Consumer complaint received 2019-03-20
Company: LoanCare, LLC
State: CA
Product: Mortgage
Sub-product: Conventional home mortgage
Issue: Trouble during payment process

Complaint:
I submitted a request to LoanCare, my loan servicer, to have my PMI cancelled in XX/XX/XXXX due to an increase in my property 's value. The loan servicer had a broker, XXXX XXXX, contact me to set up a BPO. He asked me to send him photos of my property but said not to discuss that with our loan servicer. He said he would come out to visit the property later that day. He never came. Clearly XXXX has a conflict of interest, as he is employed/contracted by the loan servicer, not the property owner, and so it is in his best interest to create the lowest possible property valuation in order to prevent homeowners from cancelling their PMI and continue receiving business from the loan servicer. Should he produce valuations that are " too high, '' even if accurate - we live in Southern California, one of the hottest real estate markets in the country, and it's clear that home values have skyrocketed over the last few years - perhaps the loan servicer will no longer use his services. So, he comes up with low estimates in order to keep his boss happy. This is a fraud upon the customer and a disgrace to our mortgage system. 

After a few months I received a denial of the request, citing that our property value had actually declined in value. This is impossible. First, a house down the street from us that is smaller actually sold for the same price our home did two years ago ; thus, even if our home hasn't increased in value enough for PMI cancellation ( which it has ), it's clear that our house HAS increased in value, and so XXXX 's claim that our home value actually decreased since purchasing is simply untrue. Second, we produced a comprehensive list of comparables in the area. It was evident XXXX only used the lowest comparables in a certain geographical area in formulating his fraudulent valuation. 

on XX/XX/XXXX, my husband submitted a complaint to the loan servicer and he provided them with our list of comparables that we obtained from a real estate agent. On XX/XX/XXXX, we received a form response that the complaint was being investigated. 

On XX/XX/XXXX, my husband requested an update about the status of our request. On XX/XX/XXXX we received a response requesting a letter with comparables in addition to the comparable properties on the BPO to support our dispute. Note that we had already provided this information on XX/XX/XXXX. In any case, we again provided this information to LoanCare on XX/XX/XXXX. In response, we received a form response indicating that our request was being researched. 

On XX/XX/XXXX we requested an update and received another form response that our concerns were being investigated. 

On XX/XX/XXXX, we requested an update and received another form response, but this response indicated that " a detailed written response will be sent to you no later than 30 days ... from the date LoanCare received your complaint. '' However, our complaint was clearly submitted in XX/XX/XXXX and now the servicer is acting as though this is a new complaint. It is not. 

LoanCare is clearly outside of the 30 day time frame to resolve this matter or offer any reasonable justification as to why it has not yet been resolved. We have not been provided any updates as to the actual status of our complaint, after multiple attempts on our part. Not only was this BPO produced fraudulently, but LoanCare hasn't done their required due diligence to respond within applicable statutory timeframes.

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