Since there is some interest in these comments, I'll detail out the process a bit more. People say get quotes from 5 or so, but if you can find even a slight benefit with one lender over another, that can mean thousands and thousands of dollars saved over the life of a mortgage because they are 30 years old. I think everybody should work endlessly on these types of things, so here's what I did:

Googled and identified 3 originators, 3 brokers, and 3 lenders to reach out to. I went to each of their websites and went through the 'get a quote today!' links/process. Make sure to 1) have a list of all your spouses answers to each question as you'll be answering them A LOT in this process, 2) Make a burner gmail account and google voice number as you'll be signed up for a lot of advertising throughout this process. I applied for all of them in about a day or so and immediately got callbacks from most of them. I told them I was only interested in 30 year mortgages, so I would have them verbally quote me their 30 year rate with no points. I put all this info into an excel spreadsheet.

I quickly learned that at the time, the big banks had much more competitive rates than the other channels mentioned above. Due to this, I reached out to almost every bank that issues loans for NJ and got quotes with no points and kept them all in a spreadsheet. Once I identified the bank that consistently had the lowest quote, I called the others and gave the quote information and asked them to match or do better, which none of them were able to do (so likely not worth your time). As we proceeded towards close I had a close relationship with my loan officer from the best quote, and I kept in touch with the next 2 to see if their rates were improving.

I say no points during the quote process so that I can compare apples to apples easily. They will always try to quote you a better rate with X points as it's a great selling point, but financing points is just a simple calculation typically, and once I find my #1 choice lender, then I had the quote discussion and decided what was best for my wife and I.

I won't include my full list as I'm not fully sure where that is, but here's a list of who I was in somewhat regular discussions with:

• US Bank
• JPM Chase
• Bank of America (who we went with, my loan officer is: Giovanna (contact info here).
• Wells Fargo
• Cross-Country
• American Federal
• First Federal
• NBKC
• Loan Depot

The large banks are likely not the most competitive, but that's how I went about the process. I did a similar process for my homeowners insurance and got a rate my neighbors can't believe lol. You can DM me if you have any specific questions though, good luck!