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When I bought my house three years ago, I used LendingTree ^[3] to get some financing offers to get a better feel for what rates for someone like me. Within an hour or two of when I submitted the request, I had someone from LendingTree call me ^[4] to tell me they were coordinating the lending offers. Within an hour of that I had a response from LendingTree that included several rate quotes from multiple lenders, I was genuinely impressed with how quickly that process was.

Today was a totally different story. I submitted my request in the morning and it wasn’t until 5 PM that I saw some “quotes” roll in. I put that in quotes because it was one lender with three quotes depending on what loan I wanted. By then I had talked to a local lender and a loan officer from BB&T, where my current mortgage is. The loan offer was from a lender in Kentucky and it was far inferior to the one offered by BB&T (the local lender will get back to me tomorrow). Maybe it’s because we’re so close to the holidays, maybe it’s because we’re in a sagging housing market, or maybe because I’m a weak borrower, but it’s overall a pretty lackluster response.

Here are the offers so far on the table (obviously pending credit checks and whatnot):

• BB&T Mortgage said that I could get a 20 or 30 fixed year mortgage at 4.875% or a 15 year mortgage at 4.75%, with no points. The closing costs, which would include all the document fees, escrow setup, and title insurance BS ^[5] would run about $3,100 to $3,200.
• SurePoint Lending had three offers – $4.875% on a 30 year fixed with one point, 5% on a FHA 15 year fixed with no points, and 5.25% on a 30 year fixed with no points.

Assuming the closing costs are going to be similar, the SurePoint offer doesn’t come close to the MM&T Mortgage and I’m inclined to stick with the bank I’m already with. I didn’t set up my loan with BB&T, they bought it, but I haven’t had any problems and they’re offering a much cheaper option.

Perhaps tomorrow will bring more quotes but I’m not holding my breath, it looks like the number to beat is 4.875% with no points.