Countrywide is my favorite conforming mortgage lender; I will share my impressions about a few of the products they offer and maybe you will understand why I rate them tops.

They have the most innovative product mix. Their software is complex, but it was worth me learning because of multitude of choice products whether a mortgage applicant wishes to reveal income or to not disclose income or assets.

They have a program for almost every situation. One example is a borrower with a credit score of 680 or higher. A 680 score qualifies a borrower for what Countrywide calls a “Fast and Easy”. With a “Fast and Easy” loan, the borrower is not required to prove income. (They need a job, but that’s all).

They leave no stone unturned. I recently (March 06) finalized a mortgage for $117,000 for a borrower who had no job, no income, and when I met this borrower in late January he did not even have a credit score. What the borrower did have however was a free and clear property which was worth $240,000. This prospective borrower had very old credit profile and was not scoring withExperian, Equifirst, or Transunion. 

I suggested he go to Home Depot and Sears and open a couple of small accounts. He did just that, and immediately went from “no score” to over 700 score average on all threerepositories.

We qualified for a NINA (No Income No Asset) product with Countrywide, meaning nothing was required to be disclosed on either income or assets. We obtained a fixed30yr product at 6.625 rate and my borrower put almost 113,000 in his account to provide him resources until his social security begins in two years.

Without Countrywide and a product like a NINA, I would not have been able to produce a quality mortgage for my client.

There are many other clients and variations of the situation which I described. The important part is to have a trusted ally and for that ally to provide a product mix which best suits the situation.

Hats off to Countrywide.