Best Mortgage Lender Overall

Methodology:

All reviewed mortgage lenders are evaluated against the criteria below. The lender with the highest raw score is our Best Mortgage Lender Overall:
  • 1. Rate spread/fees.
  • 2. Rate transparency.
  • 3. Variety of loan types.
  • 4. Ease of application.
Tiebreaker:
  • 1. Lender with the lowest origination fee.

How we picked the lenders to evaluate:

NerdWallet reviewed nearly 60 mortgage lenders, including the majority of the largest U.S. mortgage lenders by annual loan volume (lenders had to have at least a 1% market share), lenders with significant online search volume and those that specialize in serving various audiences across the country. We rated them on criteria including rate transparency, loan types offered, ease of application and more.
Some of the providers are NerdWallet partners, but this did not influence our selection of the winner.

How we chose the winner:

We started by pooling all of our reviewed lenders. The winner is the mortgage lender that had the highest raw score when evaluated against NerdWallet's overall mortgage lender star-rating rubric: rate spread/fees (25%), online mortgage rate information (25%), variety of loan types (25%), and ease of application (25%). In the event of a tie, the winner must charge the lowest origination fees.

How we verified our data:

NerdWallet solicits information from reviewed lenders on a recurring basis throughout the year. All information is verified through lender websites and interviews. We also utilize 2020 HMDA data for origination volume, origination fee, rate spread and share-of-product data.

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