Is There a Good Way to Shop for a Mortgage While Fixing FICO?

[MsMoneypeso]

We want to shop around for a refi mortage, and then jump on it as soon as 1 person's FICO is high enough.

Is there a good way to shop around where they only do soft pulls without giving personal info & having a zillion people pester us for months? 

A few months ago I made the mistake of checking rates on NerdWallet. I guess I made a mistake, I only wanted to check rates but they must have sent my info to various lenders. One of the lenders must not have been vetted or must have had a breach. The very same day some scammers applied to open up an SBA loan in my name. 

And of course all of the lenders pestered me for a long time.

[MsMoneypeso]

OK, on further reflection, we'll start with NFCU and then follow up with PenFed just to say we shopped around. 

The local NFCU branch manager is a next door neighbor, so who better to understand the value of the house? And I'm sure we can call the mortgage department and ask a zillion questions before we have them pull the trigger.

[Harmony12]

I called and talked to about 15-20 LO before I actually applied with 5 of them. I gave them my mortage FICO scores, credit profile, salary, etc. verbally to see where I would fall on their current daily rate. I also wanted to know who would be the most responsive. Months later I finally decided to apply with 5 of them.

[4sallypat]

---

@Harmony12 wrote:

I called and talked to about 15-20 LO before I actually applied with 5 of them. I gave them my mortage FICO scores, credit profile, salary, etc. verbally to see where I would fall on their current daily rate. I also wanted to know who would be the most responsive. Months later I finally decided to apply with 5 of them.

---

Very good tactic - to see what they offer!

Mortgage brokers are like job candidates - you have ask, question and see how they respond to your situation.

First was Better.com with their SP pre-approval which was enticing along with lowest rates but turned out to be a weenie dealing with a rookie in NYC.

Then came my local union bank which was an out of state (AZ) loser (qualified us for $400K house) for someone who lives in expensive CA.

Finally, we found 2 brokers who were very good, one was super aggressive and wanted to waive everything. The other was more conservative and pre-approved us before we put in offers.

We went with the conservative broker who got us to close escrow 4 days earlier than promised.

An example of "under promise, over deliver".

We are elated - keys in hand and moving in during Christmas - what a fine gift!