I'm looking for a website that has user reviews on mortgage lenders. I'm particularly interested in madrate.com. All I could find in a text search were maybe 5 posts here or there with people saying generally good things. Anyone have any bad experiences with them? My realtor seems to be pretty worried because she is unfamiliar with the company and thinks that we are putting ourselves at risk by not using a more established name.

Personally, my thought is that my pre-approval went pretty smooth and I'm sick of the hoops you have to jump through with each lender you go to visit - only for them to cornhole you with fees, mountains of paperwork, and sales pitches just to get your pre-approval.

I closed with madrate a few weeks ago. It was great, no surprises, they were quick to respond when I had questions, and today I just realized they credited back my $500 deposit just a few days after closing. I didn't have to follow up for that at all.

I think realtors are generally to be treated with skepticism. Her interests are not very closely aligned with yours - she wants the sale to close, with no concern for what it costs you now or over the course of the mortgage. For a realtor, it is worth paying thousands of extra dollars if it helps ensure a sale closes - even if it were her own money. And of course, it's not, so she really has no incentive to "take a chance" in order to save your money.

I've commented on my experience with madrate in other threads here, search if you want more details. But I was very happy with the deal and process.

And yesterday we got a small refund check from the title company for overestimates they made on a few of the filing & tax fees. Completely unrelated to madrate of course but a little punctuation on a very positive transaction.

I'm a little frustrated with madrate now

They still seem to have the best deal for 30 year fixed, but will lose their kickbacks if I refinance within 6 months. I'd take them up on their current offer in a heartbeat (my rate is .5 higher).

I'm looking for anyone with a similar offer, haven't found it yet. If I do, I'll give madrate a chance to get the refi, but if they still don't want I'll do it without them with no remorse.

Ah, looks like Total Mortgage Services does not do loans in Colorado. Which is odd because I thought pretty much anyone could do that here - no fancy licensing or anything.

But yeah, you can get a 5.875% rate from just about anyone. I haven't found anyone close to madrate's ~$700 costs from the 800 section of a GFE though. bankrate listed Priceline as "in the ballpark" and I filled out their quote form today. Haven't heard back, and others I've contacted are a bit sneaky with "low fees" provided you don't count "origination".

Penfed is reliable for low closing costs, though their only great rate is for 5 year adjustables right now. They didn't like me for my purchase loan (strange tale described in other threads here) so I don't think they're an option for me, but you should check them out.

In case you were wondering, TMS had $850 in charges within the 800 section. EDIT: This does not include the 1.875% loan origination fee for $6,750, but I was paying for points there I believe.

The 1100 section was about 2262, but I am in NY so maybe that's why it is a bit higher?

Doing a search for madrate.com on FW only yields 10 results and the ones that have gotten a mortgage from them seem to be pretty positive.

I saw this post on another forum which pasted in the BBB complaints against madrate.com, anyone have any concerns about that? http://www.bestcashcow.com/forum/showthread.php?t=77

I just started my loan application process with Madrate.com. I will post updates as things move along, hopefully this will help someone else down the road.

AVakil said:I'm looking at the GFE and they are charging $3,000 for the GFE.$3000 for the GFE? Oh, you mean the other type of GFE...

ajny said:Question for SlimTim: You said "I just realized they credited back my $500 deposit just a few days after closing". Isn't this usually seteled at the time of closing itself ? Also: Could you explain "They still seem to have the best deal for 30 year fixed, but will lose their kickbacks if I refinance within 6 months" ? What kickbacks are you talking about?

No, the $500 was not dealt with at closing. But that was how they explained it would work from the beginning, it was not a prepayment toward closing costs.

The "kickbacks" I mean are the commissions they get from the lender (which was also GMAC for me). Most lenders now include conditions on those so that the commission is lost if the borrower does not hold the loan for some minimum length of time. In this case, madrate says it's 6 months.

About 10 years ago, lenders were not so careful. We found a broker who had a great scam going - actually heard of them from a local news report about the scam accusations. They were doing very cheap refis for people, in two parts. First, they'd refinance you to a "sucker" loan - high rate + big commission for them. Then they'd immediately refinance again to a great rate. Almost all of the costs for both were covered by the fat commission on the first loan (I think we paid a total of about $600 which was title insurance on one of the loans).

I thought, "These are my kind of sneaky bastards!" and gave them a call. We were a little nervous, this was our 1st refinancing of our first mortgage. But by the time we signed for the "sucker" loan, its rate was actually the same as our original 7 year balloon loan so there was really no risk to us at all. And it all worked out great for everyone, except the sinister lender of the first refi who paid huge bonuses to brokers who could sign up borrowers for above market rates.