Consumer complaint received 2022-03-09
Company: TRUIST FINANCIAL CORPORATION
State: PA
Product: Mortgage
Sub-product: FHA mortgage
Issue: Applying for a mortgage or refinancing an existing mortgage

Complaint:
In the spring of XXXX, we put our mortgage on forbearance due to a COVID related hardship. Every three months, SunTrust told us that we could remain on the forbearance, which we did. In the fall of XXXX, we wanted to remove the forbearance and proceed with whatever method the lender needed to use to accomplish this. At this point, we were told to wait until we received documentation in the mail to sign and have notarized, and to not pay any amount until these documents were received. This took over 3 months. Once everything was signed and fully notarized, it was sent via regular mail and was received by SunTrust ( now Truist ), though we never received the counter signed documentation from them after multiple requests. 

Now, after we have begun making timely payments for the last three consecutive months, as it was required from our new mortgage lender in order to refinance our mortgage elsewhere. Last week, the website was down due to another merger, and customer documents, statements, etc. wouldn't be available until XX/XX/XXXX. We were able to retrieve our statements, but not payoff amounts, and were directed to call the customer contact number. We can only get our payoff amount by calling Truist, typically we could have requested this through the website, but we can not get any clarity and spent hours of our day today attempting to get a person on the phone. We call, we wait for hours, and get hung up on. We are supposed to close next week on our refinance and Truist is making this task utterly impossible for us. We have our rate locked in, have signed closing disclosure documents, and paid/completed our appraisal with our potential new lender. 

Ultimately, we are trying to figure out if our subordinate mortgage paperwork ( which was signed off on ) shows whether HUD is the noteholder or if Truist is the noteholder. Based on the paperwork, we are led to believe that it is held by HUD, which would take a long time to get a payoff from, but we have received no answers or clarity from Truist if this is the case or not. This is typically a simple, standard operating procedure, and it is going to create much more hardship on us should we have to continue to pay this high interest FHA mortgage when we clearly qualify for a conventional mortgage with our other lender. 

Our new lender needs documentation, or at least someone to communicate back to tell us what is going on. The only other option is for the title company to dig further to see who holds the Note, which quite frankly is not their job to do and will likely cost us a lot more money. Public records do not show any recording of the subordinate mortgage, so for all we know, the agreement we signed is null and void and Truist is basically refusing through inaction that their mortgage be refinanced with another lender.

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