Quicken Loans Inquiry

[Shantelle Evans]

Has anyone ever used Quicken loans to refinance a property or to fund a deal? If so, are they legit and what was your experience?

[P.J. Bremner]

@Shantelle Evans

I used to work for Intelliloans down in Irvine and our biggest competitor was Quicken Loan (sometimes Loan Depot and a few others).  I can certainly agree with some of the previous posters about wanting to get a local lender for a fresh purchase because the listing agents will often discount offers with a national lender approval.

One thing I certainly will disagree with is the cost of doing the loans.  One thing I always do when I am getting advice is ask "Where is this information coming from?  Does the person giving the answer have anything to gain by saying this?  Could they be biased?"  While I cannot say for certain that loan depot loan costs are lower than EVERYTHING out there, I can tell you that national mortgage lenders are often the cheapest way to go.  I say this as an investor, not a mortgage originator who is trying to earn a living in that area.  

When I worked in the industry, we would absolutely CRUSH any bank or broker that would try to compete with us (I'm talking refinance only).  The only company that ever gave us issues was Quicken Loans and sometimes we could get an exception to match or beat their pricing and sometimes we had to let them loose.  

As I am setting myself up for 3 refinances in the next 4 months, I have already began the process. Think Regan - "Trust, but verify". I have a couple local lenders that will be able to price out the loans for me. When the time comes to lock in the rate and pull the trigger, I will get a GFE (Good Faith Estimate) from each to make sure they are quoting apples-to-apples. One of the biggest tools that a mortgage officer has in his belt is giving selective information. Beware of the LO's that want to quote you a rate without anything else (it's illegal by the way, but very common practice). You have to know everything you will be paying for to know if they are legit. Looking at the APR helps because it gives a much better picture of your actual cost, but I will typically tell them all to quote me the exact same way: Give me current market rate at cost - no points and no lender credits. This means they will not inflate or deflate the rate artificially. Once you get the lender with the lowest numbers, you can play with points or lender credits to match your desired situation (one of my favorite is to pay a higher rate, get lender credit to cover ALL closing costs and have $0 out of pocket).