No, there is no good reason for many of the questions - especially the same ones over and over. The real problem is there is no incentive for the banks to lend money - they make more off the government if a house sits in foreclosure, they get more subsidies for the properties they "hold", and there is not enough return at 3.5% on what they'll lend out.

The underwriters enjoy toying with people because they can. After 75 days of back and forth ridiculousness and endless requests for inane and irrelevant papers (including stupid written statements like I had access to funds my minor child was an ITF name on an account, why I paid cash for my last house, why I sent money from one account to another every month, etc) - I fired my last mortgage broker and paid cash. It didn't matter that I was only financing 40% of the value, that I had cash on hand to pay for the house three times over, a credit score well north of 800, already had another mortgage with them, and investments that were another four or five times the value of the house, they wanted their stupid paperwork...I told the loan officer she should be embarrassed because she was no longer a loan officer who made decisions, she was now just a paperwork collector for the underwriters - gone are the days when a loan officer lent money to a person they evaluated for credit worthiness, now they lend money to a stack of paper blessed by the underwriter.

The mortgage before that got drug out to the point where I had to get another appraisal. Like the market will have changed enough in 60 days to impact whether or not to lend me 60% of the value of the house - never mind this was a refi of a 100% paid off house, never mind I again had enough in the bank to pay it off again. One of the hangups was I was told they had all the paperwork they needed. I asked to be sure because I was getting deployed and after three more days wouldn't have access to any files or paperwork. 'Yes, of course, we have everything we need.' Then the underwriter decided that the signed authorization for IRS acccess to my tax transcripts wasn't enough, they wanted to see my actual signed filed tax forms. After six weeks of back and forth explaining that all the info was contained in the transcripts, I finally just downloaded a 1040 from the web, used my transcript to fill it out, signed it, and sent it to them and they were happy. Seriously? I actually think I could have filled it out however I wanted because I don't think they actually looked at it - I think they just wanted it for their pile of paperwork because they could.

If I never deal with another mortgage again, it'll be too soon. It's just another perfect example of bureaucracy for the sake of bureaucracy. Process over product. People no longer matter.