We had been trying for two years to refinance. Our current bank was unable to help us without a huge down-payment. We tried both Discover and Quicken, but to no avail. We have a particular carrier of mortgage insurance that made it impossible for those companies to help us. We were locked into almost 8% interest on a 30-year (10-year interest-only loan), 6 years in, and we were in a kind of no-man's land: making too much to quality for government programs, but not making enough to make a big down-payment. It was extremely frustrating.
But after I called AFN and got the ball rolling, the entire matter was settled in less than two months - including the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. I was blown away every step of the process.
Kim was assigned to our loan, and she was my contact person. I did not have to call with an account number to be put on hold only to deal with different people every time. Kim made herself available to us by office phone, cell phone, e-mail, and text. When we did have to deal with insurance matters, for instance (and a shout-out and huge thank you to Lisa Matherne and Sabrina at Allstate for their wonderful help as well!), Kim handled this for us. When we did need to speak with other people, she was on the phone with us or involved in e-mails. When we called, she either answered the phone right away, or returned our call quickly. How often can we say that about anyone?
The process is subject to a lot of bureaucratic and governmental regulation. But thanks to Kim, we sailed through all of that. AFN makes maximum use of technology, and a lot of the forms were taken care of by e-signatures and by scanning into PDFs and e-mailing. This was an extraordinary experience, especially since Kim lives near Atlanta, we live near New Orleans, and her home office is in California. You would think that this would cause communications breakdowns and a long period of time. But again, thanks to Kim and the way her company does business, it was very easy.
At closing (which took about 15 minutes) a local notary came to us after hours. We ended up with a much lower interest rate, lower monthly payment, and we had two months off from making payments. We did not have to put anything down, and in fact, we will receive a check for the overage as well as a check reimbursing us out of our escrow account in a few weeks.
The final result was even better than Kim's estimate - which suggests that she makes conservative estimates and is not just throwing numbers out there to hook a sale. She even called us afterwards to check up on us and make sure we were happy with the results.
Grace and I are blown away by this company and by Kim. I'm a big believer in free markets, and when someone offers an excellent product and superlative customer service, I want to make sure I do everything in my power to tell others about them.
If you have not refinanced, now is the time! The Fed is starting to make rumblings about tapering. I'm skeptical, but it does stand to reason that at some point, interest rates will rise. They simply can't stay where they are forever. If you want the process to be competitive, easy, and completely transparent, and if you want to work with a real person who knows what she is doing instead of a faceless bureaucracy, call Kim!
Thank you, Kim! You are doing the Lord's work!
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