CAVALIER MORTGAGE GROUP

Refinanced my primary home mortgage through this Virginia Beach-based mortgage broker. This is my first time financing through an independent mortgage broker (as opposed to a realtor-based broker or a bank), and my experience was pleasant and positive. In many ways it was more pleasant than any of my other experiences, although to be fair this was the simplest finacning transaction of the three I've done. I had been watching rates generally for about a year, and Cavalier came up consistently as having pretty good rates and costs (at least for my situation). They have a live-rate lookup feature on their website, which does trigger an email contact to them, but it's nice to see real (or close to real) prices. Alvin was good about keeping in touch with me periodically (usually via email)during this time--not pressuring, but checking in with me and making sure I had what I needed to make a decision. He stuck with me as I waffled a bit on a decision. He called me when he felt (correctly) that I had reached the best deal I was going to get and that rates/costs were going to bounce back up. I credit him for being on the ball enough to act quickly with me and work with my sometimes hard-to-reach schedule. As it turned out, I hit the best pricing point of all the days I was looking, and even for a month or so afterward. He was quick and efficient at locking and getting the paperwork to me, and very good about calling me back or emailing me a response to a question or issue. He worked hard to keep the prices down on the third-party providers (appraisal, title services, etc). and encouraged me to do so. He also sat on the title company when the document preparation time came around and there were the usual minor issues with the HUD-1 statement. Their prices were honest--no funny stuff slipped in at the end. One nice thing was that I knew who the lending institution was from the get-go, and they were the ones with the documents at closing, In the past (going trhough the realtor's broker or the bank's) I had to endure the complicating charade of closing with one entity only to have them turn around and sell it immediately to another (makes tax time a hassle). Cavalier does funding all over Virginia (I myself was in Northern Virginia), but I suspect they specialize in Hampton Roads where they know the local market nuances and can have more control over the third-party vendors and such.