Shopping for a mortgage can be difficult, frustrating, and take a lot of time. If you want to refinance your mortgage or get a second mortgage, the Internet can be a great place to do research and look for a loan that fits your needs. At the same time, there is so much information about mortgage refinancing programmes on the Internet that it can be hard to know where to start. For instance, if you type "mortgage refinancing" into Google, it gives you 8,600,000 results. When you type "second mortgage" into Yahoo, 37,500,000 pages come up.
There are two main types of websites among these millions of results:
- Lead sellers or "aggregators"
- Actual mortgage companies
Here are details about both types of results.
Mortgage Company: Just like it sounds, this is a real company that makes first and second mortgages. Most likely, it will be a mortgage broker or a mortgage banker. Most of the time, you can tell which websites belong to mortgage companies by:
- They can post the current interest rates for their mortgage refinancing or second mortgage programmes.
- They might have a "about us" page or a list of staff.
- They will put up a phone number that is easy to see and that you can call.
- The site should have information about their mortgage licences.
- They will write where they live.
Lead Seller: The job of a lead seller is to get your information and sell it to a mortgage company. They are not companies that refinance mortgages or give loans. Most of these sites say something like, "Simplify shopping for a mortgage by filling out one form and letting up to four mortgage companies compete for your business." Even though these sites can definitely do what they say they will, you should also think about the following when you fill out one of their forms:
- Do you know where the information you give goes?
- Do they use a secure connection to get your information and send it to you?
- Be careful if you have to fill out more than one of these forms. If you do more than 1, you are likely to get a lot of phone calls and emails.
- Are you sure that your information will only be sold four times? Like many other fields, this one has its share of dishonest people. The lead sellers get paid every time they sell your name, so some of them don't stop at 4, as they say they will. I know this because I work in the mortgage business and have talked to clients whose names have been sold 15–20 times. The result is that the phone keeps ringing, which is annoying.
When looking for a mortgage refinancing or second mortgage, it is best to talk to more than one company. If you can't find at least two or three mortgage company websites that you like during your search, you might want to fill out a lead aggregators form. Just keep in mind that you don't want to get too much information.
