How to avoid long delays in conventional refinance?

[Sean Thompson]

Good morning. I have been held up for various reasons on a single family refinance for 9 months now. Lost a month when the rehab crew vanished , property manager got that back on track quickly, and the rest of the delay has been the refinance. First, my lending guy changed companies and I didn't know. So when I emailed his company email I lost a month thinking it was underway. That's my fault for not following up with him personally , and assuming things were underway. Sent the papers to him at the new company after speaking with him , and long story short 3 months later he leaves that company because they were dragging feet, digging extremely deep into my finances, and intentionally including weeks of delays on things like second and third audits and underwriting. He moves to next company. After 3 weeks this company stops doing investments mortgages, and drops all packages cold turkey. So now I'm using a different guy, different company. We were set to close in a record (for me and him) 2 weeks. Delayed waiting weeks after the first appraiser disappeared due to a birth in the family. Next appraiser takes 3 weeks to do a bunch of appraisals dropped on them, and comes back with an ultra low value , when they included comps in the appraisal for much higher. Several more weeks here we are waiting on contesting the value. So after all that my question is simple: how can I avoid this in the future? And what can I do about it now ? It's hard to avoid this because it's hard to know how a lender will work before using them. And conventional refinances takes a while to begin with , so how long is "too long" to realize things aren't going well? And after all that time waiting to see how things go , what can I do about it now ? Go to a different lender ? Risk waiting 3+ more months on another lender who won't get it done in reasonable time? Once I find a decent lender who works well I'll stick with them. But right now I'm being drug through the dirt trying to find that good lender. Any information will help. Thank you P.s. I'm in north Atlanta ga, with rentals in Memphis tn. Anything I can do to help other investors please let me know.