Consumer complaint received 2021-09-03
Company: BANK OF AMERICA, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION
State: MN
Product: Mortgage
Sub-product: Conventional home mortgage
Issue: Struggling to pay mortgage

Complaint:
The problem account in question is related to Bank of America and a home property in Florida. The property has a primary mortgage and secondary equity line on it. The original loan terms were interest only back in the days when that was a popular product. 

I have worked overseas for the majority of my career and the home in Florida has been used for rental purposes from time to time and in particular when I found that cashflow was tight. With that said, the income derived when rented has always been deposited by the property manager into Bank of America. My grievance is that in XXXX of XXXX, I learned that the property was being foreclosed upon when I just happened to go online to see what the status was with it. Keep in mind I am overseas, the bank has my email, overseas phone number and my residential address overseas. Tax details also on the property had my address listed overseas ( these escrowed into the BoA mortgage ). BoA position has been we made our efforts to contact you ( in USA ) and took no responsibility for their poor efforts in trying to right a bad situation. Now here lies the problem ... .the primary mortgage auto-pay timed out yet the secondary equity line did not and continued to be paid timely. I did not pay attention to the account as well as I should have but I believed it was all set and on " auto pilot ''. So back to the point, the account has nearly {$6000.00} related to rental income in it at the time. The secondary was on autopay so no issue there but I was massively behind on the primary. As I said to the bank, why would I pay one and not the other? I was not accessing the account and pulling money from it for personal use nor trying to avoid my mortgage ... is that not obvious? There was literally no effort to help right a situation that anyone with a brain would see this is clerical oversight. So in XX/XX/2019, when I learned it was in process of foreclosure I tried to settle what was owed and mind you hours of calls from overseas and costing me nearly {$500.00} that evening and was told I could not use the money sitting in the account to settle the past due amount!!!!! I had to make arrangements to send a check from XXXX to the USA!!!! 

Given the actions I have seen with BoA, I can not help but think there was a more insidious plan to their disfunction which created other avenues of revenue for them by simply turning a blind eye to problems they had internally all at the expense of people who banked with them. I know fees I racked up and ended up paying were large and think how many people may be in the same situation ... 

I have returned to the USA this XXXX to have our family all back under one roof after being split up for a year due to Covid. We are in process of buying a new home and the one items which has absolutely crushed my credit score and has me going through the FHA loan process is this BoA debacle. I originally planned to turn a blind eye and just move on from this as an expensive lesson learned but then after speaking with several others and learning of issues they had with BoA as well I felt I had to voice out. 

Thank you sincerely for your help and what may be achieved if not to improve our situation others in the future. 

Respectfully yours, -XXXX

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