Rate Mortgage Reviews

Doesn’t seem to get better... This is our second time working with guaranteed rates and the first time there was not a concept of time and we figured it would be better. The rates are good but the service is not the best. We were told by Brian there in order to close on time there could be no hiccups, but they’ve been sitting on our file for over a week. We were told they will get back to us this past Friday and no one did, but mind you they told us in the beginning to close on time. There could be no hiccups because of the holidays.

Experience working with Guaranteed Rate, in Austin, TX. I put an offer in on a house and went through the underwriting and loan approval process with Guaranteed Rate. I decided to withdraw my offer from the house during a period which I was told by my realtor is ok for the buyer to withdraw with no problems. The loan amount was for 366,480 and the denial letter stated 345,400. There was a 3rd party financing addendum for 305,400, I applied for the loan at $305,000. I tried 366,480 which was why I was denied and because I increased the loan amount, it was an issue. Although, we sent the denial letter for the correct amount because we sent both. This did not trigger an appraisal waiver. The loan was never denied. The last thing on record is our conditional approval which is over 40% down. The sellers assumption is that my denial would’ve created a property inspection waiver.

I have been trying to get my current home refinanced for over 4 months. They do not do what they say they will, the employees do not communicate with each other. You have to constantly call them on their fraudulent practices. (Charging for things such as a survey even putting a company name down that is due the money when they did no such survey. It was provided to them by me.) They send you the final paperwork that isn't right and make you sign to get the closing schedule so you will not see the actual numbers until closing. They try to rush you and they are in no rush with ANYTHING on their end. I'm so over this. I would NOT recommended them for anyone. Save your time and money and go elsewhere.

They run credit as soon as you enter SSN on their site. They make fake promises of lower interest rate and collect your information. The actual interest rates are totally different from the rates promised. This company should be sued and don't know how they are running this fraud business. The agent we were talking to was Cory **.

I got a discount offer through LifeMart – no lender fees to refinance your mortgage! I called and got a quote for 2.99% rate. Sounded good, so I requested a written quote with closing costs. When e-mail came through, the rate was now 3.5%! I called to find out what happened and was told that the quote of 2.99% accounted for points (that was not disclosed on the phone). I said OK, I will pay for 0.75 points, it shouldn't be too much. Well, GR claims that 0.75 points = 1.5 points, and charges you double. So when all said and done, the total came to about the same as Pinnacle Bank was charging me. Michelle **, Mortgage Specialist, then suggested I email her Pinnacle Bank quote - and she will see if they can do better. So I did. No response back. I waited, and emailed again - nothing. She just disappeared. Very unprofessional. Shady company. Do not recommend.

If I can give any advice at all, it is stay far clear away from doing any home financing with Guaranteed Rate. They do not follow guidelines, they make up what they want to make up. They out and out lie right to you. The originators never call you back when you have questions. The fees are outrageous. They don't lock the rate and add points on so you are paying them more. They are discriminatory towards people with disabilities and **. The DE underwriters do not know how to interpret guidelines as I confirmed it with HUD and FHA personally. They do not care about meeting your due diligence dates, and costing you unnecessary money just to deny your loan after you are told everything is good.

I applied for a pre-approval online and uploaded all documents requested. Waited 3 business day to get the first email from Emily the person assigned to my application. Spent a good time going over everything and she came up with additional documents needed, which I submitted ASAP. Called her, left message and did not hear from her. I scaled to customer service just to find out she will take another week or two for a prequalification not even a pre-approval. At this point I went to a Local lender who told me once they verify all the paperwork provided they will give me not a prequalification but a preapproval. And they did verify all the information I provided and game a pre-approval in 48 business hours. Thanks God and this local lender I will be closing in 30 days. This wouldn't never happened with Guaranteed Rate. They are the worse. Run away from them.

I began my refinance process the first of May. I felt like the terms were great, and I waited for the next steps. I sent multiple emails to the loan officer after this with no response. A month later I received an email that the loan was ready to close, and that I needed to sign the document ASAP. There was a difference in the loan amount, and also a cash to closing requirement which was not in the original agreement, which I had in writing. Officer said he would increase the loan by that amount.

I didn’t shop around for a lender when choosing to purchase my home. I went with Guaranteed Rate because a friend of mine is a loan officer there. I have been a mortgage underwriter for over 10 years so I knew what to expect when applying. I paid everything that was asked of me right away and sent my docs in the day I sent my contact in. I already knew what my underwriter would need from me. It’s been over 3 weeks and I haven’t heard a word or gotten a conditional approval. I am closing in 8 days. I am supposed to do a simultaneous closing. My buyer picked a lender that got him approved and clear to close in 2 weeks. I am panicking... myself and my 3 kids will have nowhere to live. I am more than qualified for the loan. I don’t understand what the hold up is.

