# of mortgage applications to submit?

Try one mortgage broker at least. For me they got a better rate and can shop around for you. And then pick two banks. I thought Wells was very good. My experience with JP Morgan was very bad.

I purchased a condo last fall. I ultimately went with Citibank. If you are a CitiGold member, the bank usually offer exclusives to Citigold members (no app. fee, up to $3,000 in closing costs, etc.). The contact I used is below. As for providing your social security number to potential lenders, I wouldn't give up that info. until you are comfortable that that lender will offer you a competitive rate (the lender should be able to give you a very good idea what rate you will qualify for based on your financials and your verbal representation of your credit score. However, in order to "lock" the rate, the lender will need your SSN to verify your credit). As you rightly point out, an excessive number of credit inquiries can indeed lower your score.

Charles Na - NMLS# 721862
Home Lending Specialist
Citibank N.A.
One Court Square, Concourse Level, Long Island City, NY 11120
Citibank N.A.
38-18 Queens Blvd, Long Island City, NY 11101
Tel: 347-820-4391 │ Fax: 866-283-1386 │ Email: charles.na@citi.com

Thats an interesting question. To make the quesiton more interesting lets say you don't know if lender A would 100% give you the loan and time is of the essence for closing. So any sane person would have a back up lender. Final loan approval often doesn't come in until a few days before closing. So how far would you go with both lenders and at what point do you have to make a final decision of who to use. If both lenders approve you, do you have until the day before closing to decide who to go with and not incur additional cost if you drop your back up lender?

I would start w/ a mortgage broker and have him pull your credit and provide his best quote. Then call the major banks (your home bank, Wells, Bank of America, Citi, and Chase) and you can tell them your credit score (which you obtained from the mortgage broker) and ask for quotes. In the end, our mortgage broker got us 25 bps lower from Chase than we could get directly even though we have a private client relationship at Chase. Our building ended up falling off the approved list at Chase a few days before closing and our broker was able to move us to Wells at the same rate and close two weeks later. That would not have been possible had we been working directly w/ a bank. Of the 4 mortgages we have done, only one was direct because the other 3 times the mortgage broker provided a better deal.

I do believe the credit reporting agencies allow for a window of one month for a borrower to have credit reports pulled.

I am a mortgage broker; initially became one to get a better mortgage for myself. Don't charge an application fee.

But a credit report from a mortgage broker will not be acceptable when calling a major bank.

Ellen Silverman
E.S. Funding Co.
esfundingco@aol.com
Licensed Mortgage Broker
Licensed Real Estate Broker
www.esfunding.instantlender.com

The credit # is sufficient (along with income, building address, etc) to get a quote from a bank. If a bank has a better rate than you can get from the mortgage broker, you will authorize the bank to pull your credit. It is unnecessary for 6 banks to pull your credit reports to get a reasonable rate quote.