Visit your local department of real estate website, look up the company and the loan officer. If your loan officer is not licensed don’t do business with them. Any complaints or suspension of license will be listed with DRE. Bottom line if you are working with a company that doesn’t charge application fees upfront you are pretty much covered, if they don’t deliver the loan in the terms you agree on you don’t sign, they don’t get paid, simple as that.
Hope this helps!!

Here is what I tell people to do:

Apply by giving all your information, including your social security number, to 3 companies. Your local bank or credit union, a mortgage company like Countrywide or Ditech, and a mortgage broker.

Ask them to fully approve your loan based on your full verbal application. This can be done in today’s mortgage industry. It takes about an hour of work.

Ask each of them to lock your rate.

Ask for a copy of your approval, a copy of your lock and how much variance they are willing to guarantee in writing from the Good Faith Estimate to the Estimated Closing Sheet at loan doc signing.

Then make a decision to work with one of the three. That is when you can then send in your faxed documentation of income and assets, signatures, and pay for your appraisal.

Any company not willing to do the things above does not deserve your business.

Doing it this way means you can somewhat trust that the deal you have been quoted will be what you see when you sign loan documents.

What you ned to know about mortgages:

You need to understand the mortgage process. If you understand it, then no one can rip you off…

All you need to know about a mortgage right now so print this out.

1. Prepayment penalty if any
2. Terms of the loan (If adjustable, how long?)
3. Rate(s) of interest at funding
4. Rate Cap (Highest mortgage rate possible)
5. What program you’re getting

Message me if you want my contact info and I’ll help you out…