I'm writing to provide an up to date review of Angel Oak prime bridge lending (the hard money lender part of the company) as of 2017. Our company switched from another hard money provider after several issues with the lender. We had previous experience dealing with Angel Oak and potential property investments though we had never got a hard money loan from them until may of 2017. We submitted for a loan near the end of April for a regular sized town-home in south Atlanta. The process was pretty quick from application to funding it took about two weeks though we had requested and paid for an expedited appraisal otherwise the appraisal may have been 2-3 weeks from what i was told. The appraisal was done within 5 business days and was within 4 percent of our expected value for the property. The closing process went as expected if not better the lender submitted the required paperwork to the closer and closed on the scheduled date of closing. The renovation process went good for us, we had to pay for the renovation ourselves with the renovation funds held in escrow for the property. We finished and submitted for an inspection , it took about 3 days to get inspected and we received the renovation escrowed funds into our account about two days later with no issues.
Our second property with Angel Oak prime bridge was a similar type property. It was around the holidays in November so we expected some delays but gave ourselves 6 weeks to close. We had an issue with the appraisal part of the process due to Angel Oak but they notified me of the error and went above and beyond to fix the problem which we were glad. The appraisal came back at within 2 percent of our expected value for the property.Due to complications and from what we could tell via online news Angel Oak is currently going through some additional growth which led to some issues on the back end of the loan process. Our loan ended up being stuck in underwriting for two weeks. We were only able to close on time and not lose the property due in part to our business loan officer Bob Forbes going out of his way multiple times to get the loan through in time.
Review summary:
Angel Oak seems to be a very promising company if they get past their growth stages and remain the same company we have been working with. I would recommend them based on my current experiences and we look forward to working with them again. If i had any suggestions for the company it would be to have an accurate estimate for your prime bridge loans on a time length from application to closing to avoid issues and convey that to the client prior to application as timing is very important with discounted properties! My suggestion for potential clients of Angel Oak Prime Bridge is to request info on the current time length for appraisals as this is usually the controlling portion for closing on time . It may differ depending on the season.
