Complaint Review: Tony Costabile - 227 W. Monroe; 24th Floor Illinois

My 75 year old mother is in the market to purchase townhouse and had asked me to help her since I would living there with her.  Since this is the first time either of us has ever purchase a home (my dad had purchased their other home) we took the advise of our realtor and used one of the mortgage people she had used in the past.... Tony Costabile with CitiBank. 

My mom has great credit, 700 plus. Tony even said himself that her credit was really good and rock solid. She has a fixed income of more than enough to pay for the townhouse  every month and that income will never change except to increase a little each year.  She has minimal bills, a home equity loan and 2 credit cards that she pays more on all each month than's required....not even a car payment. She has right at the moment only  Enough for the earnest money, inspection fees, Tony's fee of $357.05, a year's worth of ins., lawyer's fee and the closing costs.... downpayment etc.  But not really anything more than that. 

But Tony knew all of that because he went over everything having to do with her finances with her on the phone the first time they spoke even....he went over her finances with a fine tooth comb so to speak. Then She made copies of everything for him including the last 2 months of bank statements, savings and checking just like he had asked.  He knew exactly what she had and did not have and she was very open and honest with him about her finances. I was sitting right there during the meeting at her house and know EVERYTHING was discussed about her finances.

All during the couple week process he told her that she was good....no issues with her finances.  She had pre-qualified and then pre-approved without any problems and he didn't see anything regarding her finances holding her up from getting the townhouse. Even the realtor thought this would be a quick sale with no issues because of what Tony had led everyone to believe. 

Well on the fifth day after the contract was signed, at the close of the business day, he calls me to say that he had bad news, the loan did't go through because of some new law that was just passed in the last couple of days and he had just found out about it that day, (06/07/13) .  He said  " the feds in all their great wisdom, have changed the law because of what happened in the housing market in the past years. They now require you to have a reserve of 6 months worth of mortgage, ins. taxs, etc. not only for the new home but for the old one too."  

He then told me my mom would have to have a total of about $22,000.00 just sitting as a reserve in her account for the loan to go through. He said they were just notified that day (again 06/07/13) and the only way to beat it was to close by 06/15/13 and since that was only the 5th day after the contract was signed there was no way anyone could close that fast. So "sorry" and hope you have a good weekend or something to that effect.....  He then called my mom and told her the same thing.

SERIOUSLY....WTH?!!!!  I then called my realtor who Tony had also told the same thing to and she was in shock too and very confused as to what had just happened because she was also under the impression that there were absolutely NO issues as far as the financing because of what Tony had been telling us all. She didn't know anything about this so called new law either. When I got home from work I looked on the internet for literally a couple of hours to see if I could find out something about this supposedly "new law" and I found nothing.  

So today (06/08/13) I called two other mortgage loan officers and asked them about this.  The first kind of laughed (nicely) when I asked him about this "new law"  and told me "yes, that was true about most banks wanting a reserve BUT it wasn't new at all ...it had been around for a while".  His only explanation he could think of of why  Tony would have not told my mom or myself right away was "either he didn't know what he was doing or he screwed up, either way he dropped the ball."

The second mortgage man I spoke with has been in the business a long time and very knowledgable also . He owns his own company for investment mortgages in AZ.  A friend of mine had me call him after she heard my story.  He was more direct in what he thought Tony was up to.....He said that there was absolutely NO WAY Tony did not know about the "reserve money". That that's something he should have told her about immediately. And since he knew after talking to my mom about her finances right away that there was no reserve money he shouldn't have let it go any farther if he could not provide her with some alternatives.

Since he knew there was no other way she could get financing with CitiBank he should have told her right away so she wouldn't have preceded with everything and would not have been charged the $357.05 fee from him plus the $275.00 inspector fee also.  This gentleman I spoke with seems to believe that Tony did this to get the $357.05 fee.. So I guess he figured at least it was a way to make a quick $357  if nothing else. 

Or maybe Tony is really that stupid and just didn't know about the reserve money??  And then lied about it being a "new law" that he was just told about on Friday to cover his incompetence??  HA!!  NO, Tony's not that stupid....I found his two different websites today and the one...MortgagesByTony.net  mentions "reserve money" not just once but twice that I could see. 

So way to go Tony...You knowingly ripped off a 75 year old woman $632.05...I hope you feel really good about yourself!!!  And I hope CitiBank feels really good about their employees and their practice of stealing from people, especially an older woman that he knew had absolutely no knowledge of any of this, niether did I,  and we counted on him being honest with us.....kind of sad to think  ...but stupid us for trusting him! 

Tony Costabile is a liar!!!  He lied not only to us but to our realtor who has worked with him before and even reccomended him....Nice Tony, real nice guy!!  And really great choice of employees to represent you CitiBank!!!  Maybe you are the stupid ones for hiring someone like Tony or maybe your'e the ones telling him to cheat people!!