How do I shop around for a mortgage?

[onetruething]

Dh and I are buying our second home.  We are pre-approved for the amount and have a good downpayment, but I would still like to shop around and see if we could get a better rate.  From a board search I've seen that it is good to get three GFE's.

So, how did you find a mortgage lender- ask friends? online reviews? this board?

Also, will shopping around hurt my credit score? 

Thanks!

[gt7301b]

I called a bunch of places before actually applying to get an estimate, once I narrowed it down to a couple of places I applied at all of those. We ended up going with a broker that our real estate agent recommended for our home purchase and a local bank through Costco for our refi.

Shopping around for mortgage rates counts as an inquiry for a single loan, here is the info from myfico.com:

www.myfico.com/crediteducation/creditchecks/inquiries.aspx

What to know about "rate shopping."
Looking for a mortgage, auto or student loan may cause multiple lenders to request your credit report, even though you are only looking for one loan. To compensate for this, the score ignores mortgage, auto, and student loan inquiries made in the 30 days prior to scoring. So, if you find a loan within 30 days, the inquiries won't affect your score while you're rate shopping. In addition, the score looks on your credit report for mortgage, auto, and student loan inquiries older than 30 days. If it finds some, it counts those inquiries that fall in a typical shopping period as just one inquiry when determining your score. For FICO scores calculated from older versions of the scoring formula, this shopping period is any 14 day span. For FICO scores calculated from the newest versions of the scoring formula, this shopping period is any 45 day span. Each lender chooses which version of the FICO scoring formula it wants the credit reporting agency to use to calculate your FICO score.

[busterpup]

We found our mortgage through Costco and got a really good rate (3.5% on a 30 year fixed) even though we only had 10% down (bad, I know). They pre-negotiate rates with several different vendors, and it worked well for us. But ours was a primary home, so I'm not sure if it's different.

[onetruething]

Wow, good to know. Do I have to be a Costco member?

[gt7301b]

I'm pretty sure you have to be a member to get their rates, but I think you can shop for rates without signing up.

[kadams767]

I used an independent broker who shopped rates for us. If you can get a reputable recommendation for a broker that someone you know trusts, it's really easy.