[redshirtrob]

Has anyone actually used Rocket? Every time I (or a friend) have looked at them they have higher closing costs and wanted multiple points to close the mortgage.

I was able to do way, way better by going with a local bank, as did my friends.

The only thing I can figure is they are better for folks with "good" (not "excellent") credit and can maybe close the loan faster.

[coredog64]

Something to note about your local bank/CU. They might originate the loan, but as sure as water is wet they’re going to sell it to someone else for service.

If you have a good working relationship that you can used for good terms, then go for it. But don’t go with a local bank because you think you’ll continue to work with them.

[redshirtrob]

Yeah, I could not care less about what they do with the loan. I'm not looking for a relationship, just the best deal I can get. Full stop. Do people still think otherwise on loans?

All that said, our local CU does in fact keep their own mortgage portfolio. This may be rare, I don't know. They're a large CU associated with a government contractor.

When I bought my house they had the best deal (rate + closing costs) hands down. When I refinanced they were no longer offering 30yr loans on their portfolio (and I wasn't interested in 10/15), but still were originating them to sell. Unfortunately the 30yr rates were not as quite good as I could get elsewhere and closing costs were close to a wash so I went another direction.

[bradfa]

I didn't even know this was a thing, selling off the servicing of loans. Our first home's mortgage was with HSBC and HSBC did everything, up until we sold that house. Our second (now current) home mortgage was with a local credit union and they did everything, too.

Dealing with the local credit union was super easy for everything. Not that HSBC was bad, but the credit union was always local people to talk to and never any problems.

[mdavidn]

Yes. This first happened to me in 2008, when Bank of America sold my auto loan. I was sending payments to Citizens thereafter.

[bombcar]

I prefer that the servicing stay with the CU/bank I was working with, but wouldn't pay "that" much more for that, a couple hundred sure, actual percentage/points difference? nah.

I had a loan that got passed around a number of times back in the day, ending up with Countrywide each time.

[AviationAtom]

Our bank sold our loan before the first payment even came due.

That said, they were phenomenal during the whole origination process, and they gave us a rock bottom rate (2.375%).

My only fear is servicing being transferred multiple times, rapidly, then having to decipher who to pay now.

[bombcar]

The banks are really surprisingly good about forwarding payments, I found that a mortgage had been sold months before but the autopay from my bank kept working; it wasn't until I went to login that I realized it had been sold off.

[redshirtrob]

Exactly. I've had a bunch of different mortgages over the years. Plenty of them have been passed around, but I've never had to sweat the details. I just set up autopay and forget.

[AviationAtom]

So it isn't so much about the mortgage being sold, but whether servicing is transferred. If servicing is kept them the servicing bank forwards your payments onwards.

[jjav]

> Something to note about your local bank/CU.

Credit Unions tend to be different (at least the 3 I'm a member of, maybe this is not universal) in keeping loans in-house.

The banks will indeed most likely sell off the loan as soon as it's done.

Not that it matters either way.

[bombcar]

My credit onion sells all loans longer than 10 years - but they keep servicing all the loans normally.

Some places sell off the loan and the servicing, that's more annoying.

[cactus2093]

Exactly what I was thinking. Is this really a trend in the overall market or does Rocket Mortgage just suck?

When I looked into it they wouldn't do jumbo loans (which is just anything slightly above the median home price in the state of California these days) and their rates on traditional loans were worse than the big bank I was comparing it to.

On top of that it's not even an automated tech solution like they pretend it is, it seems to be just a thin veneer of a shiny website that then connects you to a traditional lender. So it's not even really any more convenient in terms of submitting paperwork and stuff, at least for the initial quote that was my experience.

[pdovy]

I used them, but only because they have a relationship with my brokerage that allowed me to get preferential terms.

If not for that I'd have preferred someone local, you could tell you were just a number over there, and there were a bunch of communication issues around scheduling the appraisal that were annoying to sort out.

[sc00ty]

I refinanced back in November. I'd say the process was very easy, at least compared to getting my original loan in 2015. Went through pre-approval online, talked to someone on the phone for 5 minutes, and was pretty much scheduled. E-signed a few docs and then they sent someone to my home to finalize it. From pre-approval to closing, the whole process took about 3 weeks.

My local rates were over 3% for a 15 year, they got me 2.25% + .25% in points.

[pavon]

I refinanced with them, but mostly because the salesman I talked to were misinformed or intentionally lied about some detail of how they could do FHA refinance which made them sound like a better deal than everyone else I compared against. I don't remember the details (it was a long time ago) and the information they gave had been true at sometime in the past, but had expired. In the end, they had slightly (negligibly) better rates than the rest after factoring in the points, and I had already paid deposit money.

Despite that bad start, I was very happy with how they serviced the loan. They didn't play any games or make things harder than it needed to be. If you sent in extra money they both applied it to the principle immediately, and pushed your next payment date out accordingly (and cumulatively), so you could retroactively treat it as a prepayment if something came up. This was really nice, and none of my other mortgages have done both - the better ones automatically applied it to the principle, and the worse ones treated it as prepayment unless you jumped through hoops to inform them otherwise each payment. I did end up taking advantage of this to help get through some unexpected medical expenses.

Paying off the loan was also trivial - just sent in the last payment and the loan was done and they sent me the necessary documentation. That is how all my car loans have worked, but for some reason previous mortgages have required some extra steps for the final payoff, or the mortgage ends up in some weird purgatory state.

[chad_c]

I refinanced with them 2 years ago; they beat my local credit union and several banks at the time. Closing costs were competitive and extremely easy to schedule -- they sent an attorney to my home.