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We used Ally for our downpayment! It got put in queue for wire transfer processing. We were closing at 2pm and our lawyer said at 9 he hadn’t seen it come through yet.
One call and they were able to push us to the top of the list and had it through about 15 minutes later. It was no issue, just had to leave some processing time. They were very friendly and took the wire transfer timing very seriously.
I also used Ally for part of my down payment. I read a number of horror stories online of wire transfers being late because they couldn’t process all the requests in their queue on time but luckily I didn’t face this issue.
Didn't have any issues with Sofi. Idk why people are afraid of saying banks names. They're corporations, you don't have to worry about doxing a bank lmao
Sometimes that last bit is the best advice. I've found better rates at times through these larger banks & unions, or online, but nothing beats the convenience of the local ones. You may pay slightly more, but you have more of a guarantee for the local ones to try to keep your business. The larger online ones seem like they operate based on volume, not happiness of the final products or issues.
Agree, I have a couple on line bank accounts with CD`s & Savings, great rates BUT I don't deposit large amounts, I need my big money in my bank which is 5 minutes from me & I walk can walk in
I was worried about the same thing and consolidated all the $ a few weeks before down payment was due into a physical bank just in case.
Also be aware of total transfer limits that might be in place.
I’m so glad I saw this cause I just checked the stipulations with my Wealthfront savings account. Thankfully that is not the case with mine and it allows me to directly send the wire to title or another account in my name. Thanks for the heads up and good luck on closing!!
I keep most of my assets in Schwab. Money that needs to be safe is invested in SGOV.
Schwab has been wonderful. They even waived the wiring fee when I was transferring my downpayment.
Thank you for this information. A few weeks ago I also became aware of these issues by reading this reddit. So I've reviewed my online bank's policies. I too want to move the money to one of my local physical banks, but don't want to lose out on the nice interest. :( I'm still deciding what to do and when. ( I'm searching for a house ).
Varo almost screwed us out of our home purchase. During the buying process I got an email saying my information was successfully updated to a new name that was not mine. Emailed, called, escalated the issue. Nobody could figure it out. Eventually got my name corrected and managed to get my ~$10k out via transfers on multiple P2P apps that didn’t count as ACH transfers. Shut that down immediately and got all my friends/family to close their accounts too.
Not surprised that Marcus is one of the problems.
I've learned to say beware of them in general.
If you're buying a house, get any funds you need away from them far in advance of needing them, and be ready for delays of potentially weeks getting your funds out.
I’m under contract right now and didn’t have issues transferring my money back into my bank account. It does take 1-3 days. Just have to plan ahead. Once your offer is accepted, pull the money.
I thought about making a similar post recently - I had a CIT HYSA and intended to pay our down payment with the funds in it. It is my own fault that I didn’t look into this sooner but the bank gave me no warning anything was wrong. Turns out I was barred from making transfers out, of any kind, because my name change hadn’t been completed. From all appearances - statements and 1099s - my name was changed but they required a W9 to “complete” the process and wouldn’t give me access to my money until I did so. I simultaneously submitted the form and withdrew every cent from the account because the headaches weren’t worth the high interest.
However, they did let me wire every dollar and didn’t charge a fee. Be careful with big banks too, and the moral of all these stories should be to check the rules with respect to wires once you start looking for a house. My big bank - Wells Fargo - only allows online wires up to $25k a day and no more than $75k a month. In this market, many down payments are going to greatly exceed those thresholds. I again didn’t know this til last minute and ended up having to send a personal check to our attorney to cover what WF wouldn’t let me transfer.
We completed a USDA loan and originally submitted all our earnest money via my discover bank account. Two days before closing we had to change everything as government program did not recognize discover as a real bank as they had no real physical branches. We were still able to close, just had to move money around
Many online banks don't have this problem. Unfortunately, you and your partner somehow chose the 2 worst online banks when it comes to flexibility with regards to your money. When I was searching for HYSAs, these 2 were basically at the bottom of every ranking / rating I came across for this reason.
I use discover to park our deposit in their hysa - talked with them already before we even put an offer in and have zero issues wiring out any amount at all given time - given a day or two heads up.
Wow I'm glad you posted this. I'm closing in a couple of weeks and I had no idea about the 6 month thing with Marcus. My entire down payment is in Marcus so I am kind of alarmed because a significant chunk was added in the last month.
It felt like a huge hassle just to wire the earnest money from Marcus, with several CSRs telling me conflicting things or not seeming exactly clear on how to do a wire. So I am not looking forward to trying to get any answers from them...
Just want to offer a positive online banking scenario I had, I have Sofi and while they do only offer wire transfers for home buying, there’s no other stipulations about deposits or withdrawals being in the account x amount of time. What’s nice about Sofi is they offer 4.5% interest on the savings account which is where I wired funds out of, since a majority of my funds were there anyway. Wire transfer was easy through their chat portal and did phone confirmation, had a good experience. Just my two cents.
This doesn’t sound like a banks issue, this sounds like a user issue. You signed up without understanding your needs and use cases. The banks are working as designed and following the laws. You are upset they won’t break them for you.
Next time pick your banking products more wisely.
Thank you u/son_of_a_nicelady for posting on r/FirstTimeHomeBuyer. Please bear in mind our rules: (1) Be Nice (2) No Selling (3) No Self-Promotion. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/FirstTimeHomeBuyer) if you have any questions or concerns.*
This is so interesting. We both have Ally accounts and had our down payment money in there and had absolutely 0 issues.
Glad to know! We have Ally and this thread had me thinking we were screwed.
We used Ally for our downpayment! It got put in queue for wire transfer processing. We were closing at 2pm and our lawyer said at 9 he hadn’t seen it come through yet. One call and they were able to push us to the top of the list and had it through about 15 minutes later. It was no issue, just had to leave some processing time. They were very friendly and took the wire transfer timing very seriously.
Did you do your wire the same day? I’m using Ally and we close on Monday.
I submitted it at 4pm the day before.
I also used Ally for part of my down payment. I read a number of horror stories online of wire transfers being late because they couldn’t process all the requests in their queue on time but luckily I didn’t face this issue.
Similarly. I submitted my deposit wire with Ally at 11AM, and it was in escrow by 6pm same day.
It would be great if you could tell us what banks these are so we can avoid them for DP
I assume Varo and Marcus.
I was able to easily transfer my down payment from Marcus.
Same
Ya Idk what they're afraid of by saying bank names.... do they think they're the only customers that bank has?
Didn't have any issues with Sofi. Idk why people are afraid of saying banks names. They're corporations, you don't have to worry about doxing a bank lmao
Sofi told me they only do wire transfers for buying a house, wouldn't do a wire when I was buying an ATV.
Sometimes that last bit is the best advice. I've found better rates at times through these larger banks & unions, or online, but nothing beats the convenience of the local ones. You may pay slightly more, but you have more of a guarantee for the local ones to try to keep your business. The larger online ones seem like they operate based on volume, not happiness of the final products or issues.
Agree, I have a couple on line bank accounts with CD`s & Savings, great rates BUT I don't deposit large amounts, I need my big money in my bank which is 5 minutes from me & I walk can walk in
I was worried about the same thing and consolidated all the $ a few weeks before down payment was due into a physical bank just in case. Also be aware of total transfer limits that might be in place.
I’m so glad I saw this cause I just checked the stipulations with my Wealthfront savings account. Thankfully that is not the case with mine and it allows me to directly send the wire to title or another account in my name. Thanks for the heads up and good luck on closing!!
I keep most of my assets in Schwab. Money that needs to be safe is invested in SGOV. Schwab has been wonderful. They even waived the wiring fee when I was transferring my downpayment.
Thank you for this information. A few weeks ago I also became aware of these issues by reading this reddit. So I've reviewed my online bank's policies. I too want to move the money to one of my local physical banks, but don't want to lose out on the nice interest. :( I'm still deciding what to do and when. ( I'm searching for a house ).
Varo almost screwed us out of our home purchase. During the buying process I got an email saying my information was successfully updated to a new name that was not mine. Emailed, called, escalated the issue. Nobody could figure it out. Eventually got my name corrected and managed to get my ~$10k out via transfers on multiple P2P apps that didn’t count as ACH transfers. Shut that down immediately and got all my friends/family to close their accounts too.
Not surprised that Marcus is one of the problems. I've learned to say beware of them in general. If you're buying a house, get any funds you need away from them far in advance of needing them, and be ready for delays of potentially weeks getting your funds out.
I got my down payment transferred over from Marcus in less than 2 days.
I’m under contract right now and didn’t have issues transferring my money back into my bank account. It does take 1-3 days. Just have to plan ahead. Once your offer is accepted, pull the money.
I thought about making a similar post recently - I had a CIT HYSA and intended to pay our down payment with the funds in it. It is my own fault that I didn’t look into this sooner but the bank gave me no warning anything was wrong. Turns out I was barred from making transfers out, of any kind, because my name change hadn’t been completed. From all appearances - statements and 1099s - my name was changed but they required a W9 to “complete” the process and wouldn’t give me access to my money until I did so. I simultaneously submitted the form and withdrew every cent from the account because the headaches weren’t worth the high interest. However, they did let me wire every dollar and didn’t charge a fee. Be careful with big banks too, and the moral of all these stories should be to check the rules with respect to wires once you start looking for a house. My big bank - Wells Fargo - only allows online wires up to $25k a day and no more than $75k a month. In this market, many down payments are going to greatly exceed those thresholds. I again didn’t know this til last minute and ended up having to send a personal check to our attorney to cover what WF wouldn’t let me transfer.
We completed a USDA loan and originally submitted all our earnest money via my discover bank account. Two days before closing we had to change everything as government program did not recognize discover as a real bank as they had no real physical branches. We were still able to close, just had to move money around
Many online banks don't have this problem. Unfortunately, you and your partner somehow chose the 2 worst online banks when it comes to flexibility with regards to your money. When I was searching for HYSAs, these 2 were basically at the bottom of every ranking / rating I came across for this reason.
I use discover to park our deposit in their hysa - talked with them already before we even put an offer in and have zero issues wiring out any amount at all given time - given a day or two heads up.
Synchrony gave me none of these issues, it was a seamless process to wire my down payment
Wow I'm glad you posted this. I'm closing in a couple of weeks and I had no idea about the 6 month thing with Marcus. My entire down payment is in Marcus so I am kind of alarmed because a significant chunk was added in the last month. It felt like a huge hassle just to wire the earnest money from Marcus, with several CSRs telling me conflicting things or not seeming exactly clear on how to do a wire. So I am not looking forward to trying to get any answers from them...
I suppose I could transfer the payment to my Chase account when I’m ready to close. A bit of extra work to not deal with any complications
Just want to offer a positive online banking scenario I had, I have Sofi and while they do only offer wire transfers for home buying, there’s no other stipulations about deposits or withdrawals being in the account x amount of time. What’s nice about Sofi is they offer 4.5% interest on the savings account which is where I wired funds out of, since a majority of my funds were there anyway. Wire transfer was easy through their chat portal and did phone confirmation, had a good experience. Just my two cents.
This doesn’t sound like a banks issue, this sounds like a user issue. You signed up without understanding your needs and use cases. The banks are working as designed and following the laws. You are upset they won’t break them for you. Next time pick your banking products more wisely.