AMERICA'S MORTGAGE

We were first time home buyers with some self-employment income and lots of questions about home mortgages. We sought out resources to help answer our questions and happened upon two free classes that Chris Thomas teaches on mortgages at Colorado Free University. We attended the classes and were really impressed with Chris's knowledge and willingness to openly share information. Chris's classes are around three hours each and during them he hands out a lot of original material he has written to help explain the process and make people aware of the potential pitfalls in the process. Those initial interactions with Chris and Debbie Thomas at America's Mortgage made us include them in our list of lenders when shopping around for a home loan. The rates that were offered by America's Mortgage were competitive but not the lowest rates possibly available. Ultimately, we decided to go with America's Mortgage for our home loan because of our confidence in their ability to usher our home loan application through the underwriting process. They perform all of their own underwriting in-house and are very knowledgeable about all of the underwriting rules. From our conversations with several other lenders it appeared that America's Mortgage was able to offer us the highest loan amount and that was possibly attributable to America's Mortgage in-house underwriting and knowledge. America's Mortgage was very responsive to our requests for offer letters. With the housing market being very competitive, they were willing to work with us to highlight having them as our lender, a local lender with in-house underwriting, as something that helped to ensure the loan process would go smoothly and hopefully help set our offer apart from others. When we signed our loan application, Chris Thomas came met with us to explain each document we had to sign. Chris answered all of our questions and then some--educating us about many relevant things. We had many opportunities to ask questions. Chris and Debbie were always responsive, direct, and honest. At our closing, America's Mortgage came in-person and were available for questions. At that point though we really felt like they had prepared us well and there were no surprises. Our one concern had to do with their policies on floating down the rate. We had a long period of time between the acceptance of our offer and our closing. With uncertainty looming in the economy, we locked in our loan early on in that period of time. About a month later loan rates had dropped by 3/8 of a point and some lenders had rates 1/2 a point lower. America's Mortgage doesn't offer a float down option and so our only choice was to stay with them or start over with a new lender if we wanted the lower rate. Our conversations with America's Mortgage on this point were frank and honest and we appreciated that. We have recommended America's Mortgage to our friends and will continue to do so.

Jim was outstanding and I firmly believe I would not have closed on the house had it not been for him going well above and beyond the call of duty. I was an excellent candidate for this mortgage but given all of the new regulations, we ran into a few challenges along the way. Jim was simply amazing. He was honest, professional, and trustworthy. He communicated at every turn and managed many stakeholders all needing information (Buyer, sellers, and each of our realtors). I would definitely use Jim again and highly recommend him.