Author's note: I believe that since I wrote this, the service has been outsourced to one or more mortgage brokers who I have been told are not providing the service that once was. Thus, you should take this review for what it is: data that is several years old.

When mortgage rates bottomed out in September, I decided to check out Priceline.com mortgage (or pricelinemortgage.com) to refinance my house.

The web site was clear and easy to use, but let me tell you - it isn't as easy as charging an airline ticket to your credit card.

The Web Site
While the site shows some rates on the front page (and this is a recent improvement), in order to find out the rates choices offered (see below), you have to put in a bunch of details about you and your house. This is much different than most lenders/brokers, who tell you their rates up front. I suppose the reason Priceline does it this way is that the mortgage rates you pick are the ones they must sell you. It is similar to a "lock", and most lenders want a little more info before they lock.

The Rates and Costs
The interest rates at the time I applied were a full half a percent below any other rate I saw. These were great. Since then, rates remain very competitive, but not as low as they were. The way the "choose your rate" works (and to make it reverse auction like) is that you can select from a series of point (origination fee) levels and rates. In truth, this is no different than any other lender - they just make the tradeoffs clear. Of course, you can pick your own rates and points, and I don't know whether that will work or not.

Once you enroll, you are charged $250, whether or not you go forward with Priceline - so you should be pretty sure when you sign up.

The closing costs are capped at a reasonable amount (a bit over $2000, which includes title insurance), and that is good, so you know what to expect.

Service
Note that "Priceline.com" doesn't really run the brokerage services like eloan.com does (see my other review about eloan). What this means is that you might end up with different brokers in different states. Of the three people who applied in my office, we all had very different results.

Once you have applied, your broker should send you a loan packet. You must get your packet back within 10 days to keep your rate!! This is huge. One person in my office applied, and lost his rate because he was just told to respond in "a reasonable time". He took a month, but that's another story.

Depending on the broker, communication with you may differ. For example, another person in my office applied, and he heard not a word after he sent his initial papers back. It turns out that his home in San Francisco only needed a drive-by appraisal, and so he didn't hear a word for almost two or three months, until they called him to close (he did call in a couple times to make sure it was still a live application).

On the other hand, I had an appraisal within a couple weeks, and I had regular email contact with my broker (though he always called my home number during the day in response to an email I sent from work - I hate that).

In other words, if you're in a hurry, this is not the way to go. This is a slow moving and frustrating way to go, but can be cheaper - make sure you check rates at www.interest.com before committing to the money at pricelinemortgage.com.

In the end, my home failed to appraise at a value that allowed for the refinance I wanted. I wound up doing some improvements, and am working on a new refinance at an even lower rate now, but you'll just have to wait for my next review.

Recommended: Yes