re: Recommended lenders for mortgage refinance

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Use a big bank. If you use a mortgage company they will likely sell your mortgage to a bank, if your lucky.

If your not lucky they will keep it and screw you if anything happens. My parents are with a mortgage company and they had a house fire. Their insurance, allstate, paid out within just a couple of days. But they write the check to the lender and my parents. Their lender is holding the check and won't endorse it until after all the work is done. They have excellent credit and have never missed a payment. They also have about 100k in equity. It's bullshite and my parents are having to pay everything out of pocket to get it fixed before they can get the money that the insurance already wrote them a check for 3 months ago. We're talking $40,000 worth of damage here. They are immediately changing their mortgage to a big name bank after everything is done because of the headache

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This is not being handled right by either party involved. My house caught fire and had about $20k worth of damage and I didn't have to pay a cent (except deductible).

The insurance is going to make a check out to a ton of people. It can be endorsed and placed in an escrow account by your mortgage company and paid out to the contractor in installments (like building a house), or they can release the funds after verification of completion (no escrow necessary). It's not unusual for the lender to hold the check until completion.

It's a pain to mail a $40k check back and forth for signatures and verification, but should not result in any out of pocket expenses.