If there were an option to give 0 stars I would have selected that. This has been the worst experience I have ever encountered with a mortgage company. It was a struggle every step of the way. We had to badger the lending officer to respond to our requests ultimately leading to a need to push our closing to a future date. This same lending officer asked us to sign a loan application with incorrect information while communicating over the phone that this would be adjusted pre-closing based on our request during the call to remove the points from the loan. Negligently failing to include terms in the loan agreement that were agreed to verbally. Once we saw the official closing disclosure, 3 days prior to closing, we noticed the change had not been made.

I got shuffled around to 5 different people. The first one was understandable but then I just wanted one point of contact and that seemed to difficult for them. The person in charge then left the company part way through my process? No one called or bothered to follow up. Just terrible service.

For starters, the communication by Gabe **, the lender was beyond horrible. If I knew that I could have picked my own lender company I would have and most certainly read and adhered to the reviews listed here. The reviews are nothing but the truth. I was denied the loan, the same day as I was supposed to get the keys. There were 3 lenders working on my case the same time, yet none of them communicated on what had already been submitted by me, no one returns emails or calls in a timely manner.

I find it hard to believe that others were approved and cleared as quickly as they state. Not only have we been shuffled aside for months at a time (we qualify, the property qualifies) but the incentive to GR is huge, as we were hoping to refi 2 mortgages with them. They had to stop the first application due to the length of time without writing the paper, and I’m certain the same thing will happen again. I’ve been understanding and patient as I feel this is a young company. However, you get to a point were you Just want to pull your hair out and walk away. Would I advise doing business with GR? Sure, if you like exercises in futility.

Steer clear. I have an excellent credit rating and enough money to cover my mortgage. It took three months for approval of my loan and when it was approved, the cost was about $7,000 higher than the estimate. When I emailed, they wouldn't respond and would give a quick call - I really think they didn't want their shady dealings in writing. I canceled the process and never heard from the senior loan officer. Maybe most people look at the rate and don't care about being screwed over on the closing costs. Guess that's how they get their business. They could care less about you and are just looking to churn through refinances.

Clearly there is an issue with the mortgage originators and the team that processes the loans. Originator states one thing yet the processors either ignore the required changes that need to be made on the loan documents or don’t agree which made me suspicious. I am not saying they had malicious intent but completely lost confidence in this company. I grew so frustrated I backed out and withdrew and paid the home inspection fee just shy of $500 just to put an end to it. I don’t think I should of had to pay it since I would of gone forward and closed if they could of just got on the same page. Too busy to deal with it and since I verbally agreed to pay the inspection I honored it just to put an end to it. It was actually a relief. I really like the concept of refinancing 100% online but I am just going deal with a brick and mortar bank after this experience.

Two days before closing, and still waiting for final approval. Loan Coordinator Berit has ignored all calls and emails for the last 2 week, until I spent the last 48 hours trying to get this resolved.

I have a mortgage that is serviced by Guaranteed Rate through yourmortgageonline.com. On June 30, 2020, I signed up for automatic payments. I repeatedly checked the account between July 31 and August 3rd, 2020 to ensure that the payment was posted. No notification was made that payment had been or would be posted. The mortgage servicer’s home page only said that the automatic payment would be made "8/2020." By the end of the business day August 3, 2020 no payment had been posted and no notification of payment was given, and I was worried about a late fee incurring. An email was sent to customer service and no reply was or has been received. A manual payment was made and automatic payments were canceled. Notification emails were immediately received indicating that automatic payments were canceled and that a one-time draft was active.

My partner and I are first time home buyers on a VA loan. Our realtor (who is a SAINT) sent us to this lending company- saying they were the only people she knew who were waiving the loan fees for VA customers. We get a preapproval for the amount we needed for the house we wanted at a rate that made the monthly payment within our budget. However we were very clear we only had a couple thousand dollars for close, paid most of it to the earnest money and then got the rest of what we were quoted paid by a seller credit.

My loan officer was awesome, very responsive, got me a fantastic rate, approval was a breeze. Then he handed me off to the underwriting team, who were fired after I complained about 2 weeks of failures to communicate, asking for me to submit things I'd already sent in, and many more errors. They were replaced by a marginally more effective team who at least completed the underwriting process, albeit with significant prodding from me. Then came the closing team... I've bought and sold many houses as my job moves me frequently, but this is the first time I received closing & wiring instructions only 3 hours before a closing. And only after I, the customer, prompted them. Multiple times. Thankfully my loan officer stayed engaged and helped me every time I asked for assistance overcoming the problems in other departments. Bottom line: fantastic rate & initial loan officer. Horribly painful process after that.

