Advice from homeowners with a mortgage

Ooooooooo! Interested in the responses to this as well!

Brice McLaughlin / First Liberty / 340-774-1101x24 / bricevi@gmail.com

Have used him twice and have been very satisfied both times.

Good luck!

My advice to anyone contemplating purchasing property is to have an extraordinary amount of patience, and a bit of perseverance.

I've had two notes with Firstbank. First was for land, no problem, about 3mths to close. Second was for a house. After nearly 6 months, two days before closing, an easement issue cropped up that delayed things for another 6 months. Not strictly the banks issue at all. The mortgage processing folks were ok to work with.

Like I said - patience, patience, and more patience.

First Liberty for sure. We got an approval in under two weeks and rates are very competitive. We used Rick O'Bymachow, 340-774-1101. Great guy.

This was for a STT property.

I went thru 1 First Bank and it was very painful and long
Even after we closed and signed everything, 2 months later they would send me revised documents because they had made a error on the originals
Then dealing with PR....If you do not speak Spanish it does not go well
Their customer service is zero.
Last October they sent me a notice that they did not have a copy of my renewed insurance... a copy was sent by the agent to them when I renewed
So I scanned and emailed a copy then asked for a acknowledgement that they had received the copy.....I asked 5 times + called and still no answer.
I would not use 1 First again

Thanks for all the advice. I have talked to Schaeffer and First Liberty so far. Want to talk to a couple others maybe before making a decision.

I have used and recommend:

Michael E. Armendariz
Capital Mortgage Services
NMLS # 396821
340-773-8100 office
877-262-3273 TOLL FREE

I second Michael Armadariz. Our house was incomplete when we bought it and other lenders said no. Capital Mortgage is based out of Lubbock Texas. They were great getting the mortgage and doing a recent refi..

Nathan Steiner at flagstar bank. 313-570-3121. He accommodated our requests, let us select the attorney to represent the bank, and the title company (don't know if there are still several handling stx though), and was flexible on the paperwork requirements, satisfied with whatever the title company would accept. Called several years later and asked us if we wanted to refi when the new programs came out and we could drop our rate, and there was minimal documentation for us to provide at that point. Was an investment property, and they can often be a difficult thing to finance, but not with him.

+1 for Rich O'Bymachow at First Liberty, as stated above great guy and very professional.
-1 for Michael Armadariz - I ordered an appraisal through him for a property we were buying, he turned the appraisal over to the sellers without asking me for permission and BEFORE I had a chance to see it. Unethical!

Stay away from ScotiaBank. They really suck.

Posted by: @Donnasculpts

First Liberty for sure. We got an approval in under two weeks and rates are very competitive. We used Rick O'Bymachow, 340-774-1101. Great guy.

This was for a STT property.

We also used Rick at First Liberty Mortgage for our property purchase in STT.  He was extremely responsive and professional and we were approved within a couple of weeks.  Highly recommended.  

There are some good recommendations in these replies, however it really depends on the particular property and type of mortgage you're interested in, as to which lenders to explore further.  For instance, some will finance certain condo complexes here, while others won't, some are better at a broad array of mortgage products (i.e. conventional vs. FHA, vs. VA, etc.).  Please feel free to private message me (or click on my profile for complete contact info) and I'd ber happy to furnish you a list of local lenders as well as others who do business here in the USVI.  Good luck to you!

@wolverine888:

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