Complaint Review: Ameriquest Mortgage - Henderson Nevada

My husband and I refinanced with Ameriquest in March of 2003 in order to do what we thought would help our terrible financial situation. My husband had been injured at work in Sept of 2001, a year after our wedding.

During the time he could not work and was not being paid, we were forced to charge literally tens of thousands of dollars on credit cards just in order to pay bills, and feed ourselves and our new baby. I became the only money-earner when his insurance company stopped paying him, and while our credit was still good, we were beginning to feel like we were in over our heads.

Ameriquest cold-called us just before my husband returned to work in March of 2003 and said they could save us hundreds off of our previous loan (which was $1390/mo) by refinancing with them as well as get around $12,000 in cash back to help us pay off our credit debt. I was actually surprised that Ameriquest called and offered us this refinance because of our small (or nonexistent) and somewhat unreliable income - I feel like such a fool after reading this board. If only I'd known a year ago what I know now.

They made things confusing from the start. When we went to sign the loan papers, the first time the we ended up walking out because the amount it showed we would get back was THOUSANDS less than we were promised; Brian, the loan agent, knew we were desperate for money (we were over $30K in credit debt and wanted to pay it some of it off) called and "worked with the numbers" and said they hadn't calculated the taxes, or something to that effect, and that was the reason for the change.

I told him we would not pay a higher rate and needed that cash or we'd cancel the refinance. We played phone tag for a week and set up another date to sign, supposedly this time with us receiving over $8000 in cash back. This time, it was planned last minute at the end of the evening, and there with our cranky baby we were rushed through the signing process. When we read the section that had "Pre-payment penalty - YES" checked, we asked the title officer if that was true. She said to my husband and I that ONLY in the case of refinance, and NOT SALE, would this apply, for three years. We hesitatingly agreed, feeling exhausted after the month-long approval process and in desperate need of the funds to pay credit debt, we signed.

At the end, we again received a check for around $2000 less than we expected.

Within two months of taking out the loan, we were told our payment (which we were already struggling to make) would be going up by about $190, supposedly for "future escrow payments" this was almost exactly what we'd paid with our previous loan. We were DEVASTATED as we had had this same thing happen with our former mortgage company and had specifically been assured by Brian that it would not happen with Ameriquest. Then, two months after that, I received a letter from the City of Henderson, stating I was late on my Biannual LID taxes, something my previous mortgage had covered. I had asked Brian if all of the taxes were covered the same, etc, and was told they were. However apparently that was untrue. We now owe an additional $700 plus late fees out of pocket because of that lie.

Fast forward to November of 2003. My husband's new job slowed down dramatically, leaving him work only 20 hours per week through the holidays. Our baby got very ill with the flu in December and could not go to daycare, so I was replaced at my own job (I had been the primary breadwinner prior to having our baby due to his injury). We suddenly found ourselves behind on our mortgage. We kept in WEEKLY contact with Ameriquest, always being told that as long as we kept in contact, we would not lose our home.

The last correspondence I received was from three weeks ago, at the beginning of February, very kindly suggesting that I use my tax return to bring my loan current. I called them back four days later and could not speak to a loan rep, but left a message stating that I did plan on using my entire tax refund to bring us current. We knew we were in over our heads at that point, and the next week sadly resolved to sell our home in order to keep any equity we had gained. Because of his previous injury, we have no life insurance, no savings, no 401 or anything like that, are $50K in credit debt that was used to pay basic living bills, and we definitely didn't want to lose our only asset.

I never heard back after leaving my message, but I called Ameriquest again the following week and again tried to get the representative who had sent the friendly tax refund letter. Again she wasn't available, so again I left a voicemail, but this time saying we were planning on selling, and asking how this would work with Ameriquest. Mind you, to this point we have still yet to receive anything more than our regular monthly statement showing our delinquency, a lot of reassurance that things were okay from the people at Ameriquest, and the friendly letter about the taxes dated a few weeks prior. Then, this past Friday (2/27), my husband calls Ameriquest to find out why they hadn't returned my two previous phone calls, and was told that we are now in foreclosure, effective the day prior.

I just pulled out our original paperwork, and discovered they had made our income literally $4000 more a month than we made, something we didn't tell them since my husband was making a fixed disability income at the time of the loan. Now, we are facing foreclosure. We can't afford these outrageous payments and basically got screwed out of tens of thousands of dollars in this process. We have a young baby, we are both in college and need a roof over our head, and Ameriquest saw our desperate situation and took advantage of it. WHAT CAN WE DO???? Any help from ANYONE regarding class action suits against Ameriquest, PLEASE contact me ASAP!

Rhonda

Henderson, Nevada
U.S.A.

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