Consumer complaint received 2015-03-19
Product: Mortgage — Conventional fixed mortgage
Issue: Loan servicing, payments, escrow account — 
Company: Ditech Financial LLC (CA)

I live in California, my former mortgage holder, XXXX, went bankrupt and sold our loan to Green Tree. Prior to the sell, I had never heard of this company. As a result of the sell Green Tree opened an escrow account, to pay property taxes and insurance, I never had a escrow account before and do not believe the State of California requires lenders to maintain an escrow account. My mortgage is a fixed rate 30+ year mortgage and the monthly mortgage payment is {$1200.00} and I pay $ XXXX monthly to cover the escrow payment for property taxes and insurance. According to my monthly statement from Green Tree, my regular monthly payment is {$1500.00} so I pay roughly {$11.00} per month more than is required which I acknowledge was no designated to be applied to the escrow account until I recently made my XXXX payment. Despite my attempts to comply with the terms of this loan, every year since Green Tree has held our mortgage we get a bill for XXXX of dollars, this year it was {$800.00}, supposedly because of escrow shortages. Every year it 's a different amount, but the escrow shortages are always for XXXX of dollars and the amount of insurance and property taxes we pay annually does not increase that much to justify these increases of XXXX of dollars each year. Green Tree provides this annual escrow account disclosure statement with this convoluted calculation to justify these increases ( copy attached ). This year XXXX days prior to receiving the annual escrow account disclosure statement we received a letter from Green Tree stating that our account was current ( copy attached ). Each year I contact Green Tree to get someone to explain these calculations and I have yet to understand the justification or the explanation. If you do n't pay the amount of the shortage Green Tree threatens to increase the amount of your regular monthly payment to cover the shortage. I find it hard to believe it is legal for a mortgage company to charge a borrower XXXX of dollars more per year to maintain an escrow account if it 's cheaper for the borrower to pay their own property taxes and insurance. If the borrower 's property taxes and insurance are not delinquent, then a borrower should be able to opt out of such a onerous escrow arrangement. If Green Tree is able to charge people XXXX of dollars more each year for these " supposed escrow shortages '' it 's no wonder they require borrowers to have an escrow account. We should be able to pay our own property taxes and insurance to avoid the financial hardship that Green Tree is creating. We are currently stuck with this mortgage company, but at the first opportunity we will make every effort to change lenders. But I do n't believe we should be penalized because we are stuck with this company. A company we did not voluntarily enter into a contract with. It should not be legal for a mortgage company to require consumers to have an escrow account that costs them hundreds of dollars more per year than it would cost if that consumer paid their own property taxes and insurance. I do n't know if this practice is legal but it should n't be and it definitely needs to be investigated.