How Long Will It Take to Get your Mortgage License

I am frequently asked how long it will take for a mortgage company to get a mortgage broker or lender license. I have to say as in most of my responses, it depends upon which state you are asking about.

There are the less populous states, who tend to be the less popular states, such as Iowa, New Hampshire, Arkansas, and Mississippi, where the first review takes less than 3 weeks. If the application is perfect, then you have a license in your hand in less than one month. The other end of the spectrum is New York, which can take 8 months, and I've never seen a perfect application submitted to New York.

Many times, the problem is that the mortgage company is so eager to get that application in to the Banking Department that they do not submit each document that is requested or answer every question. The licensing reviewers will not let you skip a question or leave out one of the required back-up documents, i.e., letter of reference, updated financial statement, bank check instead of company check for the fees. The devil is always in the details. You cannot be too detail-oriented when submitting a license application.

Another answer that I give to this question is that the timing is dependent on whether the banking departments are also in renewal season. A few states have licenses that never expire so that is not always an issue. However, most states issue licenses that need to be renewed every year or every two years. Most licensing departments are under-staffed. I'm sure they have offices piled with appllications waiting to be reviewed. When renewal season comes around, a reviewer may be pulled from new applications and re-assigned to processing renewal applications. That means your new application sits in a corner for maybe a month until the backlog of renewals has been cleared.

If you consult with a company or law firm that specializes in mortgage company licensing and you get an answer to the question "how long will it take" that sounds much shorter than the responses you have been receiving from other companies or law firms, find out why they can give you such a favorable answer. It's better to know upfront that the process is slow than to gear up and hire loan officers for a license that won't be in your office for several months, no matter what you have been promised.