closed. It was confusing, especially since I had no idea what I was doing the whole time (first house).

 

[easyas123]

Remember that your loan may not end up being serviced by the loan originator.

Mortgages are very often packaged up and sold to a different loan servicer, some with much better customer service than others.

Sadly you have very little control over this happening.

Yeah, all 4 our our mortgages were sold before the first payment was due.