Working with Doug and the rest of his team at Stratis Financial at the Torrance location was a great experience. He is a nice guy, honest, extremely responsive, and will give you the facts straight. I am an engineer who likes to scrutinize the numbers and found that the way Doug presented them to me was clear and always made sense. I found his good faith estimates to be very accurate and there were no surprises in the end. I definitely did my due diligence and shopped around almost obsessively with several other brokers and lenders, both local banks and online. Depending on the exact loan type, the rates Doug was able to get were always competitive and in the end actually ended up being the lowest I was quoted for my particular loan type. I also experienced that some of the bigger online companies will quote you one thing in the good faith estimate, but then if you say you are thinking about going forward with it, they will change at the last minute. Many of the companies that are not local also lack knowledge of the specifics of the local tax rates, escrow fees, and customary buyer/seller cost splits to give you an accurate big picture estimate of total closing costs. I did not have that experience with Doug and I always felt that I was being given the straight truth. He has great relationships with many of the local realtors and during the process I had several of them tell me that Doug is the best in the area at what he does. By the end of the process, I believed them.
Where Doug really shined, though, was in handling some complications with my particular townhouse I was trying to purchase. As it turned out, due to some minor conflicts between new lender guidelines and the HOA's budget, we had to unexpectedly jump through a bunch of hoops to secure the loan and the escrow period stretched out a lot longer than the original contract. The source of the issue was out of Doug's direct control, but he was able to work every angle possible to keep the deal alive and worked with the HOA board to correct the problem so we could close the deal as soon as possible. He also did everything he could to keep my interest rate locked in as low as he could in the interim and was successful. I seriously doubt many other brokers would have been willing to put in that much effort or would have had the expertise to be as effective. I felt lucky to have Doug on my side during the unusually complicated situation and I highly recommend Stratis Financial. read more