Getting a mortgage takes longer these days.
Whether you're refinancing or purchasing a home, the mortgage process is much slower than it used to be. If you're getting a mortgage, be prepared to wait - the process will be much more enjoyable.
There are a variety of reasons for the slowdown. In general, banks are more skittish about lending money, so they take extra time to evaluate you as a borrower. In addition, applications have soared as refinancing becomes attractive to more and more homeowners, but some firms are not able to handle the flood of business efficiently.
Brian Koss has a nice summary with 5 reasons why refinancing is so slow these days. It may help you make sense of why you're waiting to hear back from your lender.
Further reading:
Thank you for that article. It explains how dramatically lower mortgage rates may not translate this time around into the refinancing benefit we saw in 2001.