Mortgage offices are getting busy again as prospective borrowers fill out applications to take advantage of lower interest rates.

Picture today's mortgage world as a traffic jam with everyone driving to the same destination -- the loan settlement table. Ahead of you, idiots and flakes are parking in the middle of the road to take catnaps, or consulting $2-a-minute psychics on cell phones while lazily weaving from lane to lane. You dream of transforming your car into a helicopter so you can hop ahead of the dawdling morons in front of you.

You have the power to realize that daydream when you apply for a mortgage. You can hop over the idiots ahead of you by doing something radical -- following lenders' instructions.

Believe it or not, lots of prospective borrowers don't follow the directions. They ask for a big loan and then act like it's a Big Brotherish invasion of privacy when the lender asks for details about income and spending habits. Put yourself in the banker's shoes (Florsheim, wingtip, toe-pinching): What kind of customer service would you give someone who asked for a $200,000 mortgage loan and then acted like you were nosy for asking for copies of the last two paycheck stubs? You would act politely, then shove that application to the bottom of an ever-growing inbox.

And that inbox is growing. The Mortgage Bankers Association's weekly index of mortgage activity stood at 732 the week ending July 5. That's below the high of 1,056 recorded last November, when mortgage rates reached a 37-year low, but the index still reflects a high number of mortgage applications, both for purchases and refinances.

Here are some pointers for getting your application processed quickly:

• Pay attention to the broker's or lender's list of required documents, and make sure the papers are complete.
  
  
• Tell the truth.
  
  
• Don't game the system.

Doing the paperwork right
"Every loan officer tells their customers what they need to bring, and very consistently the customer doesn't bring in the required items," says Brian Peart, president of Nexus Financial in Atlanta. "The process can't start until then."

Alice David, a mortgage analyst with Susquehanna Mortgage in Baltimore, agrees that incomplete paperwork is the biggest problem. "They don't supply us with pay stubs and bank statements," she says. "If you don't have bank statements or a pay stub, you can't verify income and assets. A lot of people don't save pay stubs and bank statements. They throw them in the trash."

Do people really throw away their pay stubs, even when they know they're about to apply for a mortgage? David laughs. "It happens every day," she says.

Loan officers typically tell applicants to bring 30 days' worth of pay stubs. Yet many applicants bring in only their most recent one, even if they're paid every week or every two weeks.

Most loan officers ask to see the previous month's bank statement. A simple request, right? Not for everyone.

"They bring in only the first page of the bank statement," Peart says. "We need all the pages because the underwriter looks at those statements to see the flow of money." The bank statement lets the lender know if the applicant bounces checks, and it records unusual deposits.

The people who bring in only the first page of the bank statement are matched by the folks who submit the first two pages of last year's income tax forms but don't include the schedules. And when a lender asks for the borrower's W-2s, it needs those W-2s.

For house purchases, the lender needs to see a copy of the entire contract, not just the first page.

When people are refinancing their mortgages, the lender has to have copies of the homeowners insurance policy and the property tax bill. Says one mortgage executive: "Coming to application without those important documents, that can hold things up."

The truth will set your application free
Peart says another frequent problem is applicants who don't tell the truth, whether deliberately or accidentally. Applicants might say they have paid off a debt, but a balance still shows up on the credit report. It turns out that the credit report is correct. "And that changes the terms that I approved them for," Peart says.

"If they bring everything upfront," he adds, "nothing will change and they'll have a successful mortgage transaction. If they lie to us, don't bring everything that's complete, then they bring in something different from what they said, that changes the whole situation."

Applicants inflate income and minimize big debts such as auto or student loans. Or engage in understatement when discussing their credit records.

"You always get into the question of credit," says Frank Previte, owner of Alpha American Mortgage in Fort Worth, Texas. "If someone says it's excellent, it's probably excellent. If somebody says there may be a couple of things, there are some land mines. If they say, 'Well, I have some credit problems,' you know they have lots of problems."

Playing games
If you're looking for an edge, go shopping for kitchen knives, not for a mortgage loan.

Expect the lender to check whether you inflated your bank account by accepting a gift of money. Sometimes a gift of money spells the difference between qualifying for a conventional loan and qualifying for a Federal Housing Administration loan. Don't waste time applying for a conventional loan when you won't qualify for it. The lender probably will figure it out and you'll have to start over.

Pay attention to the lender's or broker's rules regarding rate locks. A rate lock is a commitment by the lender to lend the money at a specified interest rate within a specified period -- often 30, 45 or 60 days and sometimes longer.

Many borrowers elect to "float," declining to lock in the current rate in the hope that rates will fall before closing. Sometimes a borrower will float, and when rates rise, demand to lock in at the lower rate that had been offered a few days before.

Don't bother.

"We don't allow the customer to game the system," says Al Engel, first senior vice president for Valley National Bank in Wayne, N.J. On the other hand, he adds, "I never fault somebody for asking."