The SFFCU, in general, makes customer service a pleasure. That's why we were totally surprised when their real-estate department was slow and seemed inexperienced/undertrained. They agreed to a 21-day purchase agreement, but didn't seem to take the timeline seriously, or understand what was necessary to make the process go smoothly.
We sent emails at the beginning of the process asking to be informed the moment they needed any document to help the process move along. We can only assume that they didn't examine the documents until the day everything was due--because that's when they emailed us for more more documentation. Incredibly, our loan officer was unreachable by phone until the day of our first deadline. My mother spent a week playing phone tag with her, and eventually went to her own financial institution to send them some additional documentation.
I began working from home on the days that we had a purchase agreement deadline dependent on the SFFCU, because there was invariably some hiccup that my wife and I would have to address on short notice.
Examples of unnecessary stress from poor execution:
1) Our mortgage rate lock document (due at noon) arrived silently in our inboxes at 11:10am.
2) Our appraisal required a fee to get the process started, but this wasn't mentioned until the day they were supposed to start, when we called to confirm they'd be able to finish the appraisal by the agreed-upon date. We ended up paying a rush fee to be certain it would finish in time, but the original fee could have been authorized when we first talked to Hilda. That she and her team could overlook that obvious and necessary step was worrying in the extreme.
3) Our loan officer neglected to send us our HELOC agreement until late in the process, and we asked why it was missing.
While we ended up getting a relatively good loan rate, the SFFCU's real-estate team did a terrible job of executing the process. If we had not been actively involved and self-educating on the process we feel we would have lost our house. The team was always pleasant to talk to on the phone, but they're either overworked, inexperienced, or undertrained.