Lommers
Irving,#2UPDATE Employee
Thu, February 14, 2008
First of all I AM NOT speaking on behalf of First Horizon...the following is only my opinion and in no way reflects FH's view of your situation. I looked up your loan info on the property located on Broman Way. It looks like you used to be an employee of First Horizon sometime before you took out a loan? That's very interesting. Now you get on here saying your escrows were screwed up so you missed your payments. things seem very fishy here. I honestly don't think you used all your resources to fix this in the beginning. I would assume you closed on a Friday late in the day and the loan didn't fund until the following monday...this accounts for the 3 days differentiation in your precieved close date and the actual funding date. when you fund into the next month like that your first payment will always be 30 days after the 1st of the next month. (Funded 5/02/06...1st of next month is 6/01/06...30 days after that = 7/01/06) I assume the title company/attorney that wrote up your documents didn't include any pre-paid interest when they should have known the loan wouldn't fund until 5/02 and you should have paid 30 full days of pre-paid interest at closing PLUS you would have had 1 additional month of taxes and insurance collected at closing. So, you started your loan out being 30days short in interest and 1 month short in taxes (your tax was close to $400/month) and hazard insurance. This probably totaled around 1340 for interest and an additional 432 for taxes and insurance that your escrow was short. You should be blaming whom ever closed escrow for you. Once you sign and the attorney/title company funds and records we can't go back and fix things with the closing...no one can. THIS is where the error was made. FH customer service wouldn't be able to see that stuff. You had an extra month from what you were expecting in the beginning where you had no mortgage payment...what happened to that money?????? 2 words: Financial Mismanagement Also, as a side note...once the forclosure process starts no lender will accept payments anymore. I also find it interesting that you filed bankruptcy at the same time this all happened. It looks like you got in over your head with the 100% financing you took out and it made you house poor. I feel bad you had to go through all that, but the bottom line is that you are responsible for your own finances and you must be more proactive in resolving problems.
Maurizio
Lyndeborough,#3Author of original report
Mon, August 06, 2007
To Trucker2 from Birdsboro, PA: It truly hurts me to read that FHHLC is torturing you with the same sort of tactic that they used with us. It is exactly as you suggest: they love to exploit the Escrow shortage scam to "squeeze" their borrowers, even while under bankruptcy protection (in particular those who have PMI coverage, namely those who have had to borrow more than 80% Loan-to-Value), knowing that the bankruptcy court does not have the personnel, or the time, to check up on the mortgage company's allegations of shortages. This gives mortgage companies absolutely free hand to declare any and all shortages they want. Who's going to check on them anyway? Rest assured, Trucker2, that your recommendation to check their escrow accounting was already on my earliest checklist. Unfortunately, however, it was not on that of our bankruptcy lawyer (possibly too much effort, for too little money?), who instead preferred to give more credibility to FHHLC than to us, his own clients! After charging us for 2 hours of "loan accounting examination" (i.e. trying to read the copy of First Horizon's loan accounting print-out that we demanded through the court, after First Horizon came up with their first Motion to Dismiss) and giving up entirely, all our lawyer could suggest was: "well, why don't you just pay up the shortage now and let's work out the difference later ...". Hell, no! I personally had to sort through this 16-page, densely-printed computer print-out, with misaligned columns and cryptic headings and abbreviations, which looked purposely scrambled to discourage any normal human being from trying to understand what was going on. But, being myself an experienced database developer, and being used to working with misaligned database printouts and assigning and interpreting abbreviated heading names and mnemonic codes, I figured out their scheme to the very last comma! It's just that our attorney didn't care to defend our case, not even with the fully documented evidence placed into his hands. I even tried to simplify the accounting for him, by reordering the tables and summing up the escrow account balance, year by year, with the left-hand column showing "Escrow Money In" and the right-hand column showing "Escrow Money Out". Would you believe that after demonstrating that we actually had a surplus of some $56 and a couple of cents, he still had the courage to disregard this as valid proof of our case against First Horizon's allegations of several thousands of dollars in escrow shortage? We actually wanted to ask our lawyer, who the heck he thought he was working for...? And how about another kicker I discovered while sorting through this scrambled piece of an attempt at accounting: would you believe that First Horizon actually took OUR money, paid to them and placed into a "suspense account", to pay for THEIR "attorney expenses". Yes! Amazingly, we paid for THEIR attorney to work against US, and the evidence was printed right there in clear view! And our attorney replied: "yeh, well .." We were at a point where we suspected that he had been offered a "piece of the pie", if he just kept quiet and did what he was told ... Let's see how big the pie was, in our case: Forty percent of $272,000 (principal balance) = $108,800 collected from the PMI insurance in April 2006. Then the resale of the house at $259,900 later in September of the same year. Total proceeds: $368,700. Initial Loan: $279,900 Net Profit: 368,700 - 279,900 = $88,800. Hmmm ... You can split up the pie fairly generously and still have enough to set up a pretty grand party with $88,800, don't you think? And all this just by burying some false figures in the midst of several other thousands of undecipherable numbers on several pages of computer print-out to show that there is an Escrow shortage that no bankruptcy court (or Trustee) is ever going to check up on. But hey, things have just recently taken a new turn for the better for us; we finally sold our property (actually properties) in Germany and have therefore got ourselves a decent balance again on our checking account, a part of which we intend to put to good use - were not revealing how, yet ... Therefore, a note of warning to Mr. Jerry Baker, CEO of First Horizon, also Mr Edward Hyne, VP of the Legal Department, and all those of the Loss Mitigation department, who rudely turned us down and refused to work with us during the whole three years of this "Escrow Game" you were playing. Remember that it is easy to kick someone who is already down on the ground. But someday, that someone might get right back up again, then you will most likely live to regret having kicked that person. Think about it before you do it again with the next one(s). (Has anyone at FHHLC ever read "Count of Montecristo", by Alexandre Dumas, by chance? Not likely. too much culture - could be dangerous) To Trucker2 from Birdsboro, PA, all I can advise you for now is to have faith. Brace yourself for the added hardship you are going to go through when they do come to take your house, and set your goals NOW on what comes after. Just make sure in the process that your whole family holds together and doesn't break up under the pressure of what is still to come, and rest assured that somehow, some time, a higher justice may just come along and surprise you by putting things right again. Head up, look straight forward and think "bulldozer" (not literally though that's illegal).
Driver2
Birdsboro,#4Consumer Suggestion
Sun, August 05, 2007
I just wanted to let you know that you are not the only victim of fhhl. I am going to file my report as sone as i am done here. I was forced to file file for bankruptcy as were you. payments were sent back to me much in the same matter as yours were. i had no problems when the mortgage co. was called f.t. mortgage. as soon as they changed there name to first horizon home loans did the problems start. It took about three years to figure out what they were doing. fhhl claimed a deficiency in my escrow account and raised my payment to make up the shortage. however when they recieved my payments, they were placed into a suspence account. here comes the part that really hurts. fhhl than applied money to my account at the old payment amount, and held onto the money that was sent to cure the escrow shortage. the next year my escrow was even shorter and again my payment went up. i complainded to my lawyer over and over again and he just blew it off like i was some kind of idiot. the third year, again my escrow was short and my payment went even higher. again i complained to my lawyer and finally got through to him that something was fishy. he asked their (fhhl) lawyer to get me an audit spreadsheet so we could examine it. when i finally received the audit, the truth was revealed. fhhl held my escrow money in a different suspence account from my prepetition payments made through the trustee. and when they had enough of my escrow money hidden from me, they made themselves unauthorized payments. when i let them know i was on to them, suddenly my payment came down to a more reasonable level. proving to me that i had caught them in a scam. being in bankruptcy, i was already tight on cash. and with this little game of taking my money from my escrow and making themselves payments, my bankruptcy failed. my home will be sold at sheriff sale on 8-10-2007. it seems to me that they want my house very badly. so like you did i will let them have it. so check your escrow and tax statements. if you find that your escrow account was shorted the extra money that you sent in, count your total payments made in each year. i dont know if they were doing this to you or not, and they may not have been able to steal (if you will) enough of your escrow money to make themselves a full payment. even if they didn't, they got it in the end anyway. fhhl made themselves two payments with my escrow money. please read my report named fhhl escrow scam unfair and deceptive acts. good luck trucker2
Maurizio
Lyndeborough,#5Author of original report
Thu, November 02, 2006
True ... we conveniently left out the fact that we did not have one whole additional month's instalment (on top of the regular $2,330/month) readily available in the months following the closing. Especially after our moving costs from Europe to the US turned out much, much higher than the original estimates of costs, besides the fact that we had no credit history in the US, making it necessary for us to use plain old cash for everything, in most cases even up front. It is also true that one month is not sufficient to proceed with foreclosure. No doubt, the fact that FHHLC later rejected a payment in October and then rejected a Western Union transfer (count: total three, including the initial instalment) did not escape your sharp sense of observation ... ? Actually, the forebearance agreement in December, though somewhat late, was supposed to help us catch up with the (by then) two instalments in arrears, after FHHLC's accounting error was duly recognized, and they had started to do something about it. Unfortunately, FHHLC blew that opportunity, too. The poor/lacking organization between their various departments resulted in the rejection of payments already agreed with their customer service. A typical example of the large-company (mis)organization, where the "left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing". And this from a company that claims to be ISO compliant ... (I wonder who does their audits?) Also count the fact that our loan had a very high PMI coverage (40% of $279,900). Can you guess who the beneficiary was? Not a bad bonus, in our opinion ... I wonder if I could get a bonus like that after screwing up in my job ...? We appreciate your comment, stating that "being right" does not matter (sometimes?). We were made especially aware of this at a preliminary consultation with one of the lawyers we contacted in January 2004, after receiving the first foreclosure notice. This particular attorney stated that he had no doubt that he could clear the issue; all we had to do was come up with a retainer of $25,000, and he could settle the rest. And this regardless of whether we actually "were right", or not. Just a question of having enough money to demonstrate that we could "have" a right ... Although my wife and I are not new to homeownership, it is true that this was our first American home purchase, and we had never before experienced a mortgage company or bank that would purposely refuse payments towards our loan with them, to the point of "forcing" us deeper into default and then, into foreclosure. European banks are all too happy to accomodate their customers and receive payments for the money they lend you, under any circumstance whatsoever. Especially if the error was their own making and admittedly so, like in our case, as stated in FHHLC's letter of apology in late June 2003 and from their attorney's letter of April 2004, offering to reinstate the loan, waive late fees, waive legal fees, correct the credit reporting, etc ... . What does that kind of offer tell you? The most prominent issue here was FHHLC's lack of coordination and lack of attention to details, most likely due to the large volume of loans they were attempting to handle during the Real Estate Boom of 2003-04. Inevitably, it appears, one or two(??) loans slipped through their control procedures ... At any rate, there is apparently a good reason why FHHLC's membership with the Better Business Bureau (Dallas office) was REVOKED on July 10, 2006. Sixty three complaints in 36 months is a fair record, don't you agree?
Peter
Pony,#6Consumer Comment
Thu, November 02, 2006
You don't go into foreclosure over an error that occurred on your billing statement ONE MONTH. There are obviously many other issues at play here, which you have conveniently left out. In the case of mortgages, if there is a small error that you cannot get resolved before your next payment is due, go ahead and pay the extra amount showing on your bill so that your loan will remain current. THEN you can look into getting the situation resolved, and have the additional amount you paid either applied to your next payment or applied as additional principle. Not taking care of an erroneous amount promptly in the name of "being right" sometimes does not matter in the end.