For our first home (recently purchased), we are with Chase, which is also where we have primary checking and credit card (but not primary savings). They actually offered us the lowest rate.
We spoke to a couple of mortgage brokers - one my parents referred us to and one DH was able to contact through his job. Neither were able to offer as low a rate as Chase.
I don't know if every lender does this, but with Chase, we paid down some principle recently and they sent us an email telling us exactly how many "payments" that amount was worth to us and how much interest we saved by pre-paying. I liked that feature a lot.
I am self-employed and purchased in 2011. I could not find ONE bank to give me financing. Not big, medium, small, local, or credit union. A local bank referred me to a mortgage broker who does self-financing. He got us a mortgage and promptly sold it to Wells Fargo (we knew this was the plan). Wells Fargo rejected us outright when we tried directly. We used him to refinance a year later.
May be a SS, but are obviously pro mortgage brokers!
I would ask your REA agent for referrals. We had a similar experience to this. Our mortgage in our old home, which we are renting (or trying to rent )was with B of A. Without any rental history, they wanted us to put down a crazy high percentage bc obviously two mortgages takes up a lot of our income. As it was we put down 25ish percent. But even without knowing our situation our REA said she wasn't excited about working with us if we use BofA or any of the big banks. Too many hurdles and road blocks. Our loan was sold to Chase within two weeks.