patrick.net

The safest thing to do is to have no debt at all.

Then you avoid all those problems.

Especially if it costs less to rent a place to live than rent money for a place to live. Renting money = paying interest.

Which means you don't have to pay it back! Until the robo-signing re-starts.

Try zillow.com, and search their mortgage section. They have reviews for all the lenders on the site.

RedStar says

Try zillow.com, and search their mortgage section. They have reviews for all the lenders on the site.

Like the reviews may not be cooked. RE industry is rigged. :)

Credit unions (which are not for profit) often retain ownership of the loans they write.

My current loan is owned and serviced by the CU which originated it; and one before this was owned by the credit union although they farmed out servicing to some other organization.

There's generally some affiliation requirement for membership, although it can just be living or working in a certain area. For instance Provident is open to people in most if not all of the SF Bay Area, LA city, Sacramento county, and a few other places in California. In Colorado I belonged to the CU (University of Colorado) credit union originally open to students/faculty/employee but later opened to people in the surrounding counties plus a few other cities.