I anxiously await the follow-up thread, “A CIA Predator Drone Blew Up My New House”.
Obligatory link to my own home buying misery:
My clients get pissed if things get close to the due date before I get them completed. If people boinght homes more than once every 10 years, most lenders would go out of business because their service is so horrible.
I have my checking and savings accounts with Wells Fargo, but I’ve never used them for loans. I think I’m glad about that now.
You want a fuck you story from the other end of the home ownership process, this time regarding Chase? Check this out.
In 2000 my then wife and I bought our first home together. Everything went along great until Sept. 01 when I got downsized. Cue 2 years of driving cab and consulting while looking for another professional gig. We fell behind on the mortgage a few times over those 2 years but kept in contact with them appropriately, paid any outrageous reinstatement fees they demanded when we were able, etc.
I got a new job but lost the marriage in December of 03. We had the mortgage current when she moved out and I kept it that way until Feb of 06 when a guy showed up at my door telling me the house had been sold at auction and I had one week to vacate.
I called the county and everyone else on the gods’ green earth to find that, yes indeedy, Chase had auctioned off my house without bothering to let me know. When we got caught up on our mortgage, my wife and I had signed a 22 page document called a forebearance agreement. Basically it was a, “Hey we’re going to cease foreclosure proceedings, you’re going to pay us all the back money you owe us plus a penalty fee, agree to keep insurance and taxes current, etc.”
Well, the etc. really fucked us. On page 14 was a half page 8 point type paragraph that said Chase had the right to divest itself of the property if they wanted to sell the note to another provider but couldn’t. Since we’d had three foreclosure notices during the bad times, even though it had been avoided and paid up to date and kept current since from Nov. '03-Jan '06, they couldn’t easily flip the note and auctioned the house out from under me with no notice whatsoever.
I won’t even use a Chase ATM. Damned if those fuckers are getting the $2 fee from me.
I take some comfort in the fact that the house sold for almost a hundred grand more than I paid for it. It took six months of fighting and threatening to get the surplus funds, but once I did I was able to pay off my ex-wife and get completely out of debt with a reasonable life restarting fund left over. I take further comfort in the fact that since the housing collapse the place has been foreclosed on twice since and is currently listed at just 6 grand more than I paid for it in 2000. I’ve thought about buying the place again just as a Fuck You, but I don’t want to deal with any more mortgage hassles.
I’m glad this thread was posted. We are just starting to poke aronud for our first home purchase, and my dear friend of 10+ years, who will be our real estate broker, recommended 2 people she has done a lot of mortgage business with. One of them is with Wells Fargo.
Even though my friend recommended her, I am beginning to wonder what the deal is; I’ve left her 2 voice mails so far and not gotten a call back, and her work voice mail message is totally scrambled. It might just be a fluke, but I am beginning to wonder.
It’s not a fluke; it’s a warning; ignore it at your own peril. When we started working on our third deal with this mortgage broker, he lost our email for a month or so, then apologized and finally got around to answering it (with a big smiley-face on the email - "Oops, my bad 
"). I wish to hell we had realized that this guy was not the same professional we had dealt with before; somewhere along the way he had turned into a guy who forgot to answer emails, forgot to do paperwork, lost documents, negotiated useless deals, and gave us terrible advice.
I absolutely would not use Wells Fargo for a loan…at this time. From what I’ve heard from our title folks and our real estate folks and our other bank folks, Wells Fargo is usually decent ,or at least no worse than any other bank, when it comes to Home Mortgages. But right now, they are just slammed and so far behind on loans that it may take them months to catch up. Which is fine - I don’t give a shit how they run their business - but they WON’T TELL YOU that they’re not getting their loans done on time. You’ll just run into your closing date and Wells Fargo will still have your loan docs sitting at the bottom of a very large pile. Untouched and unnoticed.
Trust me…been there, done that. Last week.
Did you ever manage to close on the loan?
Yes, thank you very much. On Monday, exactly one week past our closing date. At least we were in an apartment - the sellers had already moved out and had to live in a hotel for a week. They were trying to get some money back from Wells Fargo for that - I’m not sure if they did.
Luckily for us, my wife works from home and spent pretty much 8 hours a day, every day for the last week, badgering Wells Fargo to speed it up and get it done. I’ve got to imagine we passed up a number of other folks waiting for their loan that didn’t have the ability to be full-time pain in the asses. Sorry other people!
But we’re in!
I’ve learned that in situations like this, things get done quicker when they people on the other end of the phone know who’s calling as soon as they hear your voice. Squeaky wheel and all that.
Well, I’m sorry for all the aggravation, but at least you closed.
Next step…refinance your loan AWAY from Wells Fargo!
We bought our house a year ago using Wachovia, which got taken over by WF a short time later. Our loan officer has had a horrendous time under her new employers. She called me last month practically in tears (we chat every so often) about the incompetent and borderline unethical practices that she’s being subjected to now that she’s with WF. She insinuated that some of the loan process holdups are deliberately manufactured by certain WF employees. No matter how she pleaded, how well she prepared the paperwork or how well she communicated with them, they would not complete their part on time ever.
I hope she can get another job with a good company. I’d refi, but the house is on the market (yes, after just one year, circumstances beyond our control). But if anyone asks me for lender advice, I’m going to tell them “NOT Wells Fargo!”
Wow. Just wow. I wonder WHAT ON EARTH is possessing them to deliberately delay things, what the motivation could be. Are they intentionally trying to force higher rates because the locks expire?
They did honor their original lock in our recent ref, though things hadn’t changed much either way. And there may well have been a glut of refinances (this was just after rates were pushed down to around 5%) causing work backlogs, but we refinanced in 2003 during a similar glut and had NO such delays.
Their service has gone downhill a lot, from our and others’ experiences.
Mama Zappa, I wondered that myself. It could be for the reason you suggested. From what my loan officer said, it’s definitely part of WF’s corporate culture. And AFAIK she’s dealing primarily with home purchases as opposed to refis, where they have closing dates that routinely get missed because WF drops the ball so regularly you can set your watch by it.
I’ll ask her next time we speak how things are going and if she’s learned more about WHY this egregious behavior is so ingrained in WF’s operations. That last conversation we had was so hard; the frustration in her voice was heartbreaking. And I was in no position to advise her. All I could do was listen and assure her that we thought she was a great loan officer (and she is).