We finally signed the closing documents on our most recent mortgage refinance. We ended up going through the same local mortgage broker who linked us up with Provident Funding, which is apparently one of the largest private lenders in the country. Before going through them, I read some reviews online and the main complaint seemed to be that their underwriting was overly strict. I decided to go with them anyway because:
- They had the lowest rates at the time for a no-cost refi,
- With such high loan volume, I figured I should expect some complaints based just on the numbers (happy people rarely leave lender reviews),
- We are very qualified for the loan so it shouldn’t matter anyway. Our loan-to-value ratio was well under 50%, much less than the 80% that most loans require. Great credit score, good income.
- We trusted our broker to help guide us through the process.
So how did it go? One reviewer described the loan approval process as “cookie cutter” and a “gauntlet”, and I think that is a very apt description. The underwriting is very robotic and inflexible. For example, my wife already has plenty of stable, W-2 income to support the loan by herself. I decided to keep my name off the application explicitly to keep things simple since I have both W-2 and 1099 income. Yet, Provident still required proof that the “excess” income on our tax returns was connected to me and not my wife. Why would you care where the extra income came from?
Another example is regarding bank statements. I understand the need for historical bank statements, but any deposit or withdrawal over something like $5,000 needed full documentation as to source and reason. Never mind what our total balances were. If they don’t like the reason, it is grounds for denial. This is annoying, especially if you move money around a lot like I do. The really stupid part? I finally discovered that the bank doesn’t even need to be the deposit source for your paycheck. In that case, since they don’t care about long-term balance history but instead want the appearance of blandness, I luckily had lots of bank accounts to choose from and simply chose the “cleanest” one to finally satisfy them.
In addition, the bank account that you submit the statement for is the one that you need to fund closing costs via cashier’s check. I suppose this proves you own it? The only bad news was that my “clean” account was an online bank, so I had to pay for a $30 outgoing wire fee in place of the free cashier’s check I could have gotten from a local bank.
Recap: Provident Funding has very competitive rates, but with strict underwriting requirements that often lack common sense. You should be wary of them if you are a non-standard applicant in any way (self-employed income, recent job change). There are many complaints that people lost the house they had under contract because they were eventually denied their loan or did not close on time. The total time from loan application to closing on our refinance was approximately 45 days. If you have a great credit score and nice, stable W-2 income with good ratios, then go for it if their rates are the best and you’re willing to trade a few headaches for it.
Compare with rate quotes from:
- Amerisave
- Quicken Loans
- Cashcall Mortgage
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How much history do they dig in deposits in bank statement? 6months? or less?
How much history in bank statements do they check?
That previous post said you’re doing all lender closing costs covered. Can you share more details about that? I ran through the quotes on Provident Funding and couldn’t get close to what I thought closing costs appeared to be. They have a $1099 lender fee, which might be small for the value of your house, but ours is closer to $150k with $120k owed (80% LTV). That is a huge hurdle to overcome. I would like to refinance, but appraisals seem iffy, and fees run around $3k. If I tack on enough negative points to cover the costs, I end up at my current rate or higher. If I just paid the fees, I could lower my interest rate 1% though so it is very tempting.
I think they only ask for 2-3 months of bank statements, but they will ask for other bank statements if you have transfers between bank accounts, which opens up more questions…
I had costs covered through negative points. Yes, this is harder with smaller loans as points are % of loan principal and lots of closing costs are fixed amounts. You may be able to get a appraisal waiver from Fannie if refinancing within a year. Title insurance may also be cheaper for recent refis.
I’ve always been fascinated by the whole banking history requirements of mortgages. So here’s the thing – if you are knowledgeable about the process it is incredibly easy to just set up a bank account in advance so it is sparkling clean and do all your dirty work elsewhere (or in cash for the time period). When I got my last mortgage the finance planning started happening right along with thinking about buying a house.
My company cut ties with Provident Funding over 2 years ago because they were more of a liability than anything. Even the simple “cookie cutter” loans would run into issues that would prevent them from closing. One I remember clearly was a shared driveway maintenance agreement. Provident denied the file, with no explanation. A simple explanation and how they want it remedied would have saved the loan. But you are right, their rates are generally very competitive.
thanks for the information! could we contact Provident funding directly, compared to finda broker to do the refi? what do u recommend?
Wow, your article just described my life haha. I bought a house last year after getting married, and you can imagine the amount of transaction stuff that was going on. I have the same situation as you financially. I don’t think it’s this company, I think it’s just all underwriters. I went with American Federal Mortgage and actually I’m in the process of refi with Federated Mortgage now (close on Monday). Underwriting wasn’t as bad since i wasn’t as active in the last 2 months but they did want to see proof of an auto-insurance payout.
The best thing you can get from these lenders is the price, second is the customer service response time from your agent. Everything else seems to be standard.
Is it just me or are cashier’s checks at closing a totally “new” thing? I am talking for just a couple of thousand dollars. We seem to refi, on average, every 3 years or so. I was so confused when they insisted on a cashier’s check this last time – I honestly don’t remember needing one before. {In fact, had an out-of-town bank with last refi so I know for sure they just took a plain old out-of-town bank check}.
Not to mention we had to prove we had the money in the bank beforehand. Way overkill.
I actually got off easy because I have been doing mobile online deposit – one check at a time. So none of my individual deposits met the $5k or whatever cutoff. Phew!! Usually when I deposit several checks at once, it just shows as one lump deposit, which would have been a huge hassle in comparison.
I went through Zillow.com to find a broker who worked the mortgage application for me and I ended up being funded by Provident. They are very strict and like you I like to move my money around. Also it didn’t help that I was doing the AARP game and had some very large payments to make and also a very fun cruise with that AARP card that I actually saved all the cash withdrawal receipts from the Casino cage. Broker was laughing when he saw 20 casino cash receipts taped together. Also on zillow I was able to sort it by lender fees and picked the one with the largest closing credit so it really only cost me about $300 to close if you don’t count mandatory fees (taxes, county filing, prepaid interest etc…)
They held me up for a $600 Amazon payments deposit in my bank account (with a $27,000 balance. My cash due at closing was something like $800 (most of which was prepaid interest). I then tried to pay my closing with funds from another account (removing the tainted one) They do take personal checks if under a certain amount (maybe $1000), but I had no checks for this bank so went to a branch to get a cashiers check. However this bank didn’t offer cashiers/certified checks, instead offering something called a “bank check” (I have no idea what the difference is). I fedex’d this to the title agent (they paid for the fed/ex). It was rejected since they don’t accept “bank checks.” Finally, had to drive back to the branch an order a wire for $27. Strict is an understatement. Don’t apply until you have 2 months of “clean” bank statements.
I think this is the new standard for underwriting. Those requirements don’t seem unreasonable to me. The bank wants to know how much money you make, how much money you have and where the money in your accounts came from.
Personally I think this is good. Its at least far better than the pre bust days when banks only wanted a pulse and a signature to get a 125% cash out refinance.
Thanks for the review, J. Always nice to know something about these companies beyond what they tell you in their web ad…
I may have missed it, but I’ve never seen mention of Box Home Loans on your blog. I’m not sure if you looked at them when comparing rates. I just closed a no cost re-fi with them and had a great experience. My rate was competitive, the underwriting review was incredibly smooth, and they were responsive throughout. I heard about them through a friend and haven’t seen much in the way of ads, so they must be growing via word of mouth. I believe they only cater to the >700 credit score crowd and only in some states, but I highly recommend them.
P.S. Congrats on the new shorty your wife is brewing. Your life is about to change in both wonderful and terrible ways. Luckily the wonderful comes out on top (most of the time).
Jonathan – I’m a long time follower. Really appreciate your posts and comments by other readers. I thought I ask for some input from you and other readers. I bought my place in 2005 and still continue faithfully making mortgage payments. Current loan is @ 5.25%. Have excellent credit, job history, earn 100K+. I want to refinance my current mortgage but my place is worth much less than the current mortgage. I am considering paying into the current mortgage loan to bring it down for refinance – which means a lot of $$$ out of pocket. Does anyone know of a reputable bank that works w/folks in my situation? Seems like every time I contact someone, I get shot down as soon as they hear I am underwater. Thanks for any thoughts, inputs, leads…
Thank you for this post. Our mortgage is currently with Provident and I can attest to the strict underwriting. During this process last year (we just purchased it last year), they kept questioning my husband’s deposits because he gets a commission. Luckily our mortgage broker helped us and we were able to close on our house within 30 days.
