First Option Lending

Well, sounds like other people are having, or were HAD, by these incompetents! All seem to have the same thread, i.e. Giving you the all clear to proceed, write up a contract, and smooth sailing from there on in. Then, within a few days short of the drop dead day for meeting the contractual final proof of financing, ONE WEEK prior to closing, suddenly, the so-​called «in house» underwriter, who was actually in Maryland, decides that he needs documentation for this, that, and the other. Copies of 8 year old financial info, that were all ready packed and put in storage. Why storage? well the vacate date of the present house was fast approaching, and since they delayed the closing dates several times already, we had no choice but to start sending things we could get by without for a while to storage rooms, and shipping crates, which are expensive, but at this point, we thought that they would only remain that way for a month, at most!
Every person in real estate finance that we have spoken to since this nightmare began are dumbfounded, and say that the last minute demands they made are unheard of, and totally unreasonable, except for two, that SHOULD have been asked for over 90 days before, back in the beginning! Every few days at the start, we had sent in volumes of paperwork, e-​signed doc, after doc, after doc! Now, mind you, when we first set down with them in DECEMBER, we were honest, and informed our «loan specialist» of all possible skeletons we may have had in the past. We were assured that there was NO PROBLEM with those things, and they would not even come up, since they were such old news! All during the process, our person would tell us one thing, then come back a week later with an opposite story. Now the countdown was on, I had already paid $ 650 bucks for the home inspector, all the objections had been dealt with, the seller had agreed to fix things to suit the underwriters, etc. Then, the night before the deadline, we had to kill the contract, so that we would not lose our earnest money. The loan officer, both realtors, everybody told us not to worry while we waited on the rest of the paperwork they wanted. «Gee, you guys can just re-​write the deal by this weekend. It will all be just fine!»…Except it was not. Within a few short days, the seller was presented another offer, which she accepted. The same price, I have found out since. Can’t blame her, she was already pissed off because she lost out on a house that she had a contingency contract on, due to the constant delays!
We had to get a bunch of storage rooms, pay for emergency labor to move everything, at a very high cost. Gee, our loan guy felt bad about that, but, just go find another house, and write a NEW deal, right? WRONG. Within days of this, the real estate market was blazing hot again, and prices rocketed up literaly over night. All of the houses that we were keeping an eye on were either sold, or pulled off the market, and listed again, 20 to 50 grand more added in. Half of our downpayment had been spent aquiring storage and paying out thru the nose to move, since neither one of us were physically able to do it. No Choices left, no time to wait out another contract, and now, the down payment $$ is draining away, not to mention that the money we were financing would no longer buy anything near the size and quality of this house, thus, we would now need more cash down. We thought that we could just rent an apartment for a short time, to recover cash flushed away, and start over, with a NEW mortgage company.
That was at the end of March. Now it is the second week of May. We are living in an extended stay hotel, one of the few that will accept animals. All of my savings are gone. It is costing a fortune to live here and pay the storage bills. Apts are completely full, & wait listed. Rental scams for homes are plentiful. Hopeful renters like us, are now treated like cattle to shuffle thru potential homes that they are damned lucky to even get a landlord to return a call or email, just for a showing.!! They jack up rents every day. Renters are up-​bidding prices to beat out the competition! Fix and Flippers are getting rich quickly. Everyone says it is because of the ⁴⁄₂₀ effect, record numbers of people moving here in hopes of getting rich with legal pot sales and farms. Just another gold rush boom in Colorado. Some folks coming here so that they can cope with health, illness, and pain management. Good for them, but good luck finding housing. Our hotel is full of them, too.
I am six years away from retirement, savings depleted. My heart is broken. We lost out on our Dream HOME, the one we planned to retire in. A 40 year old house in a somewhat sketchy neighborhood in old Aurora, not a Cherry Creek mansion folks. The ripple effect goes on. Do any of us have a lawsuit here? Class action? Maybe worth checking on, all of us. DO NOT DO BUSINESS WITH FIRST OPTION, EVEN IF THEY ARE YOUR LAST OPTION!!! ZERO STARS!

We recently purchased a home. Rebecca from First Option was our loan officer and she did an excellent job. She was patient and very helpful: she took all the confusing terms and related them to us in easy to understand language. She helped us sort our credit mess out and then got us a great rate on our new home (which we absolutely love!). I have recommended First Option to friends and will continue to do so. It is comforting knowing that anything I need to get done with loans and homes First Option will be there to help. Thanks!

If I could give First Option Lending a negative score I would. Prospective lenders need to use EXTREME CAUTION!!! I contacted First Option Lending after a referral from a friend. I began working with a Mortgage Broker by the name of Tracy Sheldon. At first things were great. I have been recovering from a few financial hiccups and I didn’t know for sure if I could qualify for a mortgage or not. Upon receiving various emails from her, I spent days gathering necessary documentation to proceed with applying for a mortgage. After this, I waited until I had the green light from her to begin house shopping. Me and my fiancé went into her office and I signed a ton of papers. Before we left, she had her front office associate run «findings» on my file. As I do not work in the mortgage industry, I was unaware what findings were. She explained to me that after findings are run, it guarantees that I was approved. She told me I was pre-​qualified for up to a $ 200,000 loan. To make a long story short, we went under contract on a condo and then decided to back out because we decided a town home is a better route to take. However she was terminated in mid deal. I was then contacted by a new broker by the name of Jack Chamaty. Now the story gets hairy. No longer am I pre-​qualified, but apparently Tracy left a s**t storm of collateral damage for their office to clean up by manipulating numbers. I’m extremely disappointed in their business practices. First I am approved for a loan, then I was put into a position of having to beg to get my earnest money back and am in limbo on getting a mortgage to buy a home. The follow up with the new broker was mediocre at best. I did speak with their Branch Manager who did seem to somewhat care. But the bottom line is their mortgage company «guaranteed» me and «Pre-​qualified» me for a loan and they need to back that up. After all of the work I put into this and the sketchy mortgage broker, something needs to be fixed. It is unacceptable business practices. They hired the broker and if she was terminated from being unethical, they need to clean it up as a company. She represented them.

Out loan process took more than 6 months — just to have them say no at the end. In the meantime, interest rates went up and mortgage insurance requirements changed so that when we went to a different mortgage company we ended up paying much more. The reason it took so long is that their communication and organization are horrendous. They would ask for some piece of documentation, which we would almost instantly provide, and then we would hear nothing back for 1 or 2 weeks — usually we would have to call back to check (and leave around 3 messages). Sometimes we would never hear back from our contact, so we would have to call the manager of the office. My advice is steer clear and find someone else — they cost us a bunch of money with their ineptitude.

Here’s my two cents on these guys: definitely NOT even worth two cents. I don’t know if it was just our loan or everyone else’s loans that go through this much scrutiny, but the experience was hell. Our Scenario: amazing credit score, 20% down, savings in the bank, a full-​time job — you’d think we’d be shoo-​ins for a loan for UNDER 100K. WRONG. What they failed to tell us is that a job title as «consultant» technically requires two years employment — my partner had six months under his belt. Thing is, being new at this and not knowing there was a difference, we thought it WAS employment and we thought it DID count. Of course lenders ask for all the documents and we provide them. With all that we gave them, you’d think a red-​flag would have gone up when they discovered this «consultant» vs. «employee» technicality. Right there, First Option should have just said «Look, sorry, but you guys don’t qualify right now — we can’t circumvent this technicality.» If they had said that at the beginning, we would have been bummed but understood. Except they kept making it sound like they could do it for us, they could make the loan happen. In the end, it didn’t happen. And we had to terminate our contract for the home we were buying. (I felt awful for the sellers, because we kept extending the closing date on them). Our loan was passed off by one of the guys there to another guy. I think that first guy — the first person we dealt with whose JOB is to determine if people QUALIFY for loans — didn’t ask the right questions, and that’s how we got into this mess. There is sooo much more to this story. I’m sure there are people out there who received their loans just fine from First Option, but from my experience, these guys are irresponsible, unprofessional, and simply do not know what they are doing.