Austin First Mortgage

I’m a Real Estate Broker in Austin. I’ve been forced to endure the unprofessional behavior of Austin First Mortgage 3 times in transactions where I represented the seller. Not 1 time has the transaction closed on-​time… NOT ONCE! In my opinion, they lie, mislead the parties to the transaction, blame others, including the Title Company… pretty much anything they can do to push their unprofessional behavior onto someone else in the transaction. Their voicemail system only answers if you allow the phone to ring about 10 times. They never return phone calls, etc… They have little or no communication skills, especially for a business. I can assure you the next time a buyer submits an offer on one my listings and the mortgage pre-​approval letter is issued from Austin First Mortgage I will counsel with my client regarding my past experience with this company (company is a loosely used term for this outfit!!)

Aweful experience. Read Rohan’s post. My mortgage closed late, documents done incorrectly, communication extremely poor. Would not return phone calls. Do NOT use this company.

Nancy and her team have done a great job for us a number of times. On our primary home, we had another company that couldn’t close for us in 3 months. We called Nancy and she got us closed in 3 weeks. I’m not sure what issues others have had but we have never had problems.

Do not go to this business for your mortgage! If you do, you will regret it. While shopping for a loan is different for every person, I feel that it is my duty as a good citizen of Austin to share what might happen to you if you work with this company, based on my experience:
1) You might be matched with a loan processor who does not understand sentences in English without multiple iterations and variations of the information you want to convey.
2) You might be told to submit documents you have already submitted.
3) You might be told to retrieve documents that do not exist.
4) You might be told to retrieve documents from a bank whose policy prohibits the distribution of such documents.
5) You might be told to retrieve blank tax forms that you never submitted to the IRS.
6) You might be asked to pay fees that have not actually been charged.
7) Your closing date might be postponed due to your loan status changing to pending after your loan has been approved.
8) You might be asked to provide autographed documents from home inspectors after your loan has been approved.
9) Your HUD statement at closing might be inaccurate.
10) Employees of the business may speak rudely to you and/​or your real estate agent.
11) Your personal information may be sold to companies this business works with.
12) You may receive at least 5 letters in your mail per week from companies who have purchased your information from this business that use deceptive messaging to offer overpriced financial products.
13) You may take hours of time out of your working schedule to speak with the employees of this business regarding your loan application, which may nullify the thousands of dollars of savings this business offered in the first place.
Frankly, a 1-​star rating is too high for this company because it deserves lower than 20% approval from consumers. Unfortunately, Unilocal’s rating system is restricted in this way. You will regret doing business with this company so steer clear, even if you’re enchanted by the slightly lower rate. There are better deals out there.

Communication was poor, I did not get updates when problems arose, They really didn’t do anything except try to collect the commission. Would not recommend to anyone. We have credit in the 800’s and Low DTI ratio, the issue was the appraisal, which came in at a good price but the bank asked for revision, most likely in an effort to squash the loan. AFM didn’t even know about the hold up until I started asking questions. DO NOT DO BUSINESS WITH THEM, Unless you just want to bloq $ 475 for an appraisal fee!!! I am just going to go straight to another bank and pay another Appraisal fee, that is how bad these guys are that I am willing to walk away from a $ 500!!! HORRIBLE!

Nancy and her team gave me the lowest rate by far, with the lowest fees as well. I didn’t have any problems getting a pre-​approvals for offers, as she gave out her personal cell, and responded to all of my email very quickly. They worked with the title company requested by the seller, and everything about the buying process was smooth and issue free. I did have to provide a ton of information, bank statements, and pay stubs for the lender, but I think that is standard now for any mortgage. Based on the rate they were able to get me, I will definately be using them in the future. Post-​sale, I did receive 2 letters inquiring if I would like to purchase mortgage insurance, but after both of those letters, I haven’t recieved another one.

In short I fell for the low rate promise and «most mortgagees processed» and my house closing process was very painful.
This shop is run by Nancy Sun a Chinese person and her team of almost all Chinese employees and there’s nothing wrong about that except its very evident that everyone’s second language is English. Communication was not very smooth.
The person I worked with Lucas was a very nice person, and he even went out of his way to help my process as much as he could. I should mention here that I have high credit scores and my finances are immaculate. However they didn’t work diligently enough the loan did not close within 45 days (for various reasons attributed to the underwriters taking too much time, not catching missing documents till the last minute, the owners not being available to sign off on documents etc.) and so I was stuck with a loan extension fee. So I wasn’t happy and I won’t use them ever again.

I don’t give them 1 star because they did get me the lowest rate I could find and ended up reimbursing me for some of the money they made me lose so that my realized loss was only about $ 150. These people apparently don’t have much experience with purchases and they screwed up my loan BIG TIME. I went through a week of hell after the lender refused to disburse the funds because AFM forgot that the HUD settlement required approval even though the title company asked them specifically where to send it for approval. Instead of working to fix the problem they were just stumped and tried to blame the title company even though they made no mistakes. I was very lucky that the seller agreed to cooperate with me, even though he had a cash offer on the table, but the second closing happened 6 days later and I had to pay the seller a $ 100 per diem, plus the week that I missed out on renting the house. In the end I didn’t lose the house plus all the money I had already invested on the purchase (earnest money, inspection, rate lock fee, etc) but I was awfully close. My first time home buying experience was an absolute nightmare because of AFM. Use them only if you’re brave and don’t have much to lose. And if you do, check on them every few days and make sure your stuff is moving along to close on time.