Consumer complaint received 2016-05-03
Company: BANK OF AMERICA, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION
State: TX
Product: Mortgage
Sub-product: FHA mortgage
Issue: Loan modification,collection,foreclosure

Complaint:
We are representing a client who had a divorce and both him and ex-wife moved out of our home and town. Due to the expense burdens of the divorce he got behind on loan payments and looked for help on a modification. Our client does not speak good english and also the complicated process was not explained properly to him. Once the modification took place he listed his property for lease with our firm in an effort to generate funds to pay the debt. After several month of no luck on getting a tenant and the draining expenses procured due to the divorce he began getting behind on my mortgage payments and on XXXX fees. At this point we advise to put the property for for sale. We requested Bank of America for a payoff statement and they supplied XXXX on XXXX/XXXX/16 which showed a balance of of {$180000.00} good through XXXX/XXXX/16 and based on this information provided by Bank of America we listed the property for sale on XXXX/XXXX/16 for {$220000.00} estimating there would be enough funds to payoff his loan and the XXXX fees he was behind on. Within a month we received an offer for {$220000.00}, contracted under normal for sale circumstances and 2 weeks prior closing date the title company received results of their title search and discovered a HUD lien of the house of {$52000.00}. This was a complete shock both to the owner and to our firm. We immediately contacted bank of America and requested to initiate a short sale, at which point the file manager, XXXX XXXX, stated that he needed to request to be removed from the modification and that only after we got confirmation this was completed we could request to initiate a short sale. We explained to XXXX XXXX that we had a contract, that he was over 3 month behind on payments, and that the property was vacant. She stated this qualified the property under the waterfall procedures and were able to initiate and request an expedited short sale process. Once we received the HUD Approval letter to participate in a short sale we immediately submitted the offer and the seller closing disclosure to the short sale negotiator XXXX XXXX and her supervisor XXXX XXXX. After review began requesting we remove fees from the closing disclosure that were part of the enforceable contract and that are also a sellers costs only, further they requested the buyer closing disclosure. We informed them that their requests were not only against TRID guidelines but also implied we re-negotiated an already agreed upon and enforceable contract. We requested they submit the file as is for HUD to perform a variance review. For almost 2 weeks we went bank and forth on this with them only coming down on a couple of the requests but yet these were requests that the buyer to pay seller fees such as recording fees and title fees, which would clearly not be allowed by their lender. Today they threatened to decline the file if we do not remove the fees. We pointed out that they are getting over their requested net and that they will be forcing a home owner into foreclosure if they can not bully a buyer to pay their fees to make them more money. We showed them that their net even after paying all these fees is {$190000.00} which the file clearly can qualify for a HUD variance review and they will still receive over their requested minimum net of {$190000.00} to cover the bank of America payoff of {$140000.00} and the HUD lien of {$52000.00}. Yet XXXX and XXXX XXXX refuse to submit the file to HUD and XXXX XXXX now has threatened to decline the file if by XXXX XXXX the buyer does not accept to pay for these fees.

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