Get Your HELOCs Here

How do you rate HELOC lenders? JD Powers put out a report rating some of the HELOC lenders. A summary of the report is at US News and World Reports in an article titled Best Home Equity Lenders. It is short but here is a part of it:

Here are the results (on a 1,000-point scale) from Realtor magazine:

• Bank of America: 811
• SunTrust: 809
• Wachovia: 807
• Chase: 791
• Industry Average: 780
• WaMu/Washington Mutual: 773
• CitiMortgage/Citibank: 762
• National City Bank: 756
• Wells Fargo: 755
• Countrywide Home Loans: 728

No mention of how the ratings were done. You can find the JD Power report here and slightly longer PDF version here. But going directly to the JD Powers report we can see the methodology.

Four factors are examined to determine overall satisfaction. They are, in order of importance: application/approval process (36%); closing (35%); loan officer/representative or banker (26%); and problem resolution (4%).

What is interesting about the survey that even there is only a 83 point spread out of a 1000 point rating system between the best lender and the worst lender. That is really not that huge. And kicking out Countrywide the spread is only 56 points between the highest and the lowest. The report only lists the 10 data points above so we really do not know where so many of the other lenders are.