Consumer complaint received 2021-01-12
Company: REGIONS FINANCIAL CORPORATION
State: TN
Product: Mortgage
Sub-product: Home equity loan or line of credit (HELOC)
Issue: Applying for a mortgage or refinancing an existing mortgage

Complaint:
I was picking up a cashiers check at the Regions Bank located at XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX, XXXX, TN XXXX on XX/XX/XXXX. XXXX XXXX was helping me and she mentioned to me that they were running a special if I re-did my home equity line of credit that I currently have with Regions. She said they would waive all of the closing costs and the rate would lower and they would have a 6 month promotional rate. She followed up with me on XX/XX/XXXX and I then sent her my application over email sometimes in the next two weeks. Everything was very confusing and she told me that she would payoff what I owed on my current HELOC of $ XXXX and increase my line of credit from $ XXXX to $ XXXX. This all sounded good to me. I then received several emails from her over the next several weeks asking me for pay stubs, w-2 's tax returns, homeowners insurance information, bank statements, all of which I responded to and sent her via email when she requested. I was out of town last week and someone texted me and told me that they were coming out to do an appraisal. XXXX didn't tell me anything about this, but that was fine, and he came out and did it. I had not heard anything from her in several days so I decided to follow back with her after receiving a letter in the mail while I was out of town about a counter offer. This counter offer was dated XX/XX/XXXX, but it came in the mail between XXXX. So that was confusing as well, because in an email dated XX/XX/2021 in response to my inquiry about the counter/denial letter, she said.. 

Hi XXXX, I spoke to your underwriter yesterday. From what I can gather, things are running slow because of the holidays. As it looks right now I am waiting on a few items to be completed from underwriting. All documents that I have submitted have been approved. I will contact you with a closing date as soon as everything is ready to go. I appreciate your patience. 

I responded that I had received a counter offer and what did that mean. She responded with : " What does the counter offer say? '' I had to take a picture of something that her company had sent me and send it to her so that she could know what it said. I found this very concerning and red flags began to go up. 

Apparently once she read the counter offer I found out later that she called the underwriter who told her that the way that she had it set up was not possible. Everything about my application improved once I sent in documentation to her. The appraisal was higher which made the LTV and CLTV lower than the 80 % CLTV that she had been promoting. 

Long story short they can't do anything for me because she said she was unaware of a Regions guideline that capped CLTV 's over a certain loan amount. This feels like a real bait and switch situation to me. She was promoting this great deal of a 6 month teaser rate, and then no annual fee, but apparently that was never even a possibility. I can't find her NMLS number in her email signature, but I am assuming she is registered. She should have known what the max CLTV 's were for my loan amount at very beginning before promising something that she could not deliver on. This is beyond unacceptable.

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