While I appreciate the strict underwriting, it can be frustrating trying to prove money you actually made!
How many refinances have you gone through? Is it worth all the extra energy?
@Jaime, I am afraid the only way for you to re-fi is like you said pre-pay into the principle to make your LTV ratio under 80%. You can also try to go back to your current lender to ask for a loan modification on the rate (not to principle reduction, but rate reduction, some of the big banks are doing this per the settlement) . It is very hard to get approve and it will have an effect on your credit.
And as for Provident, I understand there are new standards and policies, but provident is illogical and unreasonable on their requirements. They demanded a local office address even when there is no local office. I gave them the HQ address and they came back and said its out of state. I said, so? you guys still haven’t heard of mobile workers? After I explained that, they still want a letterhead document from my boss (which I didn’t want to disclosure) to say I work at the company even after with all tax returns, pay stubs from the same employer for the past 10 yrs. I think most people would think that is unreasonable.
@Jenna, it is def worth it to re-fi if you can get credit to cover all closing cost. Because if you are paying no money out pocket and get a lower rate, why not? Provident is the best one out there in terms credits and rates. But like many people said, be ready to have a lot of patient when dealing with them. If you have a complicated finance (ex. self employed, multiple properties, investment properties), I would try another lender.
@Jonathan, how much were the closing costs? My quote has a closing cost credit of $3,375.00 which seems really high, are their costs unusually high?
Anyone know?
I did a refi in late 2011 and got stuck with Provident. The customer service is not very good, including long wait times on the phone. Additionally, they charge fees for one time payments or to mail in a check. The only way to make a payment and avoid fees is to setup a recurring payment at a recurring amount. They do have the best rates around, which is how they can get away with being such a pain during the approval process.
@Chris, my closing cost was about $3500 and with the credit of $4000, I had a $500 credit.
What rate did you end up with? How many negative points? I’m trying to decide if I should drag myself through a *third* refi in the two years since our initial purchase.
3.65%, -1.5%. Just go to provident.com to use their rate calculator to check out your situation.
Just did a refi too. Took almost 60 darn days! That said, we had one batch of documents to pass – we sent 3 years of tax returns, all 401k, all bank accounts, rental expenses/receipts, rental leases, paycheck stubs, car registrations, proof of insurance for all properties. That was it. Just took a long time but they had everything and never asked us for more.
End result, we closed for nothing. When we get our escrow back from our last loan company and add in the lack of payment for July, we’re looking at a refi that netted us a huge savings each year and an immediate chunk of change right out of the gate. So glad we did it.
Why did you go through the broker and not go direct, or did you? Wouldn’t it have been cheaper? I’m confused.
I don’t believe it matters whether you go through a broker or not, the rates and points are the same.
If they’re the same then doesn’t matter I guess. I thought the broker had some markup in the rates in order for them to make money.
My husband and I are buying our first home and all the personnel involved are just completely incompetent. Everyone only says things that you want to hear yet they are really not doing much. And when there are problems, we are always the one to blame. I seriously will avoid them as much as we can once we close on this house. I will get my own real estate agent license next time when we are doing any real estate transaction and only buy house with cash… F*** all these overpaid “professionals”.
Agreed, most of the “agents” or “broker” I worked with are pretty useless. They can’t even answer simple questions as in how old is the roof or heating system etc.. 99% of the time, they will say, “not sure, but I can find out and get back to you” And 100% of the time, they don’t follow up. I would have to be the one calling them.
I just started my another refi a few days ago with a broker. I was going for Provident Funding, but the broker can provide the same interest rate without any closing cost, while I need pay a few hundred dollars for the same rate at Provident Funding. So I decided to use a broker. Another differenece is I can’t do another refi for 6 months, which I am ok with that.
I just found out today the broker is going to use Provident Funding for my loan. Given nothing goes wrong later, I am wondering why it is more expensive to go to Provident directly. It doesn’t make a lot sense to me. Maybe the broker could get a bulk discount, but not a individual consumer? Also the broker’s customer service is a lot better.
I am in the middle of a refinance and it’s going pretty well. I know the mortgage broker for 25 years so I trust his handling of the process. I have a 5.125 rate now and I will bring it down to 3.5. So I am pretty happy with that. I will be in the house for another 10 years so I will be saving about $30,000 in interest over time.
