Consumer complaint received 2022-04-29
Company: Empire Home Loans, Inc.
State: NV
Product: Mortgage
Sub-product: Conventional home mortgage
Issue: Applying for a mortgage or refinancing an existing mortgage

Complaint:
I started working with XXXX XXXX ( XXXX # XXXX ) with XXXXXXXX XXXX XXXX  on XX/XX/XXXX we came to her looking for a home loan. Our initial intention was to purchase my father in laws home from him, that did not work out due to county issues. We started working with her to purchase a home we wanted to put an offer in on, on XX/XX/XXXX. She provided us with a pre approval and said everything looked great, we were all set to buy this home. The pre-approval was for 10 % down which we absolutely can not afford, I immediately let her know we can not do 10 % down. She assured me that we will change that during escrow, it was just quicker to get the pre-approval at 10 % down. We put in an offer which was accepted on XX/XX/XXXX. I wrote a check to XXXX XXXX on XX/XX/XXXX for our XXXX which was {$2500.00}. Our 45 day escrow opens. We continued throughout the month with only good news coming from XXXX. My realtors became increasingly worried as our appraisal still had not been ordered as of XX/XX/XXXX. XXXX ignored emails and phones calls for a couple of weeks until finally she submitted for the appraisal on XX/XX/XXXX. One month after escrow had opened. This is when we started to notice the lies. She claimed our appraisal wasn't being picked up because the property was rural and appraisers do not like to appraise rural properties, this causes escrow to be extended the first time. We are unable to get the appraisal report back in time for closing. At this time XXXX contacts me and says our credit isn't high enough to get an approval for this loan ( news to me!! she had always said everything was fine ) she said it would be better to work with just my husbands credit and not mine so we decided to put the home in just my husband name, I don't have an income so I thought this must be why. She told me my husband has no credit score and she just needs SOMETHING. Just a score. She told me to get a loan in our personal names if we can, thats what we need to qualify for this home. So we did. We refinanced a company vehicle loan ( we are business owners ) into our personal names. Once that is done, about a week goes by, she said thats all she needed and how great it was that we got that loan in our names. About a week later she tells me that my husband actually need TWO lines of credit. So I open a credit card. About two weeks later on XX/XX/XXXX she says my husband still does not have a credit score ( he had XXXX credit ) and that we will need a co-signer now. If we can't pay 10 % down, this was our only option to get the 5 % conventional loan. My mom agreed to cosign and submitted all of her financials that next day XX/XX/XXXX. She assures us this is the last step, with my mom having an XXXX credit score thats all we need. On XX/XX/XXXX she text messaged me and asks for my social security number and birthdate, saying she's adding me ti the loan now? I wasn't sure why since we decided I wasn't going to be on the loan. On XX/XX/XXXX she contacts me via text message asking for statements from our new trade lines, so I provide those to her. She said everything is great and she can't wait to get this wrapped up! ( I have every conversation with her on text or email ) on XX/XX/XXXX I get a message from her stating she is meeting with the underwriter to see what else is required, that our scores aren't high enough still????? I told her how frustrated and confused we were, she said with a cosigner everything would be fine and we will qualify for the 5 % conventional. I get no response. On XX/XX/XXXX I get an email from XXXX asking for ALL of our financials again. I mean, everything, from tax returns to pay stubs and W2 's. Like we were starting over. I told her we had turned that stuff in 60 days ago, she apologized and said they misplaced it and need that information again. I KNEW we were starting over, but she continued to say that everything was great. On XX/XX/XXXX she text and said that my husbands credit score dropped below XXXX and now we don't qualify. Which is of course confusing since we just spent the last two months talking about how my husbands score was XXXX and we opened up these trade lines trying to get a credit score. She now says she's trying to find us another loan. She is saying it's not strong enough with just my husband and my mom that we need my dad to co-sign now. She assured me that with my dads XXXX credit score and his large income we will have this loan in the bag. Sooooo we add my dad to the loan. Her exact message to me said : " I got all the information from your mom, I am entering it this evening so I can get an approval out with him on it for you. '' Her next message says : " great news! I have approved with your parents!! Putting it back though! We need 7 business days and we can get it done! '' I asked her if we REALLY will close in 7 days and she responds " Yes as long as everyone signs we will be great! '' This is when she extends escrow AGAIN. My mom calls me and says she received the loan documents but the downpayment is 10 % ... ... I almost collapsed. The # 1 thing I have said from the beginning is we absolutely can not pay 10 %. I reached out to her via text message and told her that yet again!! She responded with " if you need help with the funds for downpayment I can lend you some money, I have no problem doing that '' my mom then calls again to let me know that XXXX had been emailing and calling her every few minutes to get her to sign the loan documents. Upon thoroughly reading them we find that XXXX had drawn these loan docs up as a second mortgage for my parents and we were not on the loan at all. At that point we knew we could NOT sign anything with her. She is completely untrustworthy and unethical. She did NOT disclose with my parents or us that she drew this loan up as a second for my parents and continue to try and get them to sign. She lied to us from the beginning, this is our first home, we had no idea how the process goes, we trusted her. Now our goal is to build our credit. Upon checking our credit from XXXX XXXX, we found that she had 7 hard inquiries for EACH my husband and I. Which brought our scores way down!!! She did hard inquires every week for 3 weeks in a row. I will be contacting Empire Home Loans to ask them to remove those inquiries as we absolutely did NOT give our permission for her to run our credit 7 times each. I just want to stop her from doing this to someone else. I believe we did not qualify for this loan from the very beginning. She cost the sellers their home out of state, she cost us our home as we already had someone else to take over our lease, she cost us {$4800.00} in inspections and XXXX. This was an awful experience I do not want someone else to go through. Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Company public response: Company disputes the facts presented in the complaint
Company response to consumer: Closed with monetary relief