HomeownerDirectLending.com is a licensee of the TRUSTe Privacy Program. TRUSTe is an independent, non-profit organization whose mission is to build user's trust and confidence in the Internet by promoting the use of fair information practices. This privacy statement covers the site www.HomeOwnerDirectLending.com. Because this Web site wants to demonstrate its commitment to your privacy, it has agreed to disclose its information practices and have its privacy practices reviewed for compliance by TRUSTe.

If you have questions or concerns regarding this statement, you should first contact Gina Bilder at customercare@directlendingfamily.com. If you do not receive acknowledgement of your inquiry or your inquiry has not been satisfactorily addressed, you should contact TRUSTe. TRUSTe will then serve as a liaison with us to resolve your concerns. HomeOwnerDirectLending.com is a subsidiary of Direct Lending Family, Inc., headquartered at:

If you would like to contact TRUSTe directly about this website click here: http://www.truste.org/consumers/watchdog_complaint.php

Effective Date: 2/7/2005
Last Updated: 2/7/2005

Who We Are
The Direct Lending Family, Inc. is a technology used by consumers, real estate agents, builders and financial institutions to help themselves or their clients decipher the complex mortgage offerings available today.  Our proprietary system collects financial information that is used only for the purposes of qualifying the borrower for a loan.  The borrower is then presented with mortgage options that best meet their personal financial situation and preferences based on the system's analysis of tens of thousands of available mortgage programs.  The borrower is then able to select the loan, rate, and closing costs that best meet their individual financial situation.  This control feature prevents predatory lending and puts the borrower in control of their financial future, not a middleman.  Finally, highly trained mortgage professionals verify the information that is input into the system and the loan is funded and closed. 

At the Direct Lending Family, your privacy and comfort with our system is very important to us.  Our technology clients and the customers that they serve are our most valuable assets.  Our integrity as a high-end provider of technological services for lending institutions depends on our ability to protect the customer’s identity and confidential information.

Each of our technology clients must sign a user agreement stating that they understand our privacy policy and they agree to the terms of our privacy policy.  If you feel that your privacy has been compromised, we welcome your response at customercare@directlendingfamily.com

Basic Beliefs and Standards
· We comply with all federal and state laws related to privacy.
· We will protect the confidential nature of our customer’s financial information.  Please see our Security Pledge.
.· To provide our customers with more financial choices, we occasionally share name and address information internally or with our affiliated operations.

Information Collected 
When you input your personal information into our site, rest assured that we will not sell your information to third party marketers. The Direct Lending Family, Inc. may collect and use your personal financial information to help you with our financial products and services that may be of value to you.  The only information that we collect is the information that you provide to us when: 

1. You ask for us to contact you regarding a question or suggestion you have.
2. Apply for a loan.
3. Register for an account.
4. Use our loan planning tools.
5. Participate in an online survey or promotion.

Contact Request

When you contact us and ask us a question or offer a suggestion, we will only access the information necessary to properly answer your question and assist you in your situation.

Applying For A Loan

There is certain information that is necessary in order to properly process your loan request.  Information such as your name, address, social security number, assets and liabilities, property location, property value, real estate agent or builder is used to obtain proper verifications to finish the processing of your loan.  If a fee is required upfront, we will ask you for your credit card number to satisfy the fee requirement.  For instance, if you apply for a mortgage loan, it is customary to pay for your appraisal and credit report in advance of the completion of your loan process.
 

Registration

When you register to use our site, you will be assigned an email and password that will allow you access to our system.  By creating your account with Direct Lending Family, Inc., we will request your name, address, email and telephone number.  Creating this account allows you to access the many informative areas within our site, such as our homebuyer education section. It also allows you to apply for a loan.  In addition, when you enter your financial information to obtain a loan, our system saves this information for your convenience and allows you to access this information to update, change or check the status of your loan request.

We do not share, sell, trade, or rent your personal information to third parties for unknown reasons.

Service Providers
We use other third parties to provide services necessary to process your mortgage application on our site. When you apply for a mortgage, we will share only the minimum information as necessary for the third party to provide that service.

These third parties are prohibited from using your personally identifiable information for any other purpose.

Loan Planning Tools

Direct Lending Family, Inc. offers many loan planning tips, articles and calculators that will help you better understand your financial situation.  When you use these tools, we collect information such as your email address, loan amount, interest rate and payment terms.  This information helps us to communicate with you via email for any further information that you have requested.

Participation In Online Promotions or Surveys

There are times that we run online promotions or ask for your feedback through our online surveys.  This information helps us to vastly improve our services to you.  If we are offering a contest, then we will use the contest entry information to contact you if you win the contest.  Names of the contest winners will be made available upon request as is required by law.  In addition, we may use survey or contest information for aggregate analysis of our contest entrants.  You have the right to participate in the contest or not participate in the contest or survey.  If you choose not to participate, this will in no way affect your ability to enter and use other parts of our website.  For each contest, we will make available rules for that particular contest for you to view.
 

Loan Application Fields

When you enter your information into our online loan application, you will notice that certain fields are mandatory information and other fields are optional information.  The mandatory information is essential for our software to properly analyze your personal financial situation. If you do not fill in all of the mandatory fields, then we will not be able to assist you in your loan request. The optional fields may be requested at a later time by our staff to properly complete your transaction.
 

