Hellobee Boards

I would highly recommend smaller institutions that do their own underwriting in-house. It makes a world of difference for how smoothly your house buying process will go.

I have used Bank of America (retail), Provident Funding (via broker) and Wells Fargo private mortgage banking (not sure exactly what this was, but it was not retail).

BoA was extremely easy and they waived a chunk of the origination fee which made a big difference in fees.

Provident Funding dragged out my refi for 3 months. I started in July and didn't close until September. They were the biggest PITA imaginable. Working with a broker was awful too--there was no management chain to escalate to.

WF PMB was good. They do their underwriting in house and it was very easy, but this was prior to the new rules so I don't know if they would still be easy.

My CU was just not competitive on rates.

Our first loan was through a referral by our trusted realtor friend. The officer worked through a medium sized bank branch. We had set up an FHA loan. A few years later, our refi was online (non-FHA) and it went smoothly. GReat rates.

We used US Bank, which has been our bank for the last 12 years. It was pretty painless.

Dh is in banking so we did both our mortgage and refi through his banks (at the time) and received employee discounts. I would keep in mind the cost of PMI if you are planning on putting 5% down!

@simplyfelicity: if I remember correctly your hubs is a teacher? If so, and he's not earning a pay check yet, I would hold off a bit. You need to show a consistent stream of income from a current job so right now y'all don't have that. Especially given that you are first time home buyers I wouldn't recommend an online lender like Lending Tree or Quicken Loans. I tried to get some re-fi quotes and ended up just getting non stop really aggressive phone calls from banks that the online lender sent my information to and it was really infuriating. We ended up doing a refi through a local bank and we got a very good rate by qualifying for some incentives based on our income/asset levels, but we are a week away from closing and now all of a sudden they are claiming that we have to open a checking account with them and pay the mortgage from there in order to get the discounted rate and it's been a headache. But, worth it for the fact that our mortgage is going down $250/month.

@simplyfelicity: I believe even if there is no lapse in employment you have to provide 2-3 months of pay stubs from your current employer. But different lenders will have different requirements.

Our previous mortgage was through Citi. Freaking nightmare. You couldn't pay me a bazillion million dollars to use them for anything ever again. My huband bought that house 10 years ago when he was rather naive. We are glad to be free of that mortgage and of Citi!

We just bought a new house and used a broker. We had an amazing experience. Our broker is a family friend and he is eating as big of a portion of the closing costs as he can (basically donating his commission from brokering the loan) to help us out. We got a phenomenal interest rate and our broker has been so helpful and informative and supportive throughout the process. Highly recommend! We did a conventional loan with 10% down.

We used Chase for our mortgage and they were pretty awful. I wouldn't recommend them.

They weren't on top of anything throughout the entire process. On the way to our closing they actually told us that we owed an extra $6k more than what we were prepared to pay, this was literally a few hours before our closing at our lawyer's office. They also messed up on our property taxes so our first mortgage payment was a lot higher than we were expecting. We were able to get this straightened out, but it was still annoying that they messed up in the first place. I would never use them again for a mortgage.

@simplyfelicity: Just traced our online mortgage. DH primarily handled the Loandepot one online. It took a exactly one month start to finish for the refi and we even made a mistake. DH missed 6 emails because it went to spam. They figured it out though. I was happy we went to a small time, in person loan officer the first time because we had a lot of questions.

For my loan and both refi, I used referral from friends that happen to be mortgage brokers. No fee and lowest rates. Banks were a waste of time. For the same rate, they tried to charge me points and fees of 12k vs *nothing* for the broker.

@simplyfelicity: We just bought our first house and used an online lender. I actually got some quotes through Zillow and then followed up over the phone to get the best deal. We used a VA loan though, so I'm not sure if that made a difference. We also talked to a local lender recommended by our realtor, but she couldn't come close to matching what the online lender (HomePoint Financial) offered. DH was initially skeptical of going with an online lender but they were great to work with and we closed with no issues.

My friend started his own mortgage company so I've been using him for the past 10 years whenever I've needed to buy or refinance. I trust him so I feel better working with him.