we worked with bill hoogkamp... his patience and knowledge was so appreciated as we were first-time…read morehomebuyers: nothing we said or asked was disregarded and he always kept us informed and involved with every step of the process. of course, we would go back in a heartbeat next time we need financing, but for now we're enjoying the fruits of their help. we can highly recommend maple tree funding, especially bill.

Great to work with. I worked with Ray - always answered all of my questions and helped made the…read moreprocess as easy as it could be. Always set my expectations as well. If I were to purchase another home I'd go through them again.

Jack and the entire staff at Homestead are extremely knowledgeable and help simplify the financial…read moreaspect of the home buying process. They communicated frequently with us to make sure that we were confident with every step of the process. Jack was especially delightful to speak with and was willing and able to break down the complex world of financing a home. Everyone should be commended at Homestead for their excellent and caring service.

The worst business experience of my life, hands down. Tried to get a construction mortgage through…read moreHomestead. They began requesting documents, we would submit them and weeks would go by before we got updates, generally only after we asked for them. It took 7 months from first contact until we could close! At month 6.5 we were told that the longest building period they would give us was 8 months to build an entire custom home with a $5500 a month penalty for going over. They refused to give us a clause saying that time spent waiting for inspections and disbursements on their end wouldn't count towards the 8 months, even though every other thing they did took way longer than it was supposed to. Finally, they pressured us to close with 2 foot of snow on ground in middle of winter, and when I asked to postpone closing to spring they threatened us with "lots of fees". Finally, when we told them we wouldn't continue with them under these terms, they sent us a $105 bill for "adjustments" to costs of things that we already paid months ago. Do yourself a favor and use a real bank for your mortgage. Everything about the experience was head and shoulders better than with Homestead.

Capital New York Home Advantage helped me purchase my first house. I consider myself a…read moreknowledgeable and competent buyer when it comes to most purchases. Even big purchases, like cars, are fairly straight forward to me. But I was a little overwhelmed with the things involved with buying a house. There are short sales, bank foreclosures, Fannie Mae purchases, closing costs, inspections, and on and on... My approach was to do as much research as possible and then shop around for someone to help me with the details of purchasing a home. I started talking to people in the business and in the end found Mike from Capital New York to be an incredible asset during this process. He is thorough and well-versed in all the nuances of financing a new home. He was always available to answer the (many) questions I had and I could tell he was looking out for my interests as he would let me know the risks and rewards of making certain decisions during this process. In the end, I felt like I made the best decisions possible. I would recommend this company to family and friends who are looking to purchase a home. And if you do, I encourage you to ask for Mike who is the owner.

Michael was very helpful and detailed during the whole mortgage process. whether there was good or…read morebad news Michael let me know and we worked through it and closed the mortgage . Michael is very knowledgeable about the whole process. I highly recommend him to anyone for any type of loan.

Excellent service Ray and Brendan have been amazing easy to deal with and we were first time home…read morebuyers and they always responded would recommend to anyone.

Tim and John at Victory Funding made what seemed like an impossible situation simple,…read morestraightforward and fast. I started my mortgage process with a different lender and ended up switching to Victory after months and months of hassle, changing of terms, and declination letters. I went to Victory as a last ditch effort and they were able to get me closed in 30 days, saving me money and peace of mind in the process. Tim and John are super responsive and easy to talk to, and make everything very easy to understand. I'd recommend them to anybody and everybody looking for a loan, and will use them again in the future if the opportunity arises.

I can't be thankful enough for Tim Halladay and his team at Victory Funding. We used them on the…read morefinancing side to get our forever home and we are so extremely glad we reached out to them. They truly care about their clients and went above and beyond to get us to the closing table as fast as they could. It is such a comforting feeling when you know the financing team behind you cares as much about you getting into your dream house as you do. At Victory Funding you are not just a file to them, you are a true customer, there was literally never a time I had to worry about things falling through the cracks or that they didn't have our best interests at heart. Thank you Tim, we'll be back!

They were very helpful with helping me get a mortgage. I have a complicated tax return with income…read morefrom multiple businesses, and unlike other banks I spoke with, Continental was able to put the puzzle together and get a great rate for me.

We went to Joanne for financial advise and for a HELOC. She was so thorough, warm and friendly and…read morehelped us get exactly what we needed!

We worked with Joanne for well over a year only to find out that we would not be unable to get a…read moremortgage for the home we wanted because it was a double wide trailer.... That was a question that was NEVER asked by Joanne, and we had no idea to would be an issue because we have never tried to buy a home before and were relying on her expertise. We lost over $8000 because we paid for all the engineers and estimates that Joanne told us we needed. That's $8000 we can never get back OR use toward another purchase or build...... The real punch in the gut?? When we were treated as if this was something we should have known or disclosed and it was OUR fault. We handed over everything they asked for, filled out all the paper work asked, did EVERYTHING they asked us to, only to have them treat us as if WE did something wrong. The only thing we did wrong was relying on this company. OH! And let's not forget the bill we later received from them....... even though we couldn't obtain a mortgage to buy/renovate our home...... and were already out over 8 grand......real nice..... my recommendation? Go somewhere else. They were very nice at first..... until things went wrong.

After quite a bit of deliberation, we went with Trustco for our mortgage. We felt this was a better…read moreoption for us because Trustco - unusually - allows you to not pay PMI if you can put down 10%. It was really hard to stomach the idea of paying PMI for the life of the loan everywhere else and we just did not have the full 20%. Trustco is antiquated in multiple respects when it comes to transactions. It's kind of frustrating, but do-able. More importantly, there were some inconsistencies between what we were told by our rep (who was the branch's manager) and what was actually true. For example, we were told that we would not actually have to pay for the credit check because Trustco does it "in house" and didn't use a third party, but, lo and behold, we paid for the credit check. There were a couple of other situations like that when all was said and done. Of course, shame on us for not getting that in writing from him and taking his word. We should have been more skeptical. The closing process was a pain and Trustco's rep came across as a bit rude and incompetent. She even made a comment about having (coincidentally) viewed our house when she was house hunting and saying that she didn't feel it was worth the price (before it was dropped to the amount we got it at, which was below market rate). That came across as a very strange, sort of tactless thing to say. The seller's rep and our lawyer told us that Trustco is notoriously frustrating to deal with for mortgages. There were times we had to just sit and wait while Trustco's rep corrected something that Trustco had messed up, which took a while. Even the process of cutting checks at the end was interminable. I've worked for a bank and have cut checks - it's a simple process. Lastly, there is a $300 mortgage application fee. Our realtor said it was sometimes waived, but that was not the case for us. Be careful about your credit score before paying this fee as they have high standards. We made sure to specifically ask before we applied to ensure we were likely to make the cut. We felt that $300 once was better than a monthly PMI payment for 30 years, though. All in all, it was worth going with Trustco to not pay PMI, but not ideal if you have the 20% down payment. PS: We closed on our mortgage in September 2015.

My experience recently with closing on a Home Equity Line of Credit was not good. After our…read moreclosing with David (who seemed very nice, however is clearly not knowledgeable about the business) we went home to wait on our checks. About 3 days after the closing we noticed $15,000 in our checking account. We had no idea why it was deposited there. We hadn't received our checks yet, so we figured we'd wait to contact Trustco until they came. The following week we received the checks and we called Trustco. We were informed by two employees (one being David) that we were supposed to then redeposit that money back into our Equity Line. We were not informed of this at the closing. They told us that we would have to pay the weeks worth of interest on this $15,000 ($8.11) even though we didn't use it at all and had no plans to touch the money for at least a month. After listening to the staff talk in circles I asked to speak with the manager Becky. She also informed me that I'd have to pay the interest and that there was nothing she could do about it. I then told her I'd be looking into changing my mortgage and new equity line over to another bank. She promptly then informed me that she would send a request to have my interest credited. It took a couple days, but that did go through. Another problem was that when we originally signed up for the loan at Trustco in Wynantskill we were informed that the interest would not begin until we wrote our first check. We were encouraged to sign up for the equity line right away so it would be available for when we needed it. When I spoke with the manager Becky she said that this was false information and that the lower interest rate (2.99% for 1 year) began at our day of closing. I feel as if in general the company was not straightforward with any information. Had they told us originally to transfer over the money I would've done that. Had they told me that the lower interest rate would begin on the date of the closing I would've waited on the closing. Based on this experience I would still consider switching my banking because I feel as if I was not provided with clear and accurate information.