Angel Oak Home Loans

Accepted an offer for my house and this company pre-​approved the buyer. On the last day, at the last moment they declined to underwrite the loan.
Angel Oak had the audacity to pre-​approve (and document) a buyer with a sub 680 FICO score along with judgements and delinquencies on their credit report. How is that considered due diligence to pre-​approve a buyer for a mortgage?
Do not use this company or accept a financing offer from a buyer who is being backed by Angel Oak.

Buying a house can be a daunting undertaking for anyone, but as a recent college graduate who refused to hemorrhage any more money on paying rent in Atlanta instead of paying down a mortgage, I knew it was the right choice for me. Angel Oak made this possible.
I was a first-​time homebuyer, and immediately after finding the perfect starter home, I spoke with multiple loan officers and shopped rates. They all sounded the same — they all wanted to get the process moving quickly without really talking to me and understanding the type of investment I was making. That is, until I spoke with Chris Philmon at Angel Oak Home Loans.
Chris wanted to understand the driving factors leading to my purchase decision. It wasn’t just a loan he and his company were going to sell, but it was ensuring that the loan they sold fit my objectives. As a first-​time homebuyer, I immensely appreciated this dialogue and was keenly aware of this attention to detail prior to even being approved.
After being approved, we hit the ground running — I was on a deadline to be able to meet the seller’s «drop-​dead» date. While the sale had a quick turnaround timeframe, that never swayed Chris and his team at Angel Oak. At every single step of the way, I was extremely impressed with the knowledge of every member of the Angel Oak Home Loan team and their willingness to share that knowledge. There was constant communication throughout the entire process so I never felt left out in the dark. When I had questions, they were immediately answered — in a way that I could understand as a first-​time homebuyer. Understanding the value of my time, the team was flexible and allowed me to call before and after typical office hours.
I am now entering the first spring in my house, and as any first-​time homebuyer who is being honest with him/​herself would tell you, I have learned something new every day since my purchase. When I have questions, Angel Oak Home Loans is one of the first places I start looking for answers. The team continues to support me as I become a more experienced home owner. I am extremely grateful to everyone on the Angel Oak Home Loans team who made this purchase possible for me. I strongly recommend this company to anyone looking to purchase — especially first-​time homebuyers like me!

Angel Oak Funding, now called Angel Oak Home Loans: Wish I could vote for no stars. This has been the worst experience ever for a loan. Now this is an investor loan and I know it would take a bit more, but I’ve done this before. Pearce Spurlin and Robert Mulcahy have been very inconsistent with their stories. I’m still trying to close after starting on May 19, 2014. How could a lender who says they make investor loans not know that if you have more than 4 loans you need to go another route. I did, but he Robert Mulcahy and Pearce Spurlin both said naw don’t worry we can do the loan. Well after what seemed like an endless amount of loan documentation they tell me they need to go through another investor, not telling me the very reason the loan was turned down was because I had more than 4 loans. I had to write the BBB before they would respond to me. I think they may just be this incompetent. Now today, the Mary Ann Amistead, the Sales Associate ask me have I changed the name on the title from my llc name to my name. Well, you never asked me to do so and Pearce Spurlin told me it would be taken care of at closing. So here were are nearly 4 months later and I don’t have a loan. Should I just cut my losses because now it appears they are just dragging me along because they can’t close. GAREIA investors beware.

If I could give them no stars I would. These people we’re completely incompatent and made closing on the house a complete disater. They could not get paper work together, numbers right and lost money for a short period of time. Run fast and far there are much better companies out there to help you with your homes. This is the third home I have bought in my 65 years and the worst.

Angel Oak Funding’s warm initial approach gave me assurance that they could meet my requirements — zero out-​of-​pocket, a simple and uncomplicated process, fold my HELOC into the refi, and competitive fees and interest rates.
I checked their fees, and the title search, and they were higher in some fees than the big banks by about $ 350
They said they would come down, but I never saw it.
They would not come down on their $ 600 appraisal fee.
Their good-​faith estimates made me a little concerned, because the numbers were not the numbers that they had discussed with me, including differences in interest rates and the higher fees they promised to lower.
They assured me that they would adjust these later.
After that, I found it very difficult to get straight answers on my loan numbers.
Shortly after starting my process, interest rates dropped, and I had to tell them, or I may not have heard about it.
At only a day into exchanging signed documents and statements, they told me that I had to complete and return all of the documents within three days of receiving them!
I explained that I was in heavy work travel mode, and needed more time, but I received a great many emails and phone calls, from multiple employees, pressing me to complete and return the documents more quickly.
It became clear that this was not a simple and uncomplicated process.
Their website allows for electronic signatures on some docs, but the site did not work well all the time, and there were still a lot of documents that had to be printed, signed, and returned.
I have no fax machine, and scanning and emailing my documents back to them was not easy.
After sending the scanned documents, they notified me that they could not read the standard jpg format that I had sent.
They had not designated a format, and I asked if they could convert them to pdf format at their end with a simple freeware app, but they said no.
They said that I had to convert all my documents to pdf format, and re-​send them.
Multiple people continued to contact me with multiple emails and/​or calls each day.
A couple days after sending all my docs to them, they called to tell me that they had lost all of my documents, and I had to download a completely new set of documents, sign them, and do the scan-​convert-​email routine all over again — within their three-​day time limit!
After they got that second batch, the main guy who was processing my application, Mr. Khaligh, contacted me, indicating that, after all of the discussion and document exchange, they had overlooked some aspects, and the numbers were going to be different than we had initially discussed.
Mr. Khaligh said they had not considered my HELOC fold in properly, and he laid out a number of options, but none were close to the numbers they discussed in the beginning.
I don’t know if any of these bad things that happened were done deliberately, or if they were just a sign of very bad management, but either way, in my opinion, Angel Oak Funding is not a firm that can be trusted.
At that point, despite already having spent $ 600 on an appraisal, I stopped working with Angel Oak Funding before completing my refi, and went to another firm.
The new lender, Joe Schwartz (Axiom Lending Group), gave me accurate numbers in the first 15 minutes of our initial discussion, and allowed me, without any badgering, more than 3 days to get my paperwork back (Angel Oak told me that three days was a legal requirement for every lender).
I originally planned to send out this review immediately after switching to the new lender, but I thought I would first give Angel Oak a chance to compensate for their shoddy service.
I sent the review above to Mr. Monahan, Mr. Khaligh’s boss.
Mr. Monahan contacted me promptly, apologized for the service issues, and said that he would ask his management for permission to offer reimbursement of my expenditures.
He reported back shortly that no reimbursement was possible.
This indicates to me that the problem is not only with their local teams — their main office does not respond responsibly to issues with their service.
In the interests of full disclosure, I should say that I would have reconsidered posting this had they responded differently.
Their employees were not rude — my issue is with the poorly orchestrated process, inadequate information delivery, and inability to respond effectively to poorly-​treated customers.
A big refi represents thousands of dollars in revenue to lenders, and with interest rates likely to move up soon, it appears that Angel Oak is caught up in a gold rush of refi opportunities, and based on my experience, after the $ 600 appraisal, they don’t really seem to mind rushing people through a rough process, providing inadequate information, and failing to respond adequately to poorly treated customers.