I gave Heather at Guaranteed Mortgage 1 star... only because I didn't have the option to give zero stars. We did not qualify for a mortgage with GRM. It is what it is. We were treated horribly by Heather, though. She made us feel like we were not fit to mop her floor. Once we asked questions about the discrepancies between what GRM was seeing vs what the credit agencies were reporting, she became condescending and rude. She doesn't return phone calls or emails. I've never been made to feel this insignificant by a business in my life. If you have anything negative in your credit history, steer clear of this company.

On 6/6/20, I received a pre-approval letter for a USDA loan from Guaranteed Rate Affinity..with that, I secured a contract to purchase a home with closing in 30 days. GRA received all the required documents from me. She said even though it's USDA (zero down) I'd need $6200 cash to close for closing costs and fees, so I secured that. I paid a 2k earnest deposit to Title to close in 30 days. I locked in the rate at 3.25%. I paid for the home inspection. All systems go! A week into it, she said her processor will be contacting me to schedule appraisal, and that closing may be delayed. On 6/18/20, the lender informs me that USDA doesn't like the loan for payment shock reasons, and asks if I have more cash to put down (turns out it's bc they didn't enter the mortgage amt I paid for previous 13 years).

They actually researched my situation and rectified their errors, but I am still not feeling my account being sold to another company less than 6 months after I got my mortgage with them.

Did not honor rate lock float down. I had clarified to him that I wanted to make sure he took into account the points I bought, my credit history and down payment when calculating the potential lower rate. I included those details because I wanted to be sure we were on the same page, because he had made a fairly serious mistake previously when I asked about a relock, comparing my loan with a completely different type of loan. He assumed I had a 30 year FHA, when I actually had a 15 year conventional. (I did not tell him this was my reason for including those details.)

I had an application with them on Feb 2020, they gave me a good rate, they made me to pay for appraisal and application fee and one day before closing they said, "Your application wasn’t approved from bank because you have a solar panel lease." They took application fee $250.00 and appraisal fee $550.00 and they came up with nonsense reason which I purchased the house and did first refinance with the solar panel lease. It seems they get your application and charge for the fee and they do a lousy job I don’t advice you go for it. I see it’s a hoax rates to get you in and charge you $250 and make you pay for the appraisal. They don’t care about your loss. My advice don’t trust them.

Although COVID 19 did have some impact on our process, we were told that the underwriters were concerned about our loan to debt ratio. The final conclusion was to pay off a student loan (which was actually being paid for by a grant), and put less down on the house. The net effect was to decrease the ratio, but to actually increase the monthly burden to us (increasing the monthly payment by nearly $200 and adding PMI which would not have been there). The closing date was also pushed back by 3 weeks. If it would not have been so difficult, we would have dropped Guaranteed and gone with another lender - however, given the particulars of the time, we could not. We also ended up paying for points when other lenders would not have changed it. For all these reasons we regret going with Guaranteed Rate and cannot/will not recommend them to anyone.

Me and my girlfriend were in the process of buying a house. Paid for a termite inspection, home inspection and appraisal. After we paid they refused to use my part time job income and lied about my girlfriend losing her job in order to disqualify us for a loan. With my part time income am more than able to qualify. Am out of $1300 thanks to them and have to start the process with a different lender. Don't use this company. Am not the first one to go thru this.

I used Guaranteed Rate to purchase my home 2 years ago. Unfortunately, due to a challenging divorce I was required to refinance my home in my own name as my sole and separate property. I contacted GR for the refinance since they helped me with the initial purchase. It was nothing but a struggle from start to finish. The whole process took 4 months to complete and they were unable to refinance me at a rate equal to or less than my current rate. GR wanted to control every aspect of my divorce, from when and how I was to pay my ex his equalization payment, when I signed my final decree, when my ex could get the Quit Claim Deed to sign, etc. All of this was completely unnecessary and just made the whole situation more stressful and drawn out.

Stay away from this company find a new lender before you close. You have the right to find one. I should have..First off I am a first time home buyer and the start nice and sweet, then I call with a few questions and was told, "I will call you back." Never did.. She had attitude when I called her back. She was very unprofessional and rude. Her name was Louise. I will never recommend and refi with them.. that was before I closed. Now after closing everything seems fine.

They are trying their best.

Guaranteed Rate brought interest rate points without my consent. First and foremost, I was referred to Guaranteed Rate by a realtor. Everything seem to be going smooth at first. I was initially told to lock in a float down interest rate and when a lower interest rate is available they will lock in the lower interest rate. THIS WAS A LIE!! When my loan officer contacted me to tell me that I was going to get an interest rate of 3.75%, I was excited because my initial interest rate was somewhere around 4.35%. Later my loan officer called me and said that there was a mistake made regarding the interest rate and that his manager told him, if he doesn't correct it they will take the money from him. So instead of my interest rate dropping, they made me pay for points to bring it down without my consent. I wasn't aware of this until I went to closing and my attorney pointed out that I had purchased the points to bring the interest rate down.

