I see ads saying that such-and-such bank is a trustworthy one from which to get a mortgage, and Mrs. Napier has been fretting about how well the bank that holds our mortgage (which on that particular day was Countrywide) would weather the rough economy this spring. And today I’m reading a letter from the latest one of these traders to buy my mortgage, Bank of America, reassuring me that they are “one of the world’s largest and most trusted financial institutions”. Seems like all of the dozen or so who have passed me around like a chess pawn try to comfort me with this kind of thing.
I have not the least clue why I need to be able to trust them. I got the cash. I’m sitting in the house now. The law won’t let them charge any more (it’s fixed rate). What do I need to count on them for now? Didn’t I already get everything I could from them?
Well, if you have an escrow account, you need to trust them to pay your taxes and insurance from that account rather than spend in on beer and BBQ ribs. You also need to trust them to keep the accounts balanced and not try to rip you off with “Escrow Account Shortfalls”. I think that’s what it called when there isn’t enough in the account to pay what’s due.
Other than that I’ve got nothing.
And my Countrywide loan was also taken over by BOA, so I’m also interested.:dubious:
Several other things that a Bad Company can do to make trouble for you:
Not applying extra payments properly. I.e., you add a couple hundred dollars to principal and they consider it an advance on the next payment. The first shortens the payoff time and reduces interest. The second means they keep your money interest free for a while. (Made lots of phone calls about this. Having hardcopy of the actual payment with the" extra principal" box checked off never made a difference.)
Having a nightmare customer support system. Long phone menu, long wait times, CSRs that can’t really do anything to fix recurring problems.
Not putting the paperwork thru properly when you payoff the mortgage or otherwise being jerks. You don’t want to find out when you sell the house that the deed stills lists a mortgage and lawyers start adding fees to get things cleared up.
Speaking of payoff: You owe less than the escrow amount: “Hey, send us the difference, okay?” “No can do, you have to send a certified check for the payoff amount (multiple phone calls required) and then we’ll send the escrow money sometime later.” “Why?” “Why not?”
Yeah, but it’s not like you have any choice in the matter. They buy and sell my mortgage all the time and nobody ever asks me how I feel about it. I’m with Wells Fargo now and I can’t stand them.
I had a mortgage with Countrywide for 9 years. They sucked in so many different ways it boggled the mind. The last year we owned the house were rather tumultuous for us, we tried to work with Countrywide and without fail, it sucked beyond belief. Every personal interaction with them I had over 9 years was, without exception, horrifying.
They sold us to a company called Ocwen. About 2 weeks later, the mortgage was paid off as we sold our house. I can honestly say, I don’t feel one tiny bit bad about Countrywide, they are finally getting what they have been giving.
Interestingly, we’ve been with Countrywide for years and have had no problems whatsoever. They probably wouldn’t be my first choice (our mortgage was sold to them – we didn’t pick them), but they’ve given us no reason to want to leave, or to distrust them. Obviously YMMV.
Wait until you live in an area where flood insurance is required and they annually forget to pay it in a timely manner resulting in you getting screwed over. Or, accidentally post you mortgage payment to the escrow account and tell you that they can not fix it because they can not call, email, fax, mail or carrier pigeon any information to that department but will happily send you a letter stating that they will begin foreclosure proceedings for missing a payment. Or when you call to find out why they haven’t made your homeowners insurance payment, instead of finding out why, spend the time trying to SELL you their insurance. Or spend days trying to get the automatic payments processed through their system, only to have it NEVER work. It was endless. I’m now mortgage free. Wheee!
I’ve had a couple Countrywide mortgages. I’ve done original purchase, refis, and sold places with their mortgages attached. They’ve never been anything but admnistratively perfect and quite pleasant to deal with. YMMV.
AIUI now, 100% of Countrywide has been sold to BofA. Not just a few loans, the whole company, including all th retail locations and the entire loan portfolio. I have never had anything but hate for BofA and their treatment of customers.
So we shall see whether my current Countrywide-now-BofA mortgage remains troublefree. I am hoping, but not optimistic.
Yep - your mortgage gets sold and resold and I’ve heard of people getting letters out of the blue saying “send your next mortgage payment to xxx instead of yyy”. Which can be legit… or can be a scam.
In contrast to you, we’ve had very good luck in general with our Wells Fargo mortgages. There were delays with this last refi, but they did honor the original rate commitment, and the servicing has always been flawless. I wonder what factors go into the situations where person A has a stellar experience, and B has a sucky one, when everything else seems comparable.
We once had a home equity line of credit with Prudential. We paid it off when we redid our kitchen and took out a fixed-term loan for the remodel and to pay off the HELOC.
This did not stop Prudential from hitting our checking account for several hundred dollars a few weeks later for our usual monthly payment. When I called to complain, I got “we’ll refund in 30 days”. Huh??? If I’m a day late they’ll send a nastygram, but they can steal my money and hold it, interest-free, for a month??? Bastids.
Not to mention, the monthly payment was based on a percentage of the outstanding balance. Reasonable. But, if I tried paying a bit extra in any given month, they treated it as a partial payment of that month’s bill, and their automatic payment would be adjusted downward accordingly. So, I wound up having to time my extra payments PERFECTLY: They’d determine the balance on, say, the 20th, but the next billing statement was the 25th. If I got my extra money in to them exactly between that narrow window, I actually got to make the extra payment count.
Well, there certainly are things mortgage holders can do to make things difficult. One of mine credited my payment to another customer and started sending me nastygrams. After we argued, they admitted losing the payment, but demanded I send a copy of the check (at my expense) and kept up the nastygrams. So, I got the copy sent, and they still wouldn’t consider the bill paid, because their own printing on the back of the check was illegible. So I threatened to get a lawyer and they stopped.
But none of these are things that depend on them being a big financial institution on solid footing (unless the escrow account cheating is because they are tanking, I guess).