This week I started shopping around for a mortgage to refinance my rental property.  I had originally purchased this property using a home equity line of credit (HELOC) on my primary home.   So the plan is to refinance the rental property and pay off the HELOC.   I had planned on waiting until working my FICO score back up above 700, thinking that would make a significant impact on loan terms. As of now, my FICO score as reported by Equifax is 696. With the recent drop in mortgage interest rates, I want to be sure to be ready, so I began shopping around. I checked a number of locations, including my local credit union, my insurance company (USAA, which also has a banking, credit card, and mortgage business), and the company I've used for my last two home refinances, www.internetmortgage.com, which is actually Bank of Blue Valley (BBV) out of Overland, Kansas. My credit union (Ent Federal Credit Union) had the best application process I've seen.  If you're like me, you get frustrated typing account information, knowing the bank pulls all that information from the credit reporting agencies anyway.  Well, Ent pulls the information right into the application, after confirming that its OK to check credit.  Very refreshing.