Complaint Review: Meadowbrook Financial Mortgage Bankers Corp

The existing reverse mortgage provided a monthly income of $2500 per month for life.  I received a call from a salesperson from Meadowbrook.  During the course of my conversations with Jeff, I indicated that would be interested if we can receive more than the $2500 a month.  I repeated this several times over the months that this process went on.

As we got close to closing we received a draft of the loan document. It was probably close to a hundred pages of all of the best boilerplate legal language.  According to this document the monthly payment was going to be satisfactory.

 The final document  was presented by a contracted Notary that was provided by Meadowbrook.  She just wanted us to sign in the mirad of locations in the document.  I should have slowed her down to go over each and every page.  I failed to see that the monthly payout was about $600 less than the payments we received from the original reverse mortgage.  The notary took the signed documents with her so that she could make a copy of the signed document.

  The copy of the final document  did not arrive as soon as I had expected, when I saw the final monthly payment  as called out in this version of the document.  I contacted Jeff to tell him that there was a mistake.  After heated conversations he told me that under the rules of reverse mortgages, nothing could be done.  

I bumped up to an officer of the corporation who seemed invested in working with me.  Ultimately he sounded the same story as Jeff which was essentially, "too bad, you need to live with it."  As anyone knows who has done a reverse mortagage, it is a very,very expensive process.  The end result was that Meadowbrook made all of its fees and commissions while I wound up with $600 a month less.  

They did promise me that in a year, when it was legal to do another refi, that they would do it for me, free of charge.  A year passed and it turns out that I would be even worse off.  

The Golden Rule of reverse mortgage law is that there can only be a refi if it benefits the borrower.  As much hand wringing as the officer did, Meadowbrook failed in its fundamental duty.  There were other irritations, such as the promise that I would be reimbursed for the home appraisal.  There were several calls telling me that the check was in the mail.  It did finally arrive, but only by my calling, cursing, yelling...  There is nothing easy in dealing with Meadowbrook and they do not stand by their mistakes.

Depending on my life span, I am out a minimum of $60,000 in hard cash, plus I incurred all of the high cost of obtaining the loan. 

According to them, the salesperson is no longer there.

If you are considering Meadowbrook, I would look at other options.