Consumer complaint received 2018-02-28
Company: EVERBANK, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION
State: FL
Product: Mortgage
Sub-product: Conventional home mortgage
Issue: Closing on a mortgage

Complaint:
In XX/XX/2017 we ( my girlfriend and I ) began applying for mortgages to buy a house, and decided to go with XXXX because they offered the best overall rate package for us. We both had excellent credit scores in the high XXXX, and enough debt-income ratio to cover the payments. ( it is this debt-income ratio that will come into play later on ). We were issued a pre-approval letter accordingly. 

The goal was to close on the property before XXXX XXXX in order to keep the homestead exemption and make taxes easier to deal with. 

Some history : I am a XXXX XXXX ( XXXX XXXX ) by trade, I have run my own business for 17 years. I own two properties, outright ( no mortgage on either ), one in the USA ( annual property tax {$1300.00} ) and one in XXXX ( annual property tax {$130.00} ). The only debt I had was on one auto loan which is about 2/3 paid off, and +- {$3000.00} in credit cards. My girlfriend owned no properties, had no mortgages, and had one auto loan with about {$11000.00} outstanding. We are both gainfully employed. The loan amount on the house was {$280000.00}, with 20 % down. 

Everything was going well, but at some point we began to be badgered for little details about the XXXX property that I managed to dig up paperwork on to prove this or that ( first they wanted proof of ownership, then they wanted proof of the annual property taxes, etc ) it was very difficult to get this information from the USA but not impossible, and I kept supplying it to them. Each time I would furnish adequate documentation, they would become more and more demanding. In this case, they were downright obsessed with the property taxes on my XXXX property ( annually {$130.00}! ). I suspected something had gone awry even if the property taxes there were the same as they were in the USA, it still would not sway my debt/income ratio enough to break anything. My growing impression through the whole thing was that the underwriter had taken some personal dislike to me and was trying to find some way to say no ( a suspicion I would find true later ). 

Closing day ( XX/XX/XXXX ) got closer and closer, and still no word from the underwriters. Finally, on the XXXX, two days before closing, we were told that we must pay off our auto loans ( again, not enough to sway our debt/income ratio ) or the deal was off. 2 days before closing? This sort of thing is addressed at the BEGINNING of the loan application, not two days before closing. We could have paid it off, but not in time for closing and not in time for the XXXX XXXX deadline. 

Everyone was surprised, not just us. The realtor and and the title company were both so surprised that they both recommend I take this to the CPFB when it was all over. 

So we did eventually close, but here is the funny thing we had to remove my name from the mortgage and run it solely through my girlfriend, who has more debt than I do, no wholly owned assets to her name, and has only had her present job for less than 2 months. With that, they managed to put it in the hands of a different underwriter and push it through to close before XXXX XXXX. 

So in asking around, I dug up little tidbits of information from my realtor and my mortgage broker, which confirmed my suspicions the underwriter XXXX me and saw that I am an adult media creator, took a personal moral grudge against me, and decided to take it upon themself to make my application as difficult as possible, probably hoping I would bail and seek another lender. And since I was able to continually provide them with the annoying little bites of documentation they requested over and over ad nauseam, they decided to try and sabotage the process last-minute with the auto loan payoff demands. Its as simple as that.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation