Questions, including the awkward ones

You get told before it happens, with dates, and files are timed around it. A sole practice has one genuine weakness and pretending otherwise would be silly: if the broker is unavailable, nobody else is holding your file. What you get in exchange is that nobody else is holding your file.

Not inherently. A broker is compensated either by the lender or by you, disclosed either way, and the choice is made before an application goes anywhere. A bank has one product shelf. A broker has several. Whether that is worth anything depends entirely on whether your file is ordinary.

Intake, structure, lender selection, the submission and every conversation: yes. Processing on a busy month is contracted to a licensed processor, and you would be told their name. Underwriting and closing belong to the lender, as they do everywhere.

Between 3% and 25% depending on the program, whether you will live in the property, and how many units it has. The more useful question is what your total cash-to-close looks like, which includes closing costs, prepaid taxes and insurance, and any reserves the program wants held afterwards.

Nobody can answer that from a website, and any site that appears to is showing you a number that assumes things about you. A rate depends on credit, loan size, property type, occupancy, term, points and the day. The calculators on this site let you enter a rate and see the consequences; they do not quote one.

A mortgage credit pull is a hard inquiry, typically worth a handful of points. Multiple mortgage inquiries inside a short shopping window are generally treated as one event by the scoring models, which is what makes shopping possible at all.

On a straightforward purchase, most files run somewhere between thirty and forty-five days from accepted offer to closing. Two-to-four units, self-employed income and non-warrantable condos each add time. The schedule on the how-it-goes page is the honest version, including the parts that are out of anybody’s hands.

That is the best time. Almost every problem that shows up in week four is visible in week zero, and the ones that need a plan — a self-employed year, a credit item, a gift that has not landed yet — need it early.

A conversation. Documents come after, and the list depends on the kind of file. Each service page carries the list for its own situation so you can gather them before we speak if you would rather.

No. Botelho Mortgage is a design demonstration. Nadia Botelho does not exist, the portrait is a licensed stock photograph of a model rather than of anyone who works here, the phone number is in a range reserved for fiction, and no licence identifier is published because an invented one could collide with a real licensee. The licensing page says all of this plainly.

No. Every calculation happens in your browser. Nothing is stored on a server, no results are transmitted, and the email button on a result builds a link your own mail program opens. The forms show a thank-you state and go nowhere.