Sebonic Financial

Low rate, closed quickly, great experience

I bought my first home, a townhouse, last year 2019. Being in an apartment with my wife, me, and 3 kids was getting to be too cramped. For everyone's sanity, we looked at a townhouse last year (2019), and used Sebonic. My buyer's agent was upset when we told her that we were going to not use her affiliated mortgage company, but Sebonic's rate was almost 1% lower, which is a lot of money. We had only 3 weeks to close (which is extremely fast), but Sebonic's online application system allowed us to upload all the documents quickly. We put 5% down, and paid about another 2.5% in various costs (law office, title search, etc). We would login to Sebonic everyday in the morning, and each night, and if there was any form needed, we'd get it completed the same day and sent back to Sebonic. The seller's agent dropped the ball on a bunch of things, but the seller was just barely able to get all their paper work done the night before closing, in spite of their agent, so it all worked out. This was before COVID-19, or else the closing would have been delayed. With COVID-19 my guess is the process may take longer. My wife and I have a credit score of 825 , we weren't getting a jumbo loan (another bank said we could have got a jumbo loan for twice the amount of the loan we got, but we wouldn't have been able to pay a huge jumbo loan monthly payment, unless we rented out rooms or something), we had no other loans beside credit cards that we pay off each month, I have a good paying job with over a decade of stable work history, so getting approval was no issue.

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Best loan officer!!

I worked with Tamara Eastridge on refinancing my home mortgage, and she is the best person to work with. She is always easy to reach via email and she is prompt on her responses. She had a huge part in making my experience with Sebonic Financial great and smooth. Thank you again!!

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Just closed, horrible experience

I closed on my loan with them last week and it too 60 days from the day I said "okay, lets do this"
I've gone through 15 mortgages in my life and this was by far the worst experience of them all.
Their underwriting department is an absolute nightmare. Let me start off by saying EVERY single document they requested from me was sent to them within a few hours to 24 hours maximum. I always make sure the lender can't use me as an excuse as to why things took so long.
With my 847 FICO score, and plenty of reserves, no matter what I provided, they always needed something else, but each and every time, days and days (often a week plus would go by) of nothing, then all of a sudden: "now they want this"
Because they ended up taking over 2 months, they ended up having 4 months of bank statements, made me rewrite all my insurance policies because they know better than the insurance company, had to prove my employment an average of every 2 weeks (even though I was an essential employee and they were told that by my employer)
I even had to provide documents the day before and the day OF closing.
RIDICULOUS! I have a folder of over 3 dozen files I had to scan and send over and over and over. With each one be out of day after about 2 weeks.
It was insanely stressful to keep thinking "okay, they have EVERYTHING they could possibly need, and a lot of stuff they really shouldn't need, so they should be contacting me for a closing date any day now" and to keep thinking that for over a month past the first month only to keep having to resend new items while they continue to extend my rate lock a week at a time.
There are SOOO MANY better companies out there, do yourself a favor and go with someone else.

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Good Luck!

Don't even waste your time - they can't close. All they will do is keep asking you for more information and once they run out, they will ask for more detail about the information that you already sent. I tried to refi with them (great score 800s, low loan:value, low debt:income) but they just kept asking for more info. They gave me "this is the last thing" three or four times. They would take over a week to review something that should take less than 15 minutes to look over.
Great rates but they can't fund...

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Low Rates but Poor services

While this company (also known as Cardinal Financial) has low rates, they have rude, pushy sales people. Beware, they will not send you a performa on their fees until they run your credit. If you decline, be prepared to be harassed and insulted
This company does not care about you. You are just a number to them.

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Fantastic Experience!

Second refinance this team. Both have been the lowest rates in the market, the most competitive closing costs, digital online process, and great service from the entire team involved. I don't know why I would look anywhere else on any future new mortgage, loan, or refinance. Michael was on top of everything, and made the whole process quick and easy. Highly recommend!

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A horrible experience

Beware of a low rate. A low rate is only good if they can close your loan. I honestly never leave bad reviews, but Cardinal Financial and its affiliate Sebonic Financial are absolutely the worst in every way possible. I only wish I would have researched this company more vigorously before being enticed by a low rate on a 15-year mortgage cash-out refinance. Every negative review I have read online about this company is true to my experience with them. In my opinion, they are as close as you can get to completely incompetent.
I started my refinance with them back on February 10, 2020 after finding them on Ban*****.com* I supplied all the requested documentation roughly with-in 48 hours. I paid $450 for an appraisal and waited. They jammed my file up in underwriting for over a month. It was a constant chasing them down with calls and texts just trying to get them to respond. And when I finally got in touch with them…they asked for more documentation. I would provide… then silence…I would call…more documentation requested…repeat. Sometimes they even asked for the same thing again after I had provided it to them already. My original closing date passed without contact from Cardinal and as of 4/14/2020 they still would not provide me a clear to close. That’s when I finally told them to go kick rocks and had to pivot to a more reputable lender.
What makes it worse, the money from my refinance was going to be used to offset the expenses my wife and I are incurring in our adoption of our son in May 1, 2020. I was clear about the timeline and was assured there would be no problems. Well, that turned out to be a lie. Two months should have been plenty of time to get a refinance complete, even in these challenging times, especially knowing the time crunch I was facing. The communication on this transaction was the worst I have ever experienced… and real estate is my profession. I put a lot of faith in this company and they let me down.
If you are self-employed and have more than one source of income, I encourage you to go elsewhere. They have no idea what they are doing when it comes to borrowers like me. It will only leave you frustrated. I spent a lot of time over two months answering questions from an underwriter who had no understanding of LLC's, partnerships, or real estate. The loan originator, John Ruskin (Sebonic) was unable to help and Steve James with Cardinal was just about as lost as everybody else I spoke to. If you are thinking about using these folk…DON’T DO IT!
Gary
Loan No. 1400****17

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