What Are Sub Prime Mortgage Lenders?

Summary

There are many different types of mortgage lenders. A sub-prime mortgage lender focuses on borrowers with bad or challenging credit situations. They may be able to offer mortgages that other lenders will not offer you.

Mortgage Lenders

Lenders come in many different forms. Your neighborhood bank where you have a checking account likely will also offer mortgage loans. You can also get mortgages from credit unions, special mortgage lenders, or through a mortgage broker.

Different Lenders

Lenders can be very different in how the treat borrowers.

Some mortgage lenders generally focus on borrowers with good to great credit.

Other mortgage lenders try to work with many different credit types. Although they may try to work with borrowers who have bad credit, sometimes their lending rules are not flexible to approve the loan.

Sub-Prime Lenders

Sub-prime lenders focus on people with difficult credit.

They have loan programs and guidelines that can handle these types of situations. Unlike some lenders where your loan will be rejected outright, they will try to make your loan happen if they can.

You can work with a sub-prime lender over the phone, on the internet, or in person.

There are many competing sub-prime lenders out there. Some even specialize in people with very low credit, such as those 500 FICO scores or less.

A sub-prime lender usually charges higher interest rates than other mortgage lenders. This is to compensate the lender for the additional risk of lending to someone with bad credit.

Sub-prime lenders are usually much more flexible about documentation. They may do a phone verification of employment rather than reviewing pay stubs, or using an employment verification form.