So we’re nearing day 90 of our home refinance with Bank of America. We have a current home mortgage with BoA as well as some checking and savings accounts with them. Comments regarding diversifying our assets are duly noted and we’ll be doing that when all this is finished with.
Anyway, they keep asking for more and more information. Information that
they already have access to
is completely irrelevant
is none of their business
For instance, they’re asking for pay stubs to prove employment. Fair enough. They’ve been sent. But every two weeks they ask for ANOTHER pay stub. This is literally the fourth time they’ve asked. I’ve shown them I’m employed. They know I’m employed. My pay goes directly to my BoA account! Why do they need to know that THIS WEEK I’m employed, and each week after that while they continue fiddling with the paperwork?
They’ve gone through all our bank accounts for the past 6 months and asked us to explain cash deposits of, like, $80 from August, or $100 checks (birthday gifts). How can this possibly be relevant to the question of whether our income is high enough to qualify for a loan (and it is…because we already HAVE a loan with them).
They’ve asked for an explanation as to why we moved $200 from one of our BoA accounts to another BoA account…as if it’s any of their business and as if it makes any difference to our income or debts.
They’ve literally asked for an explanation of a payment where it turns out its the goddamn appraisal fee that was paid to them from the bank account!
Am I overreacting? Should they even be concerned with what we do with our bank transactions when they’re such piddly sums as what’s above? Would they have even requested this information (let alone gone in and searched themselves) if we weren’t already BoA customers?
I should probably respond to them today. Probably.
That’s kinda bizarre. We refinanced our house a couple of months ago and they didn’t do any of that. They wanted pay stubs, tax info, bank account info (and our refi was with BofA as well, though our bank is Wells Fargo) but they never asked us about transfers, wanted extra pay stubs, or anything like that. They didn’t even bring it up when I financed a scooter right in the middle of the refi process.
I still would like any answers I can have to the questions I posed above, but here’s what I believe is happening.
We’re refinancing from 5.875 to 4.000 within the same institution. But since we locked in our rate (good through 1/20/11), they’ve been dragging their feet to ensure we miss the deadline. After all, they’re already making money from us, why bother with the refinance?
Now our loan officer has made promises that our rate will be honored past the deadline. She can extend it and promises that she will.
But that’s an oral agreement. I’ve got a written agreement that says I’ve got until next Thursday to close. Guess which the bank is really going to honor?
We missed our lock too, since there was some discrepancy with some of the documentation they wanted and it took awhile to get it straightened out. The lock can be extended, but it will most likely cost extra. Our mortgage broker took it out of his cut–I think it was about $500 if I remember correctly. Not sure what the dynamics are if it’s all within the same bank, though.
We refinanced with Wells Fargo last year (we had our mortgage with them also) and didn’t go through any of this stuff. I don’t think they are waiting for rates to rise, since it is not like the people doing the refi get extra money for it.
Is your credit rating marginal in any way? It sounds like they are concerned about your current employment and also concerned that you are are playing games with assets - though those are pretty small amounts. That is my only guess - otherwise the answer is that they are idiots.
BTW, don’t worry about diversification. All your accounts are insured, and we discovered that having a loan with Wells Fargo somehow qualified us for a better level of service.
Both my wife’s credit scores and mine average around 780 from all three institutions.
The reason for diversification isn’t because we’re worried about Bank of America failing. It’s because this experience has taught us that it’s really bad to give one entity complete access to your entire portfolio.
We were recently financing a new home through Shea (the builder). They asked for all that stuff - pay stubs (when we signed the initial paperwork, then months later, then right before close), explanations of activity in our account, etc.
In order to offset our higher mortgage, my husband chose to sell his Nissan Altima (that had a high monthly car payment) for exactly what he owed on it. He sold it via Craigslist to an individual. No problems with the sale - the individual paid my husband’s lien holder directly. Shea home mortgage completely flipped out and required “proof” that the car was bought. Due to privacy laws in CA and the way titles work, that was ridiculously difficult to get.
We ended up not getting the house for other reasons, but the last month leading up to close was particularly harrowing.
If this is their reasoning, it’s awfully shortsighted. If I were in your shoes, and BoA did that (missed the deadline and then refused to honor the original low rate) to me, I would refinance through someone else - and then BoA would lose all the income from my mortgage.
I’ve never had very good luck trying to refinance with my current mortgage holder. I’ve always ended up going through somebody else to refinance. My last mortgage was with Countrywide / B of A. They continually send letters saying “Call us! You can save money on your mortgage!” Each time I called them, they quoted me a rate which wasn’t as competitive as an open market rate.
My suspicion is that they really have no great incentive to refi your mortgage. Even though their literature says “yes!” their actions say no.
My advice: Go to either LengingTree.com and/or Quickenloans.com and get quotes for a refi. NEW lenders don’t make anything until they close the deal, whereas your existing lender can just continue dragging the process out, earning interest on your existing mortgage…
I laid that out to them in an e-mail last night. We’d be taking our mortgage to someone else, damned the new rate, and closing all three of our accounts there. It wasn’t an idle threat. I had to talk my wife down from just up and doing it anyway regardless of their response because I figure waiting a week to see how it all turns out won’t hurt us any.
But damn their questions are annoying. I’m typing up my responses to them now.
It likely isn’t your bank per se–it is the underwriter who wants that stuff and they are just hedging their bets so that the underwriter accepts the loan.
We originally were getting a construction/permanent loan combo this last summer before we ended up not building that home. We were able to take the same application and make it into just a home loan.
But they asked for all of that crap, including asking for a copy of my alimony portion of the divorce decree from my exwife. I figured that made sense as they needed verification that I paid $x amount to her each month, so it seemed like a reasonable request. So I sent them just that portion but that wasn’t good enough and they needed the whole divorce decree. I asked and was told that they couldn’t have incomplete documents or it would/could kick back from the underwriter of the loan.
Yeah, more fun from the underwriter today. My wife bought the home when we weren’t married. I’m not on the title, but I’m going to be when/if this refinance ever goes through.
But no.
The underwriter today has asked that I be on the title prior to closing. For what reason I’m not sure. But this means getting a document produced by the title company signed by me and my wife and a notary. At a charge, I’m sure I wouldn’t be surprised to learn when I read through the final paperwork.
You may want to research your state’s laws. Even though “I” bought our house, “I” made the down payment, it was “my” credit rating that was used, only “my” income went into the calculations, etc., my state’s laws required both husband and wife be on the title. I’m no griping, mind you. I’m just saying that as our residence, the law requires both of our names on the title.
Granted your wife bought the home prior to your marriage to her and that may be the difference. Perhaps that’s their excuse, regardless of what the law may require. For your own peace of mind, continue with your own homework and find out.
Well I really don’t care one way or the other. When we finish the refi we’re both going to be on the title anyway so what does it matter to us if it happens before? But what annoys me is that we both now have to be present with a notary to get it done, and honestly if this were so crucial you’d think it would have occurred to them to ask us before now. It’s not like we made a secret of the titlework.
They must just be covering their asses. I’m working on getting a refinance done now too, to get my ex-wife off the loan. They’ve been ok to work with, but last night they asked for some of the same documents over again. I also put a very small amount, $30 into an old bank account that I do not get statements for and through some odd twist can’t get online statements. They want proof of where it’s going but I can’t give it to them. They also wanted a statement of the direct deposit for child support. I know my ex-wife will not give them that so how can I do it?
I’ve been lucky in that they will take scanned items, so I’ve had everything scanned and when they ask for the same thing again I say, I’ve already sent you that, but here it is again.
The crap thing is that I’m going from a 20 year mortgage to a 30. I was really paying down on the house, but I can’t afford it now. I can’t wait for this to go through though and be done with it.
Yeah, but the rates have gone up enough that it’s NOT as good a deal.
Example: we locked in at 4.25% for a refinance in late October. Actually, we applied when rates were 4.25, and the credit union wasn’t in any rush to get paperwork sorted out, so they sent us a rush lock-in agreement something like 2-3 weeks later - that we had to sign and return within 24 hours or we’d lose the rate. Grrrr. Rates have gone up to 4.875 for a 30 year fixed loan. Which is still a savings over the OP’s current rate, but not as dramatic of a savings.
So, taking the mortgage elsewhere would be a nice eff-you to BofA but not as nice as that 4.00 rate.
We did a Wells Fargo refinance about 2 years ago. They dragged and dragged and it took over 60 days. Technically the lock had expired but since it was their fault, they honored it. I’d expect (but can’t guarantee) that BofA will do similarly since the OP has responded to every request in a timely manner.
So - I’d suggest you ask the person who verbally said “we’ll honor it”, to confirm in writing such as via email.
I have actually not seen as good rates from the “multi-lender” sites, but that’s definitely worth a try. You can also go directly to some of the big lenders’ sites (Chase, Wells-Fargo etc.).
Wells Fargo actually worked with us during our refi 2 years ago, including waiving the one point origination fee their site listed for new borrowers (we were already with WF). That can also be simpler from an escrow standpoint - they’ll just transfer the escrow account to the new loan so you don’t have to come up with quite as much cash for closing.
When they got the payoff request from our credit union this fall, we got a panicked-sounding voicemail from them asking what they could do to keep our business. And a few weeks later we got a letter showing the same rate (4.25) with the APR also 4.25 (i.e. a lot of the usual fees that make the APR a bit higher, were apparently waived). We didn’t bother responding because of how we’d gotten jerked around during the previous refi (e.g. one person told us X, and the night before closing another person told us Not-X; the closing was delayed, etc.).
I thought I’d bump this to tell you that we’re now entering month 6 of a refinance from Bank of America to Bank of America. Our GFE ended on January 20. We have never been issued a new one, despite federal guidelines that state we must have one in hand at least two weeks before closing. All we have are oral promises and a few vague assurances through e-mail that our rates will be honored.
They’ve zeroed in on a deposit made in December for $1,000. My grandfather gave a gift to our daughter on the event of her birth. They wanted written, signed confirmation that this was, indeed a gift. We’ve done that twice now. Apparently that’s not enough. NOW…they’re asking that not only do we get my grandfather to sign a document stating that the gift was a gift, they want proof through a copy of my grandfather’s December bank statement!!!.
I asked them what would happen if my grandfather refused as he has every legal right to do seeing as this is his private information and he is not a party to this transaction. They’ve not yet responded.
Tomorrow I believe I’m going to the bank and (politely) sitting in the loan officer’s office until
The obvious answer is tell them to fuck THAT and go with another lender… but rates have gone up about a point since you started the process and that would be HIDEOUSLY costly.