What Happens When I Apply For A Loan?

When you apply for a loan, we must verify the information that you provided to us in order to complete the process of your loan and meet lending requirements.  To do this, we will work with a consumer-reporting agency, which will give us your credit history and verify your credit score and liabilities.  You will be asked to authorize us to do this before we request the credit history on your behalf.  In addition to that, you will have the opportunity to confirm the information provided by the credit report prior to requesting a loan approval online.
 

Once we receive your online application, there are other outside sources that we may contact in order to verify the information that you provided to us. We will only contact and verify information that is imperative for you to get the loan that you requested. For instance, with your authorization, we may contact your current and previous employer to verify income, your bank to verify assets, and your existing loan companies to verify payment history and balances.  Or, we may simply ask you to provide us with alternative documentation such as bank statements or W-2’s to simplify the process.  How we verify your information is dependent on the type of loan that you choose.  However, we will not garner any information that is unnecessary to the process of the loan.

In addition to your personal financial information, we will work with an appraiser who will be provided property information, your real estate agent or builder, and/or the contractor on the property you are buying.  The appraiser will use this information to properly evaluate the property's value and ability to be used as collateral for the loan.
 

Before closing, it will be necessary to submit some basic information to a title company or attorney who you or your seller has selected to close your loan and perform the title search on your property.  Once your loan is closed, our lending partner may or may not service your loan.  You will be given a disclosure prior to closing that will let you know if they are servicing your loan or not.  If they are not servicing your loan and intend to sell your loan to another lender, then this information will be disclosed to you so that you know who to send your payments to and where.  All servicing companies are required by law to adhere to federal and state privacy regulations.
 

Technology and Web Information

When you visit our site, we gather technical information from your web browser and insert a “cookie” (which is a small piece of information) onto your computer. We do link the information we store in cookies to any personally identifiable information you submit while on our site. This information is anonymous and simply provides us with information as to what pages our visitors are visiting and what information is accessed, so that we can continue to add information that will enhance all of our customers' experiences.   
 

If you disable our cookie, there will still be parts of the site that are accessible to you. If you register on our site in order to apply for a loan, you will need to allow our cookie for security reasons.  The cookie does not contain any personal information, but it allows you to access your information that you input quickly and efficiently.  This same cookie will be used when you apply for a loan so that you may access your personal account information.
 

Third Party Advertisers

The Direct Lending Family, Inc. does not use third party advertisers. However, in the event that one of our users utilizes third party advertising, they are required to notify you of such and give you the ability to opt-in or opt-out of that advertising.
 

Where Does My Information Go When I Opt-In For Loan Purposes?

When you opt-in to allow us to share your information with affiliated parties, it is our commitment to only share your information with the parties that are necessary in order to complete your loan request.  For instance, as stated earlier, credit bureaus and appraisers are two examples.  In addition, our lending partner may need to submit your loan application to another lending partner in order to meet the needs of your loan request.  This is offered as a convenience so that you don’t have to submit a new loan application.  However, at no time does our lending partner share your information for any other purpose than getting you the loan you want.

Contractor Services

On occasion, our lending partner may contract or employ service providers who perform specific processes or functions such as email distribution, processing payments, etc.  Only the information necessary to assist them with their contracted service will be provided.  In addition, we have reviewed the privacy policies of our contractors and have them sign a privacy agreement with the lending partner in order to ensure your added privacy.

Security
The security of your personal information is important to us. When you enter sensitive information such as a social security number on our mortgage application, we encrypt that information using secure socket layer technology (SSL). To learn more about SSL, simply go to our Security Pledge web page. 

We follow generally accepted industry standards to protect the personal information submitted to us, both during transmission and once we receive it. No method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100% secure, however. Therefore, while we strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.

If you have any questions about security on our Web site, you can send an email to us at customercare@directlendingfamily.com.

 
Legal Obligations

Although none of us like to share information with outside sources unless absolutely necessary, there are times when we are legally obligated to do so.  For instance, law enforcement or government agencies may subpoena us for records.  When they do, we must comply.  In addition, the local county recorder’s office requires certain information in order to legally file your mortgage and deed of trust.  The information provided on those documents is made public record and is, therefore, accessible by anyone who wishes to access those records.  Therefore, you may receive solicitations that look like they are from our lending partner, when in reality the sender is simply capturing the public information and sending a direct mail piece to you with the lending partner's name.  This is not a practice we participate in or condone.  Unfortunately, because this information is public, no lender is able to prevent it.

Access to Personally Identifiable Information
If your personally identifiable information changes, or if you no longer desire our service, you may correct, update, delete or deactivate it by emailing our Customer Support at customercare@directlendingfamily.com or by contacting us by telephone or postal mail at the contact information listed below. 

Choice/Opt-Out
We provide you the opportunity to 'opt-out' of having your personally identifiable information used for certain purposes, when we ask for this information. For example, if you purchase a product/service but do not wish to receive any additional marketing material from us, you can indicate your preference on our order form.

If you no longer wish to receive our newsletter and promotional communications, you may opt-out of receiving them by following the instructions included in each newsletter or communication or by emailing us at optout@directlendingfamily.com or you may contact us at 800-407-0717 or write to us at:

609 West Main Street
West Dundee, IL 60118

Direct Lending Family, Inc.