Locking with NVR

If you've read my first NVR post Adventures with NVR, you'll know that we struggled with the decision to use NVR vs NFCU (Navy Federal Credit Union) for our mortgage. To quickly recap, our main reasoning was that NVR will sell us off whereas NFCU will keep us for the duration of the loan, and the interest rate with NFCU is consistently lower. NVR however was offering $5000 toward closing were NFCU was offering $1500. While the $3500 difference in closing cost, it's peanuts over the life of the loan if we ended up with a higher interest rate. So the plan as we left it with NVR was that about 72 hours out of locking we would get a GFE from NFCU and NVR would match the interest rate.

When we received our closing date of 28 July we spoke with our LO from NVR and she told us it was a good time to obtain the GFE from NFCU so that she could take it to her superiors and get approval to match the interest rate.  So that's exactly what we did and received a quote of a 3.625% interest rate which is pretty much exactly what's it's been since we started this process. NVR was quoting us at 3.875, so enough of a difference that we were willing to switch to NFCU if we couldn't get the rate match, and our LO was aware of this.

Our LO came back with an offer for us, they were willing to give us the 3.625% rate with a fee of 0.75% of the loan. This means we would have to come to closing with $3000 out of pocket, basically they were eating up some of our $5000 closing cost incentive. After running the numbers we saw that NVR would beat out NFCU by a few hundred dollars in this case but, to be honest, that wasn't enough to make us stick with NVR. A few hundred dollars over the life of the loan really is nothing and we had originally agreed to use NVR if the matched NFCU. Well charging a .75% fee wasn't matching NFCU in our opinions since their rate was the 0/0 rate.

We decided to play a little bit of hardball and told our LO that we would only stick with NVR if they matched NFCU's rate without charging a fee. She said she understood and took the info back to her superiors. When we didn't hear from her for 2 days we figured she couldn't get it approved, and were prepared to move forward with NFCU. After contacting her to see what the story was she told us that rates had actually increased a bit and she was waiting to see what they did that day so she cold continue the discussion with her superiors. When we heard that their rates went up we really figured it was the end of the line. We contacted NFCU to see what we had to do to start the process with them.

Surprise! The next day we got a call from our LO saying that NVR approved the rate without any fee!! So we would get our full $5000 incentive for closing as well as the matched rate to NFCU. We were pretty surprised and very excited. We locked right away and are now just awaiting our settlement day! Don't be afraid to negotiate a little, they really want your business and if what you are asking for is reasonable you may just come out on top.