Consumer complaint received 2016-10-08
Company: BANK OF AMERICA, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION
State: MO
Product: Mortgage
Sub-product: Home equity loan or line of credit
Issue: Loan servicing, payments, escrow account

Complaint:
I took out a home equity line of credit on XXXX of my properties about 12 years ago. After about 18 months I began repaying the loans by sending the bank what my statement said was the fully amortized monthly payment ( some months I sent more than this amount to speed up the repayment process ). After 10 years - at the end of the line of credit period the loan was to lock and the balance was to be repaid in equal monthly payments. I expected this to happen and had already been paying the fully amortized payment. When Bank of America notified me that the line of credit period was expired, they also notified me that the monthly payment had changed and was TRIPLE what they had been telling me for 10 years was the fully amortized payment. The statement I continued to received showed the same payment I had always been making so I assumed the letter was a mistake and continued making the payments as always. After 3 months I was notified that my loans were in default. After contacting the bank, they insisted I was in default. I explained the statement I had been receiving for 10 years but they ignored my pleading and said they did n't have access to a copy of the statement and their records were correct. They would n't let me send them a copy of the statement and said pay up or they would foreclose. After several calls, the bank finally said the statements had been wrong for 10 years but the only option I had was to make the higher payments which I could n't ( and still ca n't ) afford or apply for a loan modification. Since my credit report then showed I was 4 or 5 months behind on 2 mortgage payments and no other bank would consider refinancing me, I submitted applications for modification. After several months of calling them and sending them volumes of documentation, they said they had all they needed to make a decision and would contact me in a week or 10 days. The time passed and upon contacting them again they informed me that the modifications were declined. When I asked why they said it was because some of the documents were over 90 days old and were no longer current. I protested it was n't my issue -- that it was because they took too long to process the request. They agreed that I could resubmit the application if I desired. I immediately resent all the documentation they had requested but they refused to process both of the loans at once. They insisted to do one at a time and it would be faster. The rep said he would get it done in two weeks. It 's been three months and they told us two weeks ago that they finally have everything they need ( again ) and we still do n't have an answer. In the mean time, we decided to sell the XXXX property that they would n't accept a modification app for because this one was taking so long that it scared us. We ended up selling the property for about {$20000.00} less then it was worth and losing what had been a $ XXXX/month positive cash flow that was part of my retirement income just to get out from under BOA. When we requested a loan payoff at closing we discovered - unknown to us - that it was in foreclosure! 
We are still awaiting the approval of the loan modification of the remaining loan and fear that BOA will again foreclose on this property without notifying me ( like they did the one I sold ). This whole loan modification process has to date taken 18 months which seems totally unacceptable to me.

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 non-monetary relief