Here's what I ended up doing:
In addition to giving my information to have the mortgage professor's CLN lender contact me, I solicited 5 other proposals by emailing 5 other lenders, in addition to my pre-approval lender (So 7 lenders total). These ranged from national branches, to regional lenders, to credit unions, to online lenders (one of which I snagged from bankrate.com). I found email addresses of loan officers servicing my area. My email laid out all of the specifics (what type of loan product, percent down, purchase price, my most recent credit scores per my first lender, explaining our good income ratios). I said we are selecting a lender this week and would appreciate a competitive proposal based on these data.
Almost all of them got back to me using Monday's 10:30 rate update (Wells Fargo insisted that I call them back, so I never actually got around to that). Some were casual (quote written in email), others were more formal with a loan proposal form, another gave me a loan estimate form. Rates ranged from 4.25 to 3.75%. For the record, Amerisave was at 4, but the mortgage professor's recommended lender (goodmortgage.com) was 3.75. My lender from bankrate was also 3.75, but had 750 in fees as opposed to 150 in lender fees.
My original lender was at the top of the list at 4.25 with over 1200 in fees, so I sent the 3.75 proposals and asked for a competitive counter. They matched the 3.75 with no mention of the fees. I had a meeting scheduled with them today and I brought up the goodmortgage quote and they refused to honor the lower lender fees of 150 (having "never heard of goodmortgage.com before"), but they did match the 750 fees from my bankrate lender. Since this lender has worked with my agent before and is local and has a good reputation for closing on time, we decided to eat the extra 600 in fees to lock in today with them.
I get the feeling that I could have done marginally better, but who knows. I feel much better knowing I brought the local lender to the lowest rate for which I was quoted and received decently discounted fees.
Anyone know about shopping around for 3rd party fees now? From what I understand, most of these are fairly rigid, no?