When we bought our first home, we didn't. Now that we are about to purchase our second home, I was astonished by the amount we need to bring to the closing table in fees, etc. I'm thinking I should shop around for another lender but not really familiar with the process since we didn't do it the first time.
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Yup! We just asked for a good faith estimate.
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Yes! We talked to a mortgage broker recommended by our real estate agent, but also went on bankrate.com and found lower rates. We called several of the banks we found there and a credit union that I am eligible to use. We ended up using the bank where we have our checking/savings account as we got a better rate due to our use of their other services.
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We used Lending Tree and had banks bid for our business.
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We just used recommendations from our friends.
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Interesting. I am using the same lender currently as we used to buy our first home but the fees that are negotiable are concerning me and I'm afraid I'll be able to get a better deal on the "lender fees" somewhere else...it seems as those are the most costly ones.
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Only a little bit because my husband really liked his first mortgage broker and he had been really good for both of us to talk to for about a year as we prepared for our first home purchase together. Our realtor was so annoyed that we wouldn't work with his mortgage broker- that was one of many signs we should have shopped around for a realtor more!!!
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Nope.
For my first house, I used a broker my brother suggested. He's a real estate lawyer and I knew he wouldn't work with someone I couldn't trust. I had sort of kinda worked with a friend of DH's before I got totally serious about buying, but never really shopped the rates too much.
For our second house, we went with our Credit Union. DH talked about the rates with friends in the business, and it seemed like we were getting a solid deal so we were good.
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Yes, my DH did it because he understands points and closing costs and rates much better than me. He ended up getting us a great rate because he shopped it around.
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No, we just used the bank that we've been banking with for over 10 years.
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yes, we had to. But not for pleasant reasons like saving money--but because the building we wanted to buy in had some ongoing litigation happening between the HOA and the builder, so a lot of the big lenders didn't want to finance units there.
So we ended up going for a local portfolio mortgage lender. Luckily, the rates were as good and the closing costs were similar/lower than the big banks we spoke to.
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Nope...my credit union had a great program for first-time homebuyers, so we decided to go with them from the start. We wound up getting a really great rate!
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We did, we wound up bouncing deals back and forth between the two we liked the most and it saved us quite a bit. Plus, different lenders could offer different deals so one might help with closing fees and another could offer a slightly lower interest rate etc. I am pretty sure we started with a broker and then dealt with two or three companies directly.
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Sort of. We got a few quotes to begin with and then started working with one lender pretty early on. After we had to raise our budget a couple times, that lender told us we'd need to qualify for some sort of jumbo loan and at that point, we decided to shop around again and see if that was actually true. Our real estate agent recommended a different lender and that one had no problem giving us the loan we needed (no special jumbo required) so we ended up going with him.
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We did. We got 3 good faith estimates - 2 from different credit unions and 1 from a private broker. We decided based on rates combined with fees & responsiveness. The private broker somehow ended up being able to match the lowest rates and waived some of the fees. We also didn't trust that one of the credit unions would work quickly enough for us.
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i didn't for buying the first time but for refinancing i did. i would definitely look around though. this is where i looked. Just type in the specs and see what companeis come up. they can usually give you a quote really fast https://www.nerdwallet.com/mortgage-rates#filters=339944&request=ZR-JSQDCDRK&purpose=Purchase ( i don't work for them at all. haha just found my refinance lender through here and it has been smooth so far)
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Absolutely.
There are a ton of costs associated with the mortgage and many of them vary between lenders. I would shop around for the best rate + fee combo.
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Absolutely, and we were able to get the best rates at that time. Just like anything else, why wouldnt you shop around to get the best price?
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@Pumpkin Pie: I don't want to have my credit run at everywhere I shop and my credit is dinged every time. That's really the only thing holding me back once I saw all the differences in fees.
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We used a pre-approval letter from our CU to shop and put offers in but in the meantime DH was fielding calls from the Lending Tree banks. In the end two banks were duking it out like even as we were heading into closing and needed the loan to be funded. The bank we went with just gave us $1000 lender credit and the other came back and was like wait, we will give you $250 more! But by that point the loan had to be funded, it was bizarre.
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@matador84: you can always ask for an estimate based upon an assumed credit score.
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Nope. Love my home bank. They are regional. I did not want it sold to another bank with happened several times with our last mortgage.
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