The loan officer's skill matters more than the company name, but that officer also has to sit in a channel that can price competitively, and the big retail names often cannot. The labels get mixed together, so a quick sort: a true direct lender (a big depository bank like Chase, or a local credit union) lends its own money. A large national 'mortgage bank' funds loans on a warehouse line of credit and sells them into the secondary market. An independent broker shops your loan across many wholesale investors. On cost, the big national mortgage banks tend to sit at the high end. Heavy management structures and expensive retail overhead get funded through borrower rates and fees, so their rate sheets are often less competitive. They employ plenty of genuinely good loan officers; those officers can only quote what their channel allows. The big depository banks, meanwhile, have largely pulled mortgage lending in-house, and the outside bank loan officers of a decade ago are mostly gone. The combination you want is a skilled loan officer inside a competitive channel. Because pricing varies this much by channel, get more than one quote. We shop nearly 100 investors on your behalf and handle the loan directly, never a referral, so a side-by-side comparison is easy to get and often turns up real savings. Bring us a competitor's Loan Estimate and we will show you exactly where you stand.