I was clear to close in 1 week. Jay ** and his local team walked through everything. I didn't have to submit pay stubs since they could validate income through the banking shared system. I didn't have to pay for appraisal since they gave me the highest value possible allowed with FannieMae for my property, way higher than I thought. I got the lowest rate possible and shopped around to be sure. Jay waived the lender fee and I pretty much paid nothing to refi. My prior mortgage was paid off within 3 days of closing and I got excess money paid back to me via direct deposit within 3 days. My mortgage was sold as they told me would be the case when I applied (they told me either Chase or Wells Fargo most likely and it went to Wells). This was the cleanest and most easy experience I've had with what could be a long process. Great team, great people, very competent and effective at what they do.

We have used Guaranteed Rate twice and we will not be using them again. We not only closed almost a month late due to complete lack of communication by our loan originator Thomas and his team, but they were exceptionally rude to everyone from the agent, title company, and to us. We were sent texts and emails from people here where GR blamed us for the delay but the claims were incorrect. The GR team told us that it was the agent and title company's fault. They made excuses, but we weren’t even asked for extra information and didn’t get initial approval until AFTER our initial closing date. They emailed a few days before and send the closing disclosure as if we were going to be able to close.

Updated on 01/29/2020: I recently wrote a review exposing the situation that had happened with our lender who failed to close on our home multiple time. He called in the day of anticipated closing date and said he forgot to send up documents. I wrote about this on Facebook. Anthony Marinaccio, a senior Vice President as Guaranteed Rates called me **. I successfully took screenshots before he deleted the comments and blocked me. For anyone that may want to write reviews, be careful because you might be harassed by gender related names like this. I’ve never been called this before and I can’t stress enough about how horrible my experience has been with Guaranteed Rates.

We were put in contact with Kristine ** at Guaranteed Rate. I would not only not recommend her and therefore Guaranteed Rate, but I would actively petition people not to use her. Kristine makes a great first impression and makes everything seem possible, but her attention to detail, knowledge, service and attitude is lacking at best. On many occasions she made mistakes with our mortgage and not once owned up or apologized. It wasn't beyond her to suggest she told my wife information that she in turn withheld from me.

Paige **, kept my nerves calm as my wife and I were trying to refinance. She was with us at the beginning and stayed in touch to the end. We are very pleased with the new rate and am now able to pay a few bills that caught us by surprise. The closing person, and the notary public sent over to our home were fabulous and very informative.

Bought my first house in 2017 using a Guaranteed Rate loan. It was one of the worst experiences of my life, and it dragged on for a long time. I have never seen such disorganization and lack of customer service at a company. To any prospective home buyer, I would say go with anyone else but these guys. It's just not worth it!

Why give someone a temporary loan number...bad idea! I too closed a loan with Guaranteed Rate Affinity and they have been nothing but an issue since with crediting my payments. Call the 800 number, after a ton of mail saying I have not made my payment, which I have made. To learn that no one knows what that account number is that I have on my payment coupons, that came in my closing package! And to make matters worse the address on the payment coupons that came with the closing packet have an address that no one knows who it belongs to. Now here I am three, almost 4 four months in and they only show 1 payment. Now the lady in collections tells me to stop payment on the check which will cost me an additional $29 for an issue that I didn’t create. This is ridiculous! Who has time to speak with this company every week and go to the same rigmarole with no beneficial outcome and no answers.

I obtained a mortgage with Guaranteed Rate and made my first payment to them end of September for the October scheduled payment. Within a couple of weeks, Guaranteed Rate transferred the mortgage to a different loan company but did not send them the payment which was never credited to my account. The new company had me in arrears while I battle with Guaranteed Rate to transfer the payment. It is now end of December and I had to make an additional payment to bring my account up to date as Guaranteed Rate is still looking into it. I forwarded them my bank information with the confirmed payment receipt. Still waiting.

I recently purchased a home in November and my entire experience with this company was stressful. They were terrible at communication. I would call and couldn't get anyone on the phone. I would leave a message and would get a response from the secretary or assistant who wouldn't be able to answer any of my questions and would then need to call the mortgage person and/or underwriter to ask them. Instead of one of them getting back to me, the secretary/assistant would respond with their answer. If I had additional questions, the process noted above was repeated. I was always contacted by someone who was in the middle and really couldn't help me. I called the underwriter directly and left a message specifically requesting that SHE call me back and not the secretary and I got zero response.

If you have a loan that is being processed or if you are considering Guaranteed Rate please consider this opinion. In my 25 years of experience with selling and buying properties (5) I have never seen a totally inept mortgage company. From the beginning of the process it was painful with submitting the same documents (they sell their loans off) to them and the secondary. Today, 3 years later they are requesting flood insurance that I submitted via my insurance company a week ago, naming Guaranteed Rate as the loss payee. They find it unacceptable. My advise is to avoid this company by all means and find a good community bank to deal with.