Selecting a Lender

• You should spend as much time selecting a mortgage lender as you would spend planning for vacation. Sit down with everyone involved, and discuss why you're refinancing and what benefit you expect to receive. Write down your goals for the refinance and measure your lenders against their ability to help you reach your goals. Receive multiple quotes from multiple lenders. This helps protect you from predatory lenders who will take advantage of your rush to refinance your home. Remember the interest rate and some of the closing costs are negotiable, and you can save you thousands of dollars just by asking them to be reduced.
  
  

Third-Party Timelines

• Once you've applied for your loan and provided your loan officer of all of the required documentation, you are now at the mercy of other people's schedules. It may take the appraiser up to four days to visit your home and prepare the appraisal report. The title company may take 72 hours to researcher title history and provide the lender with a commitment. If the third-party companies are not busy, this can happen quickly. During a refinance boom, you may not be able to get an appraiser of your home for over a week or two. You also must wait on your current mortgage lender to provide your new mortgage lender with the mortgage payoff. Depending on how busy they are, this can also take some time.
  
  

Underwriting Process

• If the new mortgage company is well-staffed, your loan should be initially reviewed within two to four days after submission. Often loans are submitted to underwriting without all of the required documentation. This is common but also slows down the process. If the loan officer or processor submits the file to the underwriter with all of the required documentation, including the appraisal and the title report, you have a chance to receive a final approval from the initial underwrite. If even one required item is missing, this will cause delays.
  
  

Closing the Loan

• If everything goes smoothly, it is possible to close a mortgage in a week. If the loan is a refinance of an owner-occupied home, there is a federally mandated three-day right of rescission, which cannot be waived. The three days must be three full business days. For example, if you sign your loan documents on Monday, then Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday are your rescission days and the loan would then fund on Friday. If you close on a Thursday, then your rescission days would be Friday, Saturday and Monday. Sunday does not count as a rescission day, nor do federal holidays.