OLYMPIC MORTGAGE CONSULTANTS

Despite having an excellent credit score and assets, Olympic was not able to provide refinancing through their banks. The Olympic broker was always extremely optimistic that I would be approved. As a result I restructured my income at his request to generate the income that we thought was needed. After applying at multiple banks, some of them twice, I was told my income was “not of the right structure” and did not meet guidelines. In most cases, I received no written explanation from Olympic or the bank. Specific issues with Olympic Mortgage Consultants include: -poor communications: I needed to follow up many times to get answers; I was never contacted by the mortgage processor and needed to ask on many occasions whether they received my documentation (hundreds of pages). Each application took one to two months to work through the process with very limited communications unless I prodded them. -no constructive input was provided on how to address the issues/obstacles presented by the banks. If I truly had an “income structure” issue, it would have been very helpful for this to be mentioned up front along with viable options. -I paid $534 for a home appraisal ordered by Olympic. The appraisal was inaccurate and I needed to have the appraiser come out a second time, at a cost of $120, to update the appraisal. The bottom line is that if Olympic employees had the skills to provide appropriate information early in the process, I could have avoided this long drawn out process, avoided the appraisal cost, and obtained an attractive refinance through another source.

Great!

We have been through battle after battle with this company......paperwork sat on their desks without any due attention, our loan officer (Tripp Stephenson) was snippy, rude and defensive in all of his responses, he lied to us and tried to blame our bank for the delays, he told us they had a "float" policy and would reduce our rate if it dropped more than .25% from what we were locked in at and didn't do it when rates dropped until I insisted and threatened to switch lenders, we were given excuse after excuse, and then the final good faith estimate came back with $385 charges that we were not made aware of previously. VERY dishonest company and I wish we would have used a different lender. UPDATE 9/10/10 - Bill Haines, the president of Olympic Mortgage, was able to get things resolved for us and was extremely professional, friendly and apologetic. While I cannot remove my complaint about Tripp Stephenson and the overall company with good conscience, everything did work out in the end. I still unfortunately would not refer anyone to Olympic and would not use them again. Because of Bill's professionalism I have changed my grades from D's and F's to B's and C's. I understand that the company would like for me to withdraw my complaint altogether, but again, I cannot do this with a good conscience because we truly did have a bad experience with our refinance and it took a lot longer than it should have. I'm sure the company has improved their service since our experience, as Bill assures me he still uses our case as an example of what not to do.

Overall, it went well. This small office was on the ball, very reachable, and competitive with pricing. Tripp and his office processor, Wendy, are great to work with. The only disappointments were the addition of $167 (a small fractional discount point) included unexpectedly at closing, which we refused to pay. I should note that between the "deal" and closing, interest rates had risen somewhat, and someone was apparently attempting to compensate for that. We had a rate lock and we believe points should not be tucked in like that. Also, my old second mortgage line of credit had to be closed out of course, but Olympic replaced it with their favorite bank, without my knowledge. I wanted to stay with my existing bank, where my checking acct is tied to the LOC. But this was readily rectified by Olympic. This broker overall performed very well and we are very satisfied and would use them again.