Just wanted to post my experience with Quicken Loans, in case anyone else is considering a re-fi with them. It was a surprisingly easy process! From the date they pulled my credit report until closing, it was almost exactly a month.
My situation was a little unusual for two reasons: (1) my house is currently in my name only (bought it when I was single) and it needed to stay that way, my husband has bad credit from prior to our marriage. So I need to qualify for the refinance on my own to get the best rates. (2) My income has changed since I originally bought the house. My monthly salary has gone down since I bought the house BUT my actual total yearly income has increased by a lot due to bonuses. In other words, when I bought the house my income was around $115k, all paid as salary. Now, my salary is $90k but I receive bonuses yearly of $90 - 100k (I'm in a partnership so we take a lower draw then split what's left of our profits at the end of the year). So my income appears lower if you only look at my monthly draws, but I'm actually making double the money if you count my yearly bonus.
Anyway, I was worried about qualifying without the benefit of my husband's income, given that my monthly draw is 90k, and I didn't know how (or if) my bonus income would be considered.
I was quickly approved on my own for a refinance for $330k (no cash out, home value $425k). They asked me for my last two W-2s, 3 pay stubs (last two stubs plus my "bonus" pay stub), and last two bank statements, and a few other small things, all of which could be scanned and submitted instantly online. Appraisal was done quickly and next thing I knew, they were calling to schedule the closing. The notary came to my house for the closing after work, which was so convenient!
Best of all, I was able to refinance from a 30 year fixed mortgage to a 20 year fixed mortgage (got the loan in 2010, so I had about 26 years left and really didn't want to go back out to 30 years) and my payment still went down by $40!!! Got a fantastic interest rate.
This would not have been possible, by the way, without these forums. I had some baddies on my credit reports that I was able to get removed over the last year by doing my research here and taking action to better my reports, and now my scores are all mid to high 700s. I have almost no credit card debt, only one negative left on my reports (some old student loan lates that are now over 4 years old), and now I've managed to lower my mortgage payment and cut years off my mortgage loan time! Thank you, MyFico Forums!
Hope this helps anyone who is thinking about using Quicken Loans. The process was so much easier than I expected.
