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Mortgage Lender recommendations in Virginia

CDeacMan

CDeacMan

Ishmael Smith
Joined
Mar 22, 2011
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Location
Morgantown, WV
I need your help Pit. My wife and I are moving to Charlottesville in the summer and need to start the process of obtaining a loan for a house. We are planning to buy our first house, so we've never done been through this process before and would love to get any help/recommendations from knowledgeable frequenters of the boards. Do you have any positive/negative experiences with any lenders? Also, my wife is a physician so if you happen to have experience with physician's mortgages that would be great too. Feel free to PM. I appreciate any info.
 
Your real estate agent can make a good recommendation. That's what I did in NC. Got a good rate and the guy always sells his mortgages to (then) Wachovia. Knowing (as best you can) the ultimate owner of the mortgage is important. As someone who has had their mortgage held by Countrywide, I can tell you this matters.
 
Not sure what your situation is and if this still exists, but Suntrust offers a no money down and no PMI physician loan. Rates are similar to traditional loans. No points or anything crazy. When I bought my first house out of residency I used them and it's been fine so far.
 
Here's what I did, which seemed to work out well. I used mtgprofessor.com for education on the process and to solicit good faith estimates (GFE's) from online lenders. The website is popular and claims to weed out any shady lenders, so you're only getting honest quotes.

My real estate agent recommended a local lender who I also got a quote from. His initial rate was not competitive. When I sent him the GFE that I got online, he magically was able to get more competitive and matched it. So I used the local lender, which was nice because he had a relationship with the real estate agent which potentially made for a smoother closing process.

So my advice is to use a lender that your agent likes to work with, but make sure they are competing against the lowest rate you can find.
 
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My cousin is a mortgage loan originator in Richmond and does work in Charlottesville.

Any thoughts on where y'all will look to live?
 
CDeacMan said:
I need your help Pit. My wife and I are moving to Charlottesville in the summer and need to start the process of obtaining a loan for a house. We are planning to buy our first house, so we've never done been through this process before and would love to get any help/recommendations from knowledgeable frequenters of the boards. Do you have any positive/negative experiences with any lenders? Also, my wife is a physician so if you happen to have experience with physician's mortgages that would be great too. Feel free to PM. I appreciate any info.
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I live in Virginia and this was my experience. First mortgage I got - went through a friend who was a real estate agent, he picked a guy, we got a mediocre rate which they insisted was excellent. Second mortgage was a refi - went back the same guy but also had a "hook up" with a major bank. Based on much more thorough research I knew those rates were high despite getting an "insider" rebate with both Wells Fargo and BofA. Also, to me, the fees were very high even thought they insisted they were reduced significantly to the point that "they weren't making anything on the deal" (bullshit).

Then I went to bankrate.com, plugged in my loan numbers, and started researching the companies on the list. I ended up doing two refinances in a row a couple years apart with a very small company in Florida. As long as you're comfortable scanning a whole bunch of documents into PDF form and communicating primarily through email - the process was pretty painless. Basically these small companies have nothing to do in areas where real estate is doing poorly, so they'll do a loan deal for just the bank kickback - sometimes they'll even split the kickback with you. So both times I got the lowest rate I could find anywhere online with no fees. Saved me a very significant amount of money, both short and long term, and in the end your loan is serviced by a big bank anyway so only the application and approval process is different.

Food for thought, this approach isn't for people who want to sit in a room with a broker and developer a relationship or anything like that.
 
Brokers are all full of it. I have a guy I've worked with a few times who can always manage to find a better deal when I go back to him and say "Well, XXX is offering 3.25%". He calls back in 10 minutes and says "Hey, look what just popped up! Must be a new one.... yes, we can match that".

It's all crap.

Use lendingtree to make sure you have a baseline for the "best" deal, then compare them and play them against each other until you get a great deal. Just like buying a car, except you might get hosed out of a couple hundred bucks if you don't get the best deal on a car. Might be $50k+ if you don't get the best deal on your mortgage.
 
If your wife is within ten years of finishing residency you should look at using SunTrust's Physician Mortgage program. This isn't something we directly do for our clients but I'd be happy to put you in touch with the Mortgage Planner we refer out to if you are interested. About 85% of our clients are physicians/dentists so we have a fair amount of experience using this type of program.

0% needed to put down and no Mortgage insurance needed to secure the loan. If you've got any other questions shoot me a PM and I'll be happy to point you in the right direction.
 
My wife and I just bought a house up in Vienna, used George Mason Mortgage as our lender. Not entirely sure if they only do local in NoVA, but they had the best rates I could find when I was shopping around. Also very helpful and nice, PM me if you want contact info for one of the loan officers.
 
ArsenalDeac said:
If your wife is within ten years of finishing residency you should look at using SunTrust's Physician Mortgage program. This isn't something we directly do for our clients but I'd be happy to put you in touch with the Mortgage Planner we refer out to if you are interested. About 85% of our clients are physicians/dentists so we have a fair amount of experience using this type of program.

0% needed to put down and no Mortgage insurance needed to secure the loan. If you've got any other questions shoot me a PM and I'll be happy to point you in the right direction.
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I mentioned this plan above. I used it and have been happy with things
 
BacktoBack said:
I mentioned this plan above. I used it and have been happy with things
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I'm looking into this. Also checked with my wife, and she said the folks who help with transitioning at her new office recommend the SunTrust program as well. Thank you for all the advice everyone.
 
Make sure the house comes with a Mario Kart Arena, including surround sound and foamed walls for when you throw your controllers in disgust after another heartbreaking defeat.
 
Cool. That's a nice spot to work. My 3L year I lived on the Range which is right there by the hospital.
 
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