Lame, not directly related Question(May be Mr. J could come up with a blog post about this): I got around $650K liquid amount(few CDs etc) , total family income crosses $150K (on W2) and the other income around $50K. A regular Quicken user (for over a decade), so, I got all numbers in place for the past 10 years.
Never bought a home. Good Credit history(never took a loan except timely paying few Credit Cards). Given this, I am thinking of buying a 2-plex unit, live in one and rent the other(in a VERY EXPENSIVE location of Silicon Valley, CA).
Given this, buying a house by paying cash $650K(got the rainy day fund separately) for home is a good idea? I hate to pay interest. Thinking of trying for Provident if I need above $650K for my planned 2-Plex… Suggestion, comments, recommendations please
@Sree, you should def consider taking out a loan. Get a loan at ~3.0% is practically like free money (2011 inflation rate was 3%). And why tied up all the cash in 1 property. Why not do 4 properties. With 25% down each, let the tenants pay the mortgage for you. After 15 years, with estimated $2.6M in equity, that is 300% ROI. Of course, there are always risks involved, and other expenses (repairs, taxes, insurance, utilities, management fee if you choose not to do it yourself). Do your homework, but def look into it because it sounds like you want to dabble into real estate investment.
Anyone ever had any luck with Wells Fargo’s streamlined online refinancing? Supposedly it will be very short on paperwork, hassle, and costs but I can’t seem to get the system to acknowledge my mortgage (maybe because it came from Wachovia).
I refinance every time I can drop 1/4% without cost to me. My one instruction to my mortgage broker is that it cannot be with Provident.
When I tried Provident previously, I also had to deal with amazing scrutiny of my bank accounts, including insisting on my sending page 4 of a monthly statement which had no page 4 — simply because the previous month had more transactions so had a page 4 and they were sure I was hiding something in only having 3 pages the following month.
But what really locked me against them was that after approving everything along the way with my support, on the day they were supposed to fund, they sent out a new requirement that I eliminate all unused credit on my HELOC. This despite that the full HELOC credit line and my mortgage amount were less than 80% of my appraised value.
I have a great HELOC I cannot get again now, so was unwilling to do so. That meant the money we had paid for the appraisal (which under new laws is oddly not transferrable to another lender typically) was not refunded and all the work over the refinance also went to waste. All due to an inexplicable last minute extra condition that was completely absurd and contradictory to their earlier approval.
Never again with them, and I warn others the same.
As the write up says we refinance through Provident funding beacuse of competitive rates. But just after a few months I am finding that I do not want to continue with them. It just seems to me that they do not have any customer appreciation. With all my old lenders I received a monthly statement. Apparently Provident funding does not offer any mail statement to save money. I am old fashioned and prefer to receive imprtant dosumnets in printed form rather than electronic. Then there is the case of late fee. In my second or third month only the check I sent had error, the alpha and numeric amounts did not match. They sent the check back to me. This made the paymnet date go beyond the “grace period”. I called in to request a waiver for late fee. I was told that Provident’s policy is not to reverse any fee and not only that they had apparently received the check a day later than grace period. I am seriousely considering refinancing.
All the reviews really scare me. http://www.bills.com/pfloans-lender-profile/
Do you know if they have a prepayment penalty? I see there is prepayment penalties waged against the broker here https://pfloans.provident.com/ check out the virtual trainer, there’s lots of stuff in there.
Hi Jonathan – Great post – I’m a long time follower and had a similar experience with Provident. We ended up refinancing with them twice – about 12 months apart due to a rate drop – used the same broker both times – the broker was great to deal with but Provident can be a PITA – luckily they have great rates. They required lots of documentation – we had PDF copies of our bank statements and tax returns and no unusual transactions 0 all w2 income and plenty of equity. About 2 weeks after the closing the attorney contacted us and needed us to re-execute one of the documents – Provident didn’t like they way they were signed – the rate we ended up with was better than the rates on their website and the broker absorbed all the closing costs. We ended up refinancing again about 8 months ago with the same broker but we ended up with Ally Bank (GMAC) from an underwriting/approval/time to close standpoint they were a lot better.
Yay, i just closed my refi. 10 months after purchase, 30-year fixed 3.4774 APR 3.5% rate (with a 550 refund check) and an $80 per month lower payment. My house value is 230k.
Anyone beat that? :-p
@Mike – I just got online access to my account to set up automatic withdrawal, and can confirm there is no prepayment penalty per se. I confirmed there was no prepayment penalty on the closing docs, but people online said you had to be a fee whenever you paid extra toward principal. However, there is a $7.50 fee for any “one-time” drafts that aren’t part of the monthly autopay. You can set up additional regular principal prepayments as part of monthly autopay with no fees. Hope that made sense.
I have a simple question for you. When refinancing, how is the refi principal decided? While the refi loan is under progress, I am still paying my current mortgage. So when the new loan is approved, the mortgage company updates GFE with very feasible numbers based on a “set” closing date?
Can someone give links to brokers they used? I can’t seem to find any brokers that handle Provident. I wish they had a list or something on their site, but it seems like it’s all top secret hush hush.
Mike – not sure what state you are in – each state has their own licensing requirements for brokers. I’m in MA and used Nautical Home Lending in Plymouth MA – http://www.nauticalhomelending.com – As I mentioned above I refinanced 3 times in the last 2 years – the first two times the broker used Provident and the last time they used Ally Bank. Ally is definitely more customer friendly – the underwriting and closing process was very efficient and their online tools are great. If you are in MA I would contact Sal at Nautical Lending if you’re not in MA I would suggest checking out the mortgage feature on Zillow.com you will get quotes from brokers and direct mortgage lenders that service your area.
After talking with a couple brokers, it appears I can get a better deal going direct with Provident.
@Jonathan, sorry if I just missed this in all of the above information (which is great, BTW)… Does Provident Funding sell mortgages, or do they always service the loans? I see that you have your monthly payment set up with them, so I take it that they service loans, but I wonder if this is always the case.
I’m in the process of a refi with Provident now (went with a broker, and through her I just so happened to end up with Provident)… Their web site looks like it will be lame a clunky… I wouldn’t mind if they sold it to someone with a better website!
@Scott – I did 2 refi’s with Provident – they sold the first loan (2009) and it was serviced by Wells Fargo – I refi’d with them again in 2010 and they serviced the loan themselves.
When I started thinking about refinancing my home in the spring of 2012 I thought of re-financing through Provident Funding. I decided to go online and look for some reviews and found quite a few unhappy people who in one way or another had a bad experience with Provident. So, thinking I was saving myself a lot of trouble I decided to go through another lender…who ended up being an enormous waste of time. Then, I decided to go to a company who advertises nationally quite a bit (American Financing) because they promised that they would match any rate and closing cost. In the two months I was battling with American Financing, I was always trying to get them to match the rates Provident Funding was offering. In the end, American Financing told me they just couldn’t beat Provident’s rates. Since I was already frustrated with American Financing about their careless customer service, I was finally ready to give Provident Funding a shot. To my pleasant surprise, Provident had the loan closed and funding in a couple of weeks without any headache. My customer service experience with them was fantastic! They always returned my phone calls promptly, and even though my income wasn’t anything close to ordinary, they didn’t give me any trouble. Breanna Presken and Autumn Myers were agents/processors and did an awesome job. If I were to do it all over again, I would have saved myself A TON of time and gone with Provident Funding in the first place!
If you think about it, 95% of the people who have positive experiences never look back and don’t write reviews like I did. But, 95% of the people who have a negative experience post their one sided complaint online. More often than not, the negative comments come from people who quite likely didn’t have good enough credit scores to begin with. I highly recommend Provident Funding…I won’t waste my time with other morons next time!
@Jonathan, I have a slight different question about paying mortgage to Provident Funding. The mortgage is due the beginning of every month. Sometimes I have fund available sooner than the beginning of the month, so I pay the full amount ahead of time; sometime I have large fund available, I pay 2-3 month ahead of time, but I don’t pay more than the full monthly due amount. Since I’m paying off the monthly due earlier, and I’m doing this often, I expect it will reduce my overall interest payment. However, I called Provident Funding today, one of the customer reps said NO, early payments does not reduce interest payment of the loan.
Can you advise if this is typical with mortgage lenders or this is something only Provident does as a way to recoup the money from giving lower interest loan?
Thanks.
@TonyL – What Provident is telling you is standard practice in the mortgage industry. If you want to reduce your interest, you must send them funds and specifically direct them to apply it to principal only, not your required monthly payment. Then, you must continue to make the required monthly payments. That is the only way to reduce your interest charges, by paying additional amounts that can’t be applied to future payments.
Provident may be hard to get a loan with but the real problems start when you want to get out!
With one loan they “lost” the $125K wire transfer payoff for 2 weeks and were rude and would not tell us what the supposed missing magical information was that we needed to provide (we had given them all the transfer tracking info).
With another, they never discharged it. Years later when we went to sell the house we found that and immediately called them to get it discharged. We had to call them about 40 times and it took over 2 months for them to get it done. NEVER did the one person apparently able to do the discharge call us back or provide us our our attorney with requested information or documents. Their phone “wall” refuses to get anyone on the line with any authority and makes promises that are never kept about action to be taken and calls to be returned.
This company is a nightmare and they don’t care how much stress they put you under when they fail to carry out their responsibilities. Blogger, I am afraid you made a very bad choice that you will come to regret. You should have paid attention to the terrible reviews of Provident — they are not a small statistical slice if they screwed up on BOTH of our loans in independent ways. For all others, do yourself a favor and STAY AWAY FROM PROVIDENT no matter how low the rate sounds. Your mental and financial well-being is worth more than 0.X%.
I am trying to figure out if it is financially worth my time and energy to refinance at all. I read up on how to calculate refinance savings in seattle (which is where I live) but this site (http://bit.ly/Q63dHz) mentioned that some people don’t think it’s worth it to refinance unless you can drop your rate at least 2 percentage points. Mine wouldn’t drop quite that much. Is it worth it?
I’m trying to get a loan closed through them (via a broker) and they are throwing up irrational requirements. The company I work for isn’t listed on yellowpages dot com – and without that, they won’t approve a loan. I’m not kidding – if you are going through their wholesale system and you can’t find your company’s name and phone number on that site, DO NOT PAY FOR AN APPRAISAL or anything else because they won’t approve the loan and you’ll lose the money you spent! I sure hope I’m not out $500 for the appraisal.
2 months ago I closed a loan with cashcall in less than 30 days – very little trouble and nothing to pay for. No unreasonable requirements. If provident is cheaper, it’s not by that much and it’s definitely not worth it.
I have had a horrible experience with Provident Funding and would recommend you STAY AWAY. I have had a loan with Provident Funding since 2001 and with the rates went to refinance. I made every payment on time, have a 720+ credit score, make 150K, low debt and they did not approve me becausee of the way they evaluated the loss on this investment property. InTheir underwriting is has ridiculous requirements that defy logic and are run with fuzzy math. They still owe me $500 from an appraisal deposit that never happened. Their customer service is horrible and it took an act of God to get my accout represenative on the phone. As a result, I went to another lender, my loan was approved, I had a smart account representative work with me along the way and I know have a new loan, lower rate and will never work with Provident Funding again.
So I just tried refinancing the home I own with my brother through Provident. My brother and I had a combined credit score of 785. My salary is $100000 base pay plus overtime and my brother’s income is a disabilty retirement that is tax exempt at $39000, therefore he does not file a tax return as he has no taxable income.
The current loan is a 30 year fixed at 5% with a payment $2619. I was offered a 3.375% rate on a 30 year fixed with approximately $4000 in closing costs and a 30 day lock through Provident. The appraisal came in at $580000 and we owe $471000 on the current loan. I was ok with paying PMI since it would lower my rate and lower my payment by $300 a month.
I provided them with 1099-R for my brothers income along with my tax returns and W-2s. They requested a WVOE through my employer which was provided. My loan consultant told me that my employer did not provide a breakdown of my base pay and overtime pay. He also told me that they did not answer wheteher I am likely to stay employed or if the overtime was likely to continue. No employer in their right mind would ever answer those two questions since that leaves them wide open for litigation.
I am a government employee so I called my payroll department and asked them if they could provide a detailed WVOE to satisfy the lender’s needs. I was told that it is against their policy to disclose the difference between base pay and overtime and could only report gross earnings. My gross earnings ytd are $119000, with $135000 in 2011 and $129000 in 2010.
I explained that to my loan consultant and offered my end of year paystubs for the last two years which are very detailed and show my base pay and overtime pay year to date.
All of this occured over the last month. So with four days until the rate lock expires, I was told that they can not fund a loan with PMI without your brother having filed tax returns. He said that they could see if I qualify on my own but that would take another WVOE being filled out correctly. Or you can pay down the loan to $46400 and we can proceed. And BTW your rate lock expires in 3 days so we would have to market pricing prior to closing.
WHAT???????? Which part of tax exempt income did they not understand? And why did they wait until 4 days prior to losing the rate to let me know. I have never dealt with a company with such incompetence.
My last refi which was done 2.5 years ago was a lot smoother with the same income and credit rating.
So I am out $450 for the appraisal and a lot of wasted time. There has to be somebody else out there that deserves and wants my business.
I had posted earlier about my 2 refi’s with Provident – both required a lot of hoops to jump through but both closed within 30 days at the quoted rate. Just refi’d again this time through Amerisave – they made Provident look good. The rates were about the same as Provident but there real shortcoming is communication – it was non existent. It took about 60 days to close but I didn’t get the approval or condition letter until the day before the closing – if it had been a purchase instead of a refi – I would have been in trouble. @DS – I would check with some of your local banks – I checked with them after I started the process and was surprised that one of them had very competitive rates – in line with what I had been promised by Amiersave. Good Luck!
Have to say I was a big fan of Provident… used them to buy my home in 2005.
Thought so much of them that I enrolled my company in the Provident Benefit Partner program where employees receive a .250 point discount.
Ask me today and I no longer have anything positive to say.
I decided to do a simple refi on the loan I originated with Provident 8 years ago.
Credit score of 832, 24 years on the job and a 60% loan to value and no cash out… no other debt…
What could be easier… right?
For starters, can’t get anyone at Provident to reply or respond… I realize it was the Holidays and things take longer… over a week since I e-mailed, telephoned and clicked on the Help tab on the Provident Website… nothing, except automated e-mails counting down my loan lock…
What good is a great rate if it is not obtainable?
Rate locked for 30 year fixed is 3.125% with a minus .125 point.
At this point… what else is there to say… feel like an idiot wiring the $600 deposit fee… they said not to worry, it will be refunded when the loan funds… yeah, right.
I recently refinanced with Provident through a broker. Yes it was a pain, but I secured a 2.75% 15 year rate. It was worth the hassle.
If you do go with Provident, expect them to go through your finances with a fine tooth comb. Going through a broker helps as they guide you through the process.
I used iloanca.com (Save financial) and they were great.
Yes… my first experience with Provident was great…
This time around… not so.
Update…
Provident let me know last week everything is in order and they are ready to fund…. BUT, my rate lock expired the week before so my great loan will now cost $3000 additional.
I told them thanks but no thanks…
Is it my fault they couldn’t be bothered to return a phone call from Christmas to New Years?
My credit union is super competitive with 15 year fixed at 2.75%
Not so on the 30 year product.
What good is Provident’s great rate and rate lock if they let it expire?
My Provident experience was similar to yours, except:
I also did the refi in my name (wife’s) only, even though I file taxes with my husband. They did not ask me to account for the excess.
I also move large amounts of money around. They did not ask me to account for my money movement. It could be that what I left stable in the account was also large.
They did make me bring $115 to closing in the form of a cashiers check!! Funny enough, at the closing they issued me a check for $147, because they predetermined that they overcharged me for one of the fees. Why didn’t they just issue me a check for the difference.
It was pretty simple–my broker did all the work. I was flexible about the closing schedule, which made it pretty pain free.
refinance through provident for super jumbo loan at 3.5% with net credit. from online application to close/fund 16 days yesterday. did jump through a few hoops but nothing too irrational. have 2 loans with provident, both refi’s and no problems yet. just wanted to add my positive experience. hard to tell if negative reviews are a minority or the norm?
cjack…
Glad Provident came through for you… I was very please with my first Provident experience several years ago.
Went to refi and the rate lock expired and then they said they were ready to fund but it would cost a point to keep the same rate…
Went to my local credit union and zero issues on the refi…
Can no longer recommend Provident and sent Provident a follow up email when credit union funded and received no response…
Went to my local credit union and zero issues on the refi…
Can no longer recommend Provident and sent Provident a follow up email when credit union funded and received no response…