Delays, poor communication, horrible experience
On Champion Funding's website, they state "Enjoy a lightning speed process to the finish line with great communication along the way". After dealing with them as the buyer of my home's lender, I can say this is far from the truth.
I signed a purchase agreement with the buyer of my home on 11/23/2025, with a closing date of 1/5/2026. This is far beyond the normal time required to close on a loan. On 1/3/2025, the lender stated they would need more time to close on the loan and would have to delay closing until 1/9/2025. They blamed this delay on the holidays, despite having a full five weeks to get this file into closing, and being well aware of the upcoming closing date prior to the holidays.
This delay caused CONSIDERABLE stress and financial expense for my family, as we were already packed up and moved out of our home and on our way to another state to close on another property which we relied on closing on my original home to complete. This caused us to have to stay in hotels for a full week with a child and four animals.
Throughout the entire process, Champion Funding was horrible with communication, especially the first few days. Up until the last few days, my agent and numerous people with my agent's firm were unable to get any real updates as to why the loan was delayed so much, what the problems were, and when they would resolve them.
Eventually they communicated the only remaining hold up was they discovered a private loan on one of the buyer's homes. The loan was already cleared over a year ago, yet they still would not clear him to close without a new title report to verify he had no other debts they didn't know about (a ridiculous condition according to my sister-in-law who has been a senior underwriter for 15 years). And why did they wait until the last second to verify this? They initially asked the title company for MY home to get them a report on this completely separate property, which makes no sense at all. My title company refused - because it's not the property they represented. They then reached out to another title company for a title report. This wasn't done until Thursday, the day before the loan was supposed to close (again).
Why on earth was this not done days prior is beyond me. Not only that, but this information is PUBLIC RECORD. Any competent mortgage lender could easily view public records to get this information - but Champion Funding clearly is incompetent. In the end, MY real estate agent simply pulled public records themselves and send it to Champion Funding, which cleared the condition. The complete absurdity of my REAL ESTATE AGENT having to do their job for them because they cannot manage themselves is crazy.
I would avoid this lender AT ALL COSTS. They lack basic communication skills, their underwriters are slow and incompetent, and they have no care what-so-ever for getting a mortgage to the closing table in a timely manner. "Lightning fast" is the most laughable phrase for them to attempt to use on their website to describe their process.