Amerisave - Up Front Mortgage Lender

Rates for 30 year mortgages are significantly higher today than they were yesterday.  I called my preferred lender, and talked about refinancing yesterday, but the rates weren't quite low enough for me.  Hopefully they will go lower over the coming days.  In preparation for lower rates, I want to talk a bit about mortgage lenders.  I am a big fan of up front mortgage lenders.  These are basically lenders that make all of the costs associated with a mortgage, clear up front.  The most interesting piece of information that is divulged by most up front mortgage lenders is the yield spread premium (YSP).  This is basically the amount of money you can get for accepting a higher interest rate for your loan.  You can think of it like paying points, in reverse, because, that is exactly what it is.

I refinanced my home loan recently with amerisave.  They are an upfront mortgage lender, and had the best deal on rates, closing costs, and YSP that I could find.  The key requirement I have for any mortgage lender is: do what you say you're going to do.  On this score, Amerisave did well.  The loan I eventually closed was exactly the loan that was represented to me in my original good faith estimate.  Also, the communication from Amerisave was phenomenal.  If you look for reviews of Amerisave on the web, a lot of people comment that they have a hard time getting in touch with their mortgage processor.  I think Amerisave took this criticism to heart, because my mortgage processor would always get back to me within an hour, whenever I tried to contact him.  That is great service!  At the end of the day though, the main question is, did they give me the rate they promised at the price they promised.  They did this as well, so I was very happy with Amerisave.  My only minor quibble was the amount of documentation they wanted.  I have not refinanced since 2009, so maybe the level of documentation required by all lenders has risen, but it was a little crazy all the forms I had to fill out.  Regardless of the massive paperwork, I would definitely recommend Amerisave to anyone looking to refinance their loan.