I was placed with Richard Smith through the 'Homes for Heros' program.  Buying a short sale property is never an easy process but I truly felt that Richard Smith and his team made the process even more difficult.  Early on Mr. Smith blamed the sellers agent for trying to mess up the process (and maybe she was) but as the process went on it was clear that Mr. Smith didn't know how an FHA 203k (home improvement) loan worked.  He forgot to mention multiple things to us:
    1. That the contractor we chose had to have a certain amount of insurance liability (almost made the loan fall through) 
    2. That Mr. Smith would not be the main one working on our loan (his secretary was the one that did most of the work) and their preferred method of communication was text message--not exactly what I would call professional.
    3. At one point Mr. Smith and his team told us that they had basically given up on the loan because they didn't believe that it would go through.  Our closing had to be pushed back multiple times because Mr. Smith and his team had not done their work.  He eventualy stopped answer/returning our phone calls.
    4. That he did not fill out the paperwork for the 'Homes for Heros' program and therefore I wouldn't be recieving any money off my closing costs, even though I qualified for it.  My agent and the sellers agent ended up giving up parts of their commission to help compensate for Mr. Smith's wrong doings. 
Eventually the AVP of LeaderOne (Mr. Lynn Woodrum) stepped in and figured out our loan in the very nick of time (we needed to close at 5 and we got the call at 4:45 that everything was done and ready to go but don't worry that was only after our closing had been pushed back 4 times already).  I believe that Mr. Woodrum stepped in because I had more than enough information to sue LeaderOne and they wanted to avoid a lawsuit. 
I was hung up on, cursed at, and made to feel like I was not important.
LeaderOne very quickly sold our loan and we are much happier with our new mortgage provider.
Apparently I was so unimportant to Mr. Smith that he called me nearly a year after our awful ordeal because he was just then seeing that I had filled out paperwork for the 'Homes for Heros' and he wanted to make sure that he helped me...again this is over a year after this awful ordeal and he was just then seeing the message..
I would NOT recommend LeaderOne and Mr. Richard Smith to anyone!