In my real mortgage rates podcast, I give you the 30 year mortgage rate every day. But how do you know that my 30 year mortgage rate is the par rate since we always say you cannot trust rate quotes?

Locating the yield spread premium rip-off is virtually impossible except at closing on the settlement statement known as the HUD1 Settlement Statement. Of course, by then it’s too late!

Other non settlement statement mortgage disclosures specifically the Good Faith Estimate (the mortgage application disclosure) are useless for discovering yield spread premium overcharging since most brokers either never disclose or obfuscate the disclosure as you’ll see below.

A Good Faith Estimate is a legally required mortgage document showing costs, rate, and payment. Believing the Good Faith Estimate reflects truthful, accurate, and guaranteed figures is folly.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The Good Faith Estimate is manipulated by the loan officer low balling the costs and rate morphing it from a mortgage disclosure into a selling tool. It does not reflect real mortgage rates or actual closing costs.

The best mortgage is never found by collecting a handful of Good Faith Estimates or by calling around getting mortgage rate quotes. Yet this is THE shopping method for most.

If you define the best mortgage as the loan having the best mortgage rate, the lowest costs, and the one that fits your financial circumstances in both the short and long term…then standard comparison shopping methods will not work.