Michael Bowen

I can't speak highly enough of Michael and Waterstone Mortgage! They stepped in mid-process and brought us to a smooth closing. Michael and his team answered all of our questions and made us feel extremely well taken care of.

Water stone was great. Superb communication throughout the entire process.

Mike was great! He was able to help us navigate the difficult prospect of buying and selling a home simultaneously. Very personable, honest and knows his field. His Loan Partner, Roseanne was awesome! Such a great team over there!

Michael was personable on the phone and seemed reliable. However, dealing with them during the mortgage process was frustrating and in the end costed me money. During the process, there were 4 different people emailing me asking for information, and none of them seemed to have a sense of accountability. People in the office would lose track of information I had already given them. I had to send 4 emails answering the same question because someone forgot and apparently couldn't be bothered to search their email for an answer. One person who was working on my file went on vacation for a week, and it seemed like no progress was made on my file during that time. In the past, I have worked with lenders who assign one person to interface with each customer who is responsible for the transaction. This is much more clean and much less confusing for the customer. In the end, I was given a closing disclosure several days before closing which showed me losing money that I had expected to get via the seller covering part of the closing costs. I talked to Michael, who assured me that he would arrange the situation with the title company so that I would get back most of that. When it came to closing, the title company would not budge, and I ended up losing money. I chose to lose the several hundred dollars rather than delay closing because I had already given notice to my landlord and had started arrangements to move. The title company was chosen by Michael, so why was he not able to predict how they would act? If First Mortgage had given me a closing disclosure further ahead of time, the contract could be have been renegotiated with the seller without a delay in closing. I chose to use this company because they offered competitive rates and were local, which I assumed meant a premium in customer service. I did not find that to be the case, and next time I will go with an online company with better rates and most likely better service.

Michael was fantastic. He really put us first. He sincerely wants us to get in the house and be happy. He worked with his management to meet some advertised prices and even offered an affordable bridge loan if need be. Working with him is definitely easier than large banks!

Michael was great! As first time home buyers, we had tons of questions and concerns. He is an expert at what he does. He sat us down and gave us a lesson on Mortgage 101. At times, he was out of the office, but his team was always there for us. Thank you Michael & First Mortgage for helping us and making the process so easy and painless.

In the end, we were able to get a loan on a home that we initially was out of our reach. However, some charges/estimates were underestimated and what he thought our home would be appraised for was overestimated. I'm sure these things are hard to predict but we were taken aback by how much these values were off. He was, however, very available in the beginning of the process. I think we may have called him on Easter and he took the call. It was toward the end of the loan process that he seemed more unavailable to us. He made a promise to look into getting our 2nd mortgage's application fees waived but never followed up

The whole team was so efficient and professional! I have already given Michael's contact information to one of my friends. And will keep doing that in future!