AVOID LIKE THE PLAGUE. This was by far the sloppiest and most frustrating transaction I've ever been involved with, full of incompetence and no accountability held. If you are thinking of working with Manny Gomes and his team including Carlos Lara and John Testa I STRONGLY encourage you to run fast. At first they seemed like they were on top of things, responded quickly and promised a smooth transaction, but it was anything but. We were supposed to close the morning of 6/28, as we got closer to the date guaranteed rate had not got the clear to close done yet, I kept being assured by Carlos that it would get done no problem and not to worry (we were beginning to get frustrated because our attorney was not able to schedule the closing until they received this). Finally 2 days before the planned close John finally provided the clear to close. At this point my attorney and I are waiting for the final closing disclosure with the finalized numbers, we were then told that John would not provide the final CD until the morning of 6/28 (the day we were supposed to close) and said that we would have to move the closing from the morning to the afternoon because of this. I reached out to Carlos about my concern with this since my attorney and I still need to review the final CD and also get to the bank to get a check, which I was not able to do until the CD came in with the final numbers, and Carlos again promised that everything was on schedule (which it wasn't since we were already forced to move the closing time) and not to worry, my attorney will receive the final CD by 11am on 6/28. Fast forward to 10:30am on 6/28 and still had not heard from John, and again Carlos promised that everything was ok and that we would be closing that afternoon. The next call I got was from Manny and I was told that they would have to reschedule the closing because the person on their team never pushed the submit button to send the files to the closing department on 6/26 when they gave the clear to close and this was not discovered until 6/28 when we were waiting to close. They then tried to play the pity card for the woman who failed to do her job by saying "she was crying and was worried she was going to be fired for messing this up" which my response was that she should be as this was a HUGE mistake which ended up costing me money, time and a lot of frustration and anger. This was my worry in the first place, as I saw a pattern of just being told "don't worry, it'll get done" over and over, while things weren't being done and I was rarely provided with dates or times for anything when I asked specifically. So we had to push the closing to 7/1, which now instead of closing at the end of the month we were forced to close at the beginning of the month. This wasn't the end. We were STILL waiting for John to send the final CD which we were told would be sent first thing in the morning on 7/1. Again, nothing from John so I followed up with Carlos and Manny and they said it would be sent in the next 15 minutes, this was at 9:30am. Fast forward to 1:30pm and we STILL have not received the final CD from John and I had to contact Carlos and Manny again. They finally sent over the CD around 2pm and to no ones surprise, IT HAD ERRORS IN IT and had to be sent back to be corrected. We were now risking not being able to close for the second time due to the extreme incompetence by the whole guaranteed rate team. We finally were able to close. During all of this process my insurance agent reached out to Carlos about how the insurance would be paid in which Carlos responded that everything would be included at closing. Fast forward 2 months after closing, I get a call from my agent saying that the homeowners insurance had not been paid. Yet another lack of communication on guaranteed rates side in which Carlos never informed us that he changed things from what he told my agent and I and didn't include the insurance in the closing. The only guarantee these people provide are a guarantee of frustration, anger incompetence and waste of funds. read more