Care to explain? I am pre-approved with them and currently looking for a house. If they are shitty I wanna know.
edit: Also what branch/office did you deal with?
yes please elaborate, I as well might consider them.
I had a hell of a time… loan officer started screening my calls, asking for more and more stuff just so she could justify pushing me off another day. took forever to close on a very simple and low risk (low $$) loan. So i went into the lancaster office where she was and called her from my cell phone outside her cube out of line of sight and walked into her cube, sat down still holding the phone to my ear. priceless she started with the: the fax machine ate it, and i just started handing her copies and copies of everything she’s wanted and opened the notebook of communications documented by time and date with brief notes of what was discussed and all the voicemail times she had not returned. why should two gainfully employed people with 7XX+ credit scores take nearly 6 months to close on a <$60k loan with money down?
Thank you that’s what I needed to know.
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Has anyone ever had an issue with first niagara?
I did the First Home Club through HSBC - I would absolutely do it again. Jan Brown was phenominal and I can’t tell you how many times she put me on hold while she conferenced in someone who was slowing the process down - and straighten shit out.
Keeping in mind that I’m in Ontario County instead of Erie, this was a big thing.
HSBC has been great.
Good things about HSBC
Awesome thing was even after I closed she was still calling me to check in and she even faxed out paperwork to me on her personal time.
Thanks for the info, I’m dealing with the West Seneca office on ridge. Granted I haven’t started the paper work as I am still looking. Hopefully your problem was just because of the her.
I’m currently going through Patti Ball @ 1st Priority Mortgage.
Lady always answers her phone when I call, if I’m at work or if it’s 9 at night.
Seems like she knows her shit, and I’m expected to close in the begining of august. (about 5 weeks from when I signed mortgage papers, and ~7 weeks from having an offer accepted)
Got me able to put down 5% on a conventional, @ 4.5%
Julie Wilde, Premium Mortgage
Absolutely awesome to work with!
HSBC employee here but no complaints on the process with them, (Other than the fact that I had to send them proof of my employment and such when I applied from a damn HSBC work e-mail address and it would take 2 seconds to check the employee directory, but whatever), they were very helpful and addressed all of my questions. Plus the mortgage center in Depew keeps having to do layoffs so it’s good to do your part to keep a few more decent jobs in WNY, and nice to know that the servicing is done by an American that lives in the area when you call with issues. 4% employee rate FTW. Set up auto-pay out of my bank account for the 10th of every month and it works seamlessly.
Check your phone
Bank of America here …
great company to deal with … closed in 3 weeks …
Same here. Was not bad at all except for the scare of our money not being there at closing. Other than that communication was on point we knew what we needed when we needed it by and who it had to go to. Would certainly go through BOA again.
Bank Of America was great for me…
Everything went extremely quick
james.buscemi@bankofamerica.com
716.634.6233 x226
Tell him I sent you over
Wish I was in the home buying market :(. Anyone know if they (banks) require a minimum employment period? I haven’t been at my current job for more than a year yet, but my credit score is 7XX+.
If its the same job field its fine…If you keep switching careers they care.
Nope, I was Unemployed for ~9 months but in school. Before that I had been at my job for 2 years and the one prior for 5 years. Each moved, leading to an increase in pay.
We are through the process of everything and we have been shopping for loans since the beginning. Knowing that rates change daily sometimes, we have been waiting until we had attorney approval of our contracts and a home inspection done first. We started looking for the right place to go last Wednesday. In that time we have talked with a transaction based lender and attempted a few institutional based lenders (banks). Here’s how they stacked up.
- Hunt Mortgage: We were pre-approved twice through them. Don’t ask me why we had to be pre-approved twice. I think it had to do with the fact that there is little communication there. Our final rep, James Murowski, did not call us back when we asked for a break down of the costs involved. Finally he called me back, twice in a row, late at night and left a voice mail asking what it would take to bring this deal in, and telling us he can get us an even lower rate than discussed before. Down to 4.25%. At this point I’m already kind of annoyed considering we were under contract to have this sorted within 5 days and he took forever to return phone calls. This guy answered the phone once when he was in a gym with his kid and then asked if he could call me back at a more convenient time. Why the hell did you answer the phone in the first place… This guy seems kind of un-professional. So I called him back last night and asked him to email me the figures for the loan either tonight if he had them or first thing in the morning. I haven’t seen anything and have called him back twice this morning and got his voice mail. I realize I’m probably not his only client. However if you are going to go to the trouble to call me to see what you can do to “bring this deal in” then why not just do the easy thing and give me a call back. F, fail
M+T: Before reading the horror stories, we went into an M+T branch and asked to speak to someone about a mortgage, like all banks they have a specialist that travels from branch to branch. They took our name and information on a post it and said they would have them call us. We haven’t heard from anyone to this date. Who the fuck uses a post it? Answer, the kind of lazy bastard who doesn’t pass on your info or loses it. Very antiquated and the branches are filled with old ugly bitches. Next. F. fail
HSBC: Went into a branch and spoke with people, we visited all the different banks on the same day, seemed very professional although the rep at the bank had no idea on mortgage information and I started to question the fact that she even had a clue about what a mortgage really was. She gave us the name of their specialist, I called her as soon as we left and asked to set up a time to sit down. She called me back friday night and said to call her any time that weekend day or night and we could get together. Cool sounds great, I called and have since left 6 voice mails. After that I called a different HSBC branch and asked for their rep thinking they have different ones for different territory. I was right and called him and left a voice mail, have since to hear from him as well. I left 2 more voice mails. These are not angry voice mails, I left very professional voice mails asking for help and eager to do business with them. They are either too busy or just too fucking dumb to listen to a voice mail, or worse, don’t care. Either way I’m a little dismayed after reading everyone’s praise for them yesterday, it instilled some hope that maybe things were just too busy but after several attempts to reach SOMEONE I’m giving up on HSBC. meh, D-
First Niagara: So far this has been the only option that has panned out. The rep Mike Florczak called me right back and we setup a time to meet over the past weekend at a branch, he took the time to give us a complete break down of the loan. Not really familiar with everything as we would have liked to be we elected to shop around and talk to friends and family who have gone through the process to get some more explanation of the fees attached the loan. We have since not had any other interactions with any other establishment because no one was kind enough to return a call expect to try to real in the loan. Fuck that. We are going with First Niagara and he is giving us a rate of 4.375% with 0 points. I can live with that. I’m going to give him a B for now because we are not finished and I don’t have much to compare with.
Hope this info helps everyone else.
Try Wells Fargo. They are the bank that bought out Wachovia. I am not sure if they do business in NY, but I filled out their online application and someone called me within 24 hours, and was able to get me a ‘good faith estimate’ fast.