Consumer complaint received 2023-10-19
Company: Freedom Mortgage Company
State: NY
Product: Mortgage
Sub-product: Conventional home mortgage
Issue: Struggling to pay mortgage
Sub-issue: Trying to communicate with the company to fix an issue related to modification, forbearance, short sale, deed-in-lieu, bankruptcy, or foreclosure

Complaint:
Freedom Mortgage has continually given me the runaround for over one year while I tried to get back into good standing by applying for modification help. Instead of conducting a transparent and efficient review I have been given conflicting information as they misplace or lose documents and feel that this is a coordinated obstruction of access to benefits that they are required to consider me for. Freedom is required to allow a path to reconcile delinquent payments due to Covid income hardship through the CARES program. After a full year of multiple submissions, I have still not been reviewed for any type of program to address the delinquent payments and now I find myself in foreclosure. 

I was a front line XXXX XXXX  as a XXXX XXXX ( for 22 years ) and within the first two months of the pandemic I became sick with XXXX and was unable to work. I applied for the CARES forbearance and I am grateful that the government put this program in place to help struggling homeowners during the pandemic. I was able to go back to work after a few months but then my father ( XXXX XXXX ) became XXXX XXXX  with XXXX and I had to take time off from work to serve as his XXXX I was able to get the forbearance extended to help us during that time and finally got back to work in 2022 and resumed making payments to Freedom. After a few months of payments I was told that I needed to apply for a loan modification to reconcile the payments that had been put aside due to the forbearance. 

I first submitted documents and went into loan modification review a year ago. I submitted all of the requested documents, and then their office claimed they did not receive it. So I sent the tracking information that showed it had been received. After providing that information the package was located and then it was sent to loss mitigation. After several weeks with no response I called in and instead of a status or a decision Freedom Mortgage sent out another package for me to complete. Once again I completed the paperwork and submitted it to Freedom, and once again their agents gave me the runaround saying they were missing documents. So I began backing up the submissions by emailing them so that I would have documented that the paperwork had been provided for loss mitigation. I also sent it regular mail and also faxed it. I continued to run into the same problems, and I began to think that this was some type of organized plan to obstruct access to programs. I next submitted the full package through the Freedom online portal and the notes say that it is under review but then a new package would appear in the mail a few days later. 

Now Freedom Mortgage has initiated foreclosure against me, stating in their legal filings that I have not paid the mortgage as agreed. Just to be clear, I could not pay the mortgage during the pandemic and the government program allowed millions of struggling American homeowners to pause their payments and reconcile them once the hardship ended. When my hardship ended I resumed making my payments but then their agents told me I had to go through your modification review first. It has been more than one year and now the delinquent amount is close to $ XXXX and this is a result of inefficiency and incompetence and possibly deception on the part of Freedom Mortgage. I am frustrated and have been trying to pay them and I want to pay them.

Company public response: Company has responded to the consumer and the CFPB and chooses not to provide a public response
Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation