Consumer complaint received 2016-01-08
Product: Mortgage — Other mortgage
Issue: Credit decision / Underwriting — 
Company: Prospect Mortgage, LLC (TX)

We contacted Prospect Mortgage in XXXX for a renovation loan, in XXXX. We went through a significantly long process, whereby we were approved for that loan. However, the final papers revealed that Prospect wanted {$5000.00} to take out a {$20000.00} loan ( plus payments ). We opted to not take that loan, but the officer advised us that later we could get a " cash out refinance '' on the renovated home. The story is too long and convoluted to type here, but it took them 5 months to finally DENY the loan, even after we got pre-approval in the first month on the cash out refinance. 

The reason for Prospect 's troubles are twofold : First, they use clerks to process complicated and sensitive material - and the clerks are in over their head, do not have the proper training or resources. Some of them ca n't even spell or put together a professional email. Second, is the process, which is quite broken. Prospect uses other lending institutions and appears to just be a broker, although they claim to be " direct lenders. '' These underwriters have a very complex and detailed systematic system when looking through the papers, and will deny loans on items the clerks and " regional managers '' have no clue on. 

Our process was fraught with difficulty. XXXX loan officer quit. That loan officer, who was actually quite competent, quit in the middle. She did not put up our documents. We had to start over and requalify after many delays. The clerks were replaced often with people who asked for the same documents over and over, misspelled, and mishandled the documents, all being put up in email, which is not secure. Finally, in the XXXX hour the XXXX caught a mistake in their calculations and the loan was denied on our debt-to-income ratio, but we had correctly reported our debt and income months before. They wasted about XXXX hours of our time, and during this time, bills began piling up on our renovation - bills that should n't have needed to be paid if the pre-approval had gone through. If we had been DENIED in a timely manner, then we could have looked elsewhere for the funds. We also incurred " hard '' costs of survey and other items, based on their mistakes. Prospect Mortgage has very broken standard operating procedures. Most of their problems could be fixed by simply " templating '' normal requests for documents, instead of having people just send out " something '' until the underwriter gets it and denies it. Also, Prospects ' processes could remain broken for a long time, because they use different