First Again: A new day in lending

Today I did business with a company that really made my day....

I was never so happy to incur debt....

This is coming from someone who prides herself in having little to no credit card debt and living debt free. My desire is that we will even have a debt-free real estate investing business within the next 5 years and be a lender for others instead of the borrower. BUT....in the meantime I wanted to finance our rehab costs for our properties with an unsecured loan instead of using our own cash. And boy oh boy did I find the right company thanks to Brian in the Flipping Homes community.

One of my biggest pet peeves is unnecessary paperwork and ineffective processes that don't take advantage of good ol' technology. I absolutely despise the mortgage lending process and the piles of paperwork involved. I've closed on 3 personal residences in the past 9 years and every time I complain endlessly to the people at the mortgage companies regarding their ineffectiveness. I know its not that employee's fault but SHEESH! Can somebody pay attention here and pull us into the 21st century?

The answer is YES... here comes First Again. Their slogan is "A new day in lending"... and it most certainly is. They are backed by Merrill Lynch too....If (and only if) you have excellent and substantial (e.g. 5+ years) credit history, First Again has the single most effective and painless process for obtaining an unsecured loan up to $100K at a competitive rate. It is exactly what I've been asking for the past 10 years.

So here was my experience....

I filled out a very simple online form that asked for the basic info including assets and liabilities, income, etc.

Then within 3 hours of submission (and I think it would've been more like 10 minutes if they were on the East coast time zone), I get a phone call from a rep who wants to grill me a little bit about the purpose of the loan...she was super friendly but asked very specific probing questions.

After the call with the friendly probing woman, I receive an email asking for a few pieces of documentation to support my application ... and get this... they allow you to UPLOAD it through their system. The next morning I simply created a nice PDF document and sent it right over through the site.

After sending the documents, I get another email within a few hours basically saying we can't give you the exact dollar amount and length of loan you want BUT click on this link and we'll show you the terms we can provide. I click on the link and it breaks down the difference between my request and what they'll provide.

Then they tell you that you have a few weeks to accept the loan if you want it. Heck yeah I wanted it...the terms were awesome! So do you think they make you sign and fax a doc back to them? No way...they let you use your mouse and attempt to sign it or you can click a link that will create your name in cursive automatically using a script font...then you check off a couple disclosures after reviewing a very clear loan doc (no small print - no prepayment penalties, etc).

After that you tell them when you want the money...they can do it the same day (depending on the time) or the next business day. Then money is wired to your account.

48 hours from start to finish. That's it.

I cannot wait until the mortgage companies catch up to this too.....oh if the healthcare industry can get it together that would be a bonus (do we have to fill out the same daggone forms a million times at the same office?)

Ok, that's all for today. It's rare to have such a satisfying customer experience so I wanted to publicly applaud First Again for getting this oh so right. Thanks First Again!