Quicken Loans--Not so great

[samclem]

We recently started the process of refinancing our house so I did some comparison shopping of lenders. I called Quicken because I thought their business model was to be a low-overhead, no brick-and-mortar, do-it-all-on-line source of competitive mortgages. I didn't find that to be the case.

Their phone representative definitely wanted to move quickly past my request for rates and costs. Their approach was like the worst part of buying a car. "I'll run this past my supervisor and we'll see how low we can get this rate for you. Will you be ready to commit to a loan today if you like what you see?" C'mon. At the end of the process (apples to apples) their total closing costs were four times larger than the loan from a nearby bank, and their interest rates on a 30 year fixed mortgage were 0.75% higher. That's a lot of dough. I couldn't hang up fast enough--I may have been abrupt.


Anyway, maybe my experience was unusual. I'm just throwing this out there in case others had the same (apparent) misperception that I had about where Quicken Loans fits into the universe of mortgage providers.

 

[pb4uski]

I'm not a fan of Quicken Loans either.... had a bad experience with them many years ago... didn't end up costing me anything but I won't go near them.

 

[Ducati52]

Now the second shoe will drop -- depending what personal information of yours they obtained, you will get a barrage of phone calls, e-mails, and mailings from Quicken and every other company they can sell your contact information to.

They truly suck.

 

[pjm-7]

I also had a bad experience with them about eighteen years ago. They waived a few fees but the whole process with them was a pain. I never used them again.

 

[ziggy29]

If they were that good, IMO, they wouldn't need a massive marketing budget. People would find them. And all those ads aren't free.

 

[samclem]

If they were that good, IMO, they wouldn't need a massive marketing budget. People would find them. And all those ads aren't free.

Yes, that's normally my starting point. But I figured there might be an inefficient marketplace due to the incentives offered to real estate agents, etc to push customers to various lenders, and the other lenders do advertise a LOT in my local newspaper, sometimes on local radio.

Now, I still believe the market may be inefficient, but Quicken takes advantage of that by "encouraging" folks who have done little comparison shopping into nailing down an application quickly. When I told the Quicken rep about the much better rate I had through the local bank, he said "well, you didn't say that you wanted to be aggressive on the interest rate" (i.e. he was next going to offer me something with a lot of up-front points--when he was already 400% higher on closing costs than my local bank's zero-point closing costs). No, thank you. When I told him that he was already non-competitve on the front end costs, he said "Well, I find it hard to believe that your bank is much cheaper. This is a highly regulated business and . . ." I think he had more to say, but I didn't hear it. It felt like a boiler-room operation with a script.

Mortgages can be tricky to compare, especially since a lot of folks hate numbers and they may only shop for them every decade or so.

 

[jazz4cash]

I had a great experience with them in 2012. The loan servicing has been great throughout but now they are pushing to get a refi and becoming a nuisance. A lot less chance we’d use them again. Too pushy.

 

[Another Reader]

Quicken has never been a high quality, low cost provider. Haven't shopped mortgages recently, but if you are in an area served by AIM Loans, it's worth trying them. Then shop a couple of local brokers and let them shop the loans to their wholesale channels. A good broker should give you good quality personal service and excellent rates and terms, comparable to AIM Loans.

 

[braumeister]

No experience with Quicken, but I'll just point out that four years ago when we bought our current place I used a mortgage from PenFed.

The rate was good but it was absolutely the worst overall experience I've ever had with a financial institution. I've been a good customer of PenFed for 30 years and always had good experiences. But their mortgage division was so horrible it put a bad taste in my mouth that is still there.

 

[dtbach]

I've always found the best loan rates from my local credit union.

 

[samclem]

I've always found the best loan rates from my local credit union.

I thought that would be the case for us. I'm a member of a credit union, but their rate was .25% higher than the bank, and closing costs at the bank are $1000 less on this loan.

I don't understand how the competition works in this biz. The bank we are going with took out a 1/2 page ad in our local paper, so I followed up on it and it turned out to be a good rate. And, they'll keep our loan in house (something USAA FSB didn't do when we financed through them).

 

[OldShooter]

Intuit has always been a slimy company. When they spun out Quicken, the same managers went with it. The guys who have now instituted the subscription model. Quicken Loans is AFIK a separate company but obviously birds of a feather.


I would do my taxes by hand before I'd let TurboTax get a look at my financials. I continue to expect some kind of data privacy scandal at Intuit.

 

[Andre1969]

My mortgage, which I took out just last September, got sold to Quicken Loans (or rather, Rocket Mortgage, but in my mind they're the same thing) so fast that I made my first payment to them.


I haven't had any problems with them. I just refinanced though, and right now I'm sort of in that limbo period where the first mortgage was paid off, but I haven't gotten the payment info for the new mortgage yet. The original mortgage does show as paid off. About the only snag I can see is some kind of goof-up with my escrow, but we'll see.


I'm trying to stay optimistic.