Complaint Review: Americor Lending Group - Irvine California

Ive been working in the mortgage industry for years, and in my own experience, closed over 450 mortgages. In that time, Ive heard it all, and sadly this isnt the first time Ive become aware of a similar situation. My response here is not defending the lender at all, but rather, hoping to give some insight to help prevent it from happening again and pointing out a few important occurances. First, I noticed that you felt it was "too good to be true" which it was, and as you know how the saying goes. Sometimes it sounds too good but actually is true, but I digress. If you had a bunch of credit card debt, consolidating them into one home loan would make a dramatic difference in your monthly payment, but ANY lender would be able to do about the same thing. I cant tell you how many times Ive told a potential client that a loan they had been offered elsewhere was just not possible, and it was. Services like Bankrate are worthless, and will be about 1/2 as deceptive as this offer. Your best indication is to ask a few reputible lenders what they have seen as the most common interest rates on recently CLOSED loans. Sadly, its very easy (and even compelling) for a loan officer to do the kinds of shady things this one did to you. A deferred interest loan with $10k in closing costs would have paid that individual thousands of dollars in commission. They way that kind of person looks at it is that if they can scam two people in a month, they are living large. As far as the payoff request and your home equity loan being frozen. You must have signed at least an initial application package with a borrowers certification in it, which was probably included in the documents you said you sent in within 72 hours. That document would have been required by your current loan holder in order to even produce a payoff. In that capacity, you had authorized this lender to get the payoff, so the bounced check wasnt entirely their fault. The borrowers certificaiton includes verbage such as "I have applied for a loan with 'company' and authorize 'company' to recieve information on my behalf required to process this loan, such as verificaion of employment, bank deposits, payoff, etc." so they were within their bounds in doing so. They should have asked you if you were using your home equity line as that would have been easy to avoid. Lastly, it could have been left out of your payoff if you wanted to continue to use it beyond getting a new first loan. In the future, you may avoid paying a deposit if you offer to pay the appraiser at the time of the appointment. This does not entitle you to the actual appraisal report at the time, but it does give you some sort of control over the situation, and prevents you from making a deposit that is possibly twice the actual cost of the appraisal itself. I wouldnt hope to get anything out of that particular appraisal anyway, as most crooked lenders work with crooked appraisers who will give the value needed to support the loan regardless of the actual sales value of the home. So taking that report and providing it to a different (quality) lender would be pointless. Deferred interest loans are scary, and should only be used in a few, very specific situations. In my experience, I have closed exactly 2 of them. 2 out of 450 should be a good indication of the actual viability of such a loan, and for most people, it should be avoided. A good faith estimate is completely worthless, but also completely required. As far as I know, only the state of Illinois has introduced lending laws pertaining to this often-abused document. In that state, if the cost of the loan changes by more than $100 during processing, the lender must notify the borrower in writing within 3 days. I would imagine that most states will hop on this bandwagon as its one of the most sensbile and overdue laws Ive heard of. Currently, in every other state, there is no law that says the final closing figures have to be even close to the original estimate, leaving the door wide open for this exact situation to repeat itself over and over again. I cant tell you how many times Ive had a potential client tell me that some other lender is going to give them their loan for no points at such-and-such rate with such-and-such terms, and the whole time, I know exactly whats going on and its somewhat like this. The GFE means nothing, and more often than not, its used to intice a consumer into committing to a loan (paying deposits, signing paperwork) that has terms that simply cannot be met, such as 2% fixed rate and $595 cost. As much as Id like to put my name and contact information in here (Ive built a long list of happy, closed clients and referrals by avoiding these kinds of practices) so that I could offer straight-forward, honest assistance, I cant. In the future, dont dismiss the loan officer from the well known, reputable company because the GFE has costs that appear to be a few hundred dollars higher, or a rate thats .125% higher, in favor of the company you have never heard of, because chances are that one GFE is accurate and honest and the other is not. I have likened this to many other consumer purchases in the past, but if you think about it, it all makes sense. If a lender can say its one of the largest of 60,000 companies, it would only make sense that they are doing something correct. People dont shop at Walmart because its more expensive, and thats why its the biggest retailer in the country. Similarly, a company like Countrywide (the largest retail lender in the country) is more than likely not abusing its customers or charging rates and costs that are above average. That simply wouldnt make sense. In conclusion, be careful signing even your initial application. You are going to be giving that company permission to order a payoff of your current loan, call your employer and your bank, and locking you into paying a sometimes hefty deposit that you may never get back. Call a few big, popular companies and inquire about common rates, costs, and programs. I advise that you actually do business with these companies because its safe, but even if you simply use them as market barometer, you will have done yourself a favor. Avoid advertising services like bankrate.com, as they are paid by these companies to put their names and rates out, and its almost 100% innacurate. And last, but not least, if you have one rogue offer that seems too much better than the rest to be true, it probbaly isnt. I hope this lengthy response helps you, or anyone else considering going down the same road, to prevent the anxiety and financial loss associated. Best wishes!