I can personally speak to how great Keith is
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My personal opinion since I used to be a correspondent banker before is that they have more fees and tighter guidelines for qualifying. Compare a really good mortgage broker against a good mortgage banker and the broker will win 99% of the time. With less fees and faster turn times, we dont have pay all the different levels of people that you do in a banking company. My advice get at least one quote from a mortgage broker.
Zillow lenders. Look at them like you do Zillows values, typically way off compared to the real value.
Lending tree is worse, you will get 80 calls in the first 1 hour with them all promising you the moon. This will go on for months.
Find a few different mortgage people talk to them see who makes you feel comfortable while giving you a great deal. Remember they are dealing with one of the most important financial transactions in your life. You want to find someone who wants to take care of you more than just lining their pockets.
I agree with you completely on LendingTree. Put your personal info into that site and the only thing you’ll get is day after day of knuckle draggers blowing up your cell phone.
I also agree with you on getting quotes from mortgage brokers, but 99% is a dramatic overstatement. Are you a mortgage broker, by any chance?
I also agree with you that Zillow home value estimates are garbage.
I do not agree with your dim assessment of the Zillow quotes. These are legitimate offers, unless you’ve misrepresented your credit score or LTV.
One caveat: In order to provide quotes that are easily compared to one another, the Zillow quotes are all for 30-day locks.
Depending on your needs, you may need to get pricing on a longer lock, which may (or may not) be incrementally more expensive.
Of the four deals we’ve done with providers on the Zillow network, there have been ZERO pricing surprises at closing.
On the last refi on our vacation home the initial quote was missing an HOA fee. Because they had to account for the HOA fee on the CD, they added the HOA fee AND a lender credit of the same amount to zero out the impact to us.
On my parents’ recent refi, the mortgage broker we found on Zillow was able to get the appraisal waived due to the low LTV, which saved them $800 compared to their initial quote.
I just checked out the rates on zillow after inputting my info. The rates I received are anywhere from 50-100bps higher than my local credit union. Is that typical or could it just be my local market?
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Great. Thanks! Looks like I am on the right track.
Could be your area, could be the loan amount, could be LTV, The CU deal may be structured with more fees or points. (make sure you aren’t comparing an 
to an 
).
The Zillow rates are all 30-day locks with 0 points (unless you opt for pricing with more points).
Navy Federal, as an example, has some fantastic rates on their web site until you read the footnotes:
"This rate offer is effective 5/15/2019 and subject to change. Rates based on creditworthiness, so your rate may differ. All loans subject to credit approval. Rates quoted require a loan origination fee of 1.00%, which may be waived for a 0.25% increase in interest rate. Many of these programs carry discount points, which may impact your rate. ↵
I’ve found to use different lenders and brokers for various things.
For refinance- If you have strong credit, and can establish a cash deposit relationship of $200k plus then I have a guy for that.
If you need exotic loan with competitive arms there’s a guy for that. Navy federal credit union.
If you need to close on a property no matter what and you need to find the best lender with looser qualifications. Use a broker, I have one is recommend.
Yes its worth it but ideally you would want to keep your effective payment the same, lets say right now you have a balance of 300K at 4.75 paying somewhere around 1600 per month (just principal and interest, i am not counting taxes, insurance, pmi if any etc). That same 300K at 3.625% in a new 30yr FRM would be $1368 per month, but if you keep sending the same payment you have now (around 1600 in this example) you would be done paying for the mortgage in less than 23 years (while saving 45K in interest over that time).
You also have to assume you stay in the house for at least as long as it takes to break even on the refi closing costs (usually 2+yrs)… if you plan to sell/move soon, prob not worth it.
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I completely agree on using Zillow Mortgage to start your search and get an idea of what the most competitive rate for your area/situation looks like. I found Matt Hess at Patriot Financial on Zillow a couple years ago and he has refi’d me (twice), my parents and two friends. He easily beat the best advertised rates anyone local had. He generated a credit that covered closing costs and we only paid for appraisals (my parents didn’t even have to do the appraisal).
Hi
I wanted to know what ppl think about 0 down mortgages. Im able to get that with no PMI (lender pays it) and a slight increase in rate (4.3% APR). What are the disadvantages of that? Thanks.
“slight” increase is a bit of an understatement… given that todays rates on conforming (that means 20% down) 30yr FRM are around ~3.75%, over the life of the mortgage the one at 4.3% will cost you over 35K more (on a 300K original balance, a number i simply picked as an example).
Are you SURE you are being quoted a fixed 30 year mortgage with NO points?
I almost bet that quote includes additional costs (application fee, points upfront, etc)
I’ve worked in banking all my professional life, lenders will never give you anything for free, there is always another way/area of the transaction were they can make up for and then some… nothing wrong with that, its a capitalist business in existence to provide a good/service in exchange for PROFIT.
I just closed last Friday on a house
30 year fixed
3.625%
5% down
No PMI
Not a Physician loan
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I get it that they’ll make their money. They’ll get it from the increase in APR for sure. There are no added fees or points. I’m just wondering if there’s a downside of paying less than 20% or no down payment other than the obvious things (higher APR, higher monthly payment…).
That’s about what I’m getting. The increase is about 0.5. Im just wondering if it’s better to just put the down payment money into retirement, stock market…
I just made a six-figure principal payment on our mortgage.
Most of the money was from the sale of underperforming securities, which over 2-3 years had gained a grand total of $40.70 in value.
And that’s before capital gains tax. 
The fees are also baked into your rate. No free lunch here.
Depending on your loan amount and the intended duration for keeping the mortgage, you could very well pay the fees several times over.
I have never taken a “no fee” option, because for our circumstances it’s always been the most expensive choice.
Depends on the likelihood that you would pay off/down the mortgage earlier or refinance. In which case you may be better off taking the higher rate over paying upfront fees/points.
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Please register as a broker if you plan to tout your business on this site.
I agree about Zillow mortgage. I used them previously and found them to be very good.
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I only have had one mortgage, but as far as I know, the lendee has to pay for the pmi, whenever down payment is under 20%.
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