Consumer complaint received 2019-02-04
Company: Mr. Cooper Group Inc.
State: CA
Product: Mortgage
Sub-product: FHA mortgage
Issue: Trouble during payment process

Complaint:
As explained below, I believe Mr. Cooper fraudulently and intentionally sold me a loan by intentionally excluding school taxes from the monthly escrow payment and leading me to believe the refinance would consolidate an existing credit card bill. Additionally, due to their error our XXXX school taxes were not paid and the Title Company is holding the payment hostage until it receives $ XXXX in penalties incurred as a result of their/Mr. Cooper 's faulty work. 

Beginning XX/XX/XXXX, we had a mortgage on our home through Mr. Cooper ( formerly Nationstar Mortgage ). During the life of our loan, our escrow included our township 's school taxes. 

In XX/XX/XXXX, we began the refinancing process with Mr. Cooper. I identified to Mr. Cooper that the sole purpose of the refinance was to lower our monthly payments. The Mr. Cooper representative sold me a refinance that would result in consolidating a credit card bill of {$5100.00} with our new mortgage. The resulting monthly payment would be less than our prior monthly payment. Based on these representations, we closed on the refinance on XX/XX/XXXX. 

In XX/XX/XXXX, I received a letter from my Township tax collector that our XXXX school taxes had not been paid and would be considered delinquent if paid after XX/XX/XXXX. I immediately contacted Mr. Cooper and learned that the taxes should have been paid as part of our closing costs, however, the Title Company submitted the tax check to the wrong township. As a result of the late payment, there were late fees incurred. Mr. Cooper told me in XXXX that it would pay the penalties. 

I obtained the updated amount owed from our tax collector and provided that to Mr. Cooper prior to XX/XX/XXXX. Despite this, Mr. Cooper sent the wrong amount to the township ( less than what was owed ), resulting in the township rejecting the tax payment. Now there have been $ XXXX in penalties applied and my taxes are marked as delinquent. The Title Company is telling me I am responsible for paying the late penalties and that it will not pay the taxes until it receives the additional funds. Mr. Cooper has failed to respond to my repeated emails and calls on this new issue. What is worse, Mr. Cooper wrongfully took the delinquent tax money out of my escrow account ( rather than the closing funds ) and told me that it was my responsibility to get the money back from the Title Company. Now I am caught in the middle of their dispute, which only resulted from their sloppy work in sending the tax check to the wrong township. 

During this tax debacle, I also learned for the first time that despite school taxes being part of our escrow payment for 7+ prior years, our refinance does not include taxes in our monthly escrow payment. This will result in our escrow account being {$5000.00} short, which Mr. Cooper is telling me I am responsible for figuring out. 

The representative I spoke with in XX/XX/XXXX told me that the person from Mr. Cooper who sold us the loan intentionally omitted taxes from the escrow so that we would have a lower monthly payment but also intentionally did not inform me of this. The estimated new monthly payment with taxes included in escrow will result in a HIGHER monthly payment. 

Additionally, despite being told this refinance would consolidate our {$5100.00} credit card bill, that was not the case. I received {$3400.00} in cash at closing, which the Mr. Cooper representative told me was to use " as I saw fit ''. What I am now told he meant was that those funds were meant to represent the debt consolidation. Even if I was supposed to read between the lines of his statement, the amount we received at closing was {$1600.00} short of the full debt consolidation amount I was promised.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation