Beware of these Mortgage Companies
Delinquency rates are on the rise. They jumped “more than 7%, to 4.7% in the fourth quarter of 2005, from the year before,” according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.
Despite this, many lenders aren’t cutting back on exotic mortgages — in fact, they’re “charging ahead on such high-risk loans full tilt.” They claim that cutthroat competition leaves them no other option.
But pushing the envelope today could lead to major problems tomorrow for these aggressive finance outfits. Be especially wary of the following companies:
- ECC Capital Corporation and New Century Financial Corporation “do big business in California, where the median house price jumped 16% last year, to reach a record $548,430.”
- Long Beach Mortgage Corporation (a unit of Washington Mutual) and NovaStar Financial “require only limited documentation and therefore may invite fraud.”
- Fieldstone Investment Corporation and First Franklin Financial Corporation “write lots of loans called interest-only or option adjustable-rate mortgages, which allow borrowers to postpone making repayments of principal and even add unpaid interest to the debt.”
Source: BusinessWeek
Review of LendingTree.com
Recently, we found a need to do some work on our house. Our roof had a leak, and the guys we had come take a look at it said they wouldn’t touch it without putting a whole new roof on. That, combined with a desire to lock in a fixed rate on our mortgage and also to do some work on our kitchen led us to start looking around to see what our options for refinancing our mortgage were.
We first contacted QuickenLoans since they had refinanced us once before and we had liked the process - quick and painless. We got a quote from our contact there, for a 15 year fixed rate loan taking out some of the equity from our house to pay for the roof and kitchen work.
Then, we also contacted LendingTree.com, since I had heard their ads on NPR about “when banks compete, you win”. The process of filling out their site was easy enough, but the real process didn’t begin until I got a call from one of their lending specialists.
He explained that basically, the banks that deal with LendingTree have an arrangement that says that if there is a better offer, they have to beat it. So, having an offer in-hand from the Quicken guy was helpful, and in the end we focused our attention on minimizing the closing costs, even if it meant a little bit higher interest rate.
We liked the overall process, it took about 3 1/2 weeks total from start to finish, and the check for our cash-out arrived just the other day. All in all, I’d have to say that LendingTree provided a good service and value, and we now have a solid new mortgage.