Mobile Bay Reef Keepers

Hey all,

We're gonna be mortgage shopping this coming week... does anyone have good/bad experiences with the mortgage places here in town that they want to share? We're hitting Rgeions Mortgage and Southtrust Mortgage (I think) as a starting point... but we're never done this before, so don't know who's best in town. Does Wells Fargo do 1st mortgages direct to customers?

We went to Coats and Company for ours a couple years back, Hillcrest and Cottage Hill.

Call Shawn. He knows everything there is to know about that stuff.

We went through Crigler Brothers and I would not recommend them. They set us up an account through Wells Fargo.

After you start, the multiple inquiries to your credit will not affect your overall credit score for the next two weeks. I believe it allows for 14 days. Also, credit scorers ignore inquiries that occur within 30 days of a score date. So look around plenty.

You can compare rates @ http://www.bankrates.com

Check out the online ones also, if you're comfortable with that:
http://www.eloan.com/
http://www.quickenloans.com

In the end , we got the better deal online.

thanks for the responses guys, they're appreciated!

Brandon, we've looked online, and we feel we might get a slightly better rate, however we're sticking to a local "brick/mortar" mortgage place, because we're gonna be taking cash out for building a pool, and refinancing a car into it, since we only need about 1/2 the home's value as payment to seller... I don't think any online place will be setup to handle that.

Good idea about giving Shawn a call, I forgot where he worked.

Gave Shawn a call... got some good information about the birds and the bees... Thanks for mentioning that Scott!

We are going to start with NewSouth Federal, First Federal, and Regions...I think we mainly want to know if there are any tips or pointers to watch out for...heh...thanks guys!

Deanna

We had the option of opening a line of home equity credit when we financed via online. I didn't but we could have.
With the value being so far above what you're financing, you shouldn't have to pay PMI, so that's very cool.

Just my experience.. but I found the online stuff to be more flexible than the local institutions.

We went with quickenloans.com and were very pleased with the experience.. Again this was just our case.

Brandon,

I have heard a lot of other people having good experiences with quickenloans.com also...interesting

Thanks

Deanna

I have used Countrywide with great success after bad experiences with smaller but supposedly cheaper outfits.

Probably do not get the very absolute best interest rate, but their paperwork process is painless and the are much more accomodating in various non-traditional loans and loan to income ratios.

Also, Countrywide WILL negotiate rates. Shop around and then go to Countrywide. You will get close to the best deal with less pain. They also do not sell their paper in most cases. That means you deal with them forever.

Phil

There is a guy that hangs out up on cottage hill that will give you great rates....he is usually on the corner around 3am...I have heard that the penality for being late is a little out of the ordanary...has something to do with crutches and first born.....you might give him a try...he deals strickly in cash...

hehe Good luck regardless.... the Guys at Coats and Company went above and beyond to get us our house... including telling us how to swing getting this house by home equitying our old one. (believe it or not it worked) Might want to give them a shout, they will do a lot over the phone... BTW Amsouth is easy to work with also .....

tbmoore wrote:There is a guy that hangs out up on cottage hill that will give you great rates....he is usually on the corner around 3am...I have heard that the penality for being late is a little out of the ordanary...has something to do with crutches and first born.....you might give him a try...he deals strickly in cash...

I live on Cottage Hill road... are you implying something?

Welp, we've hit up five places, and we're going with New South Federal, submitting all our paperwork today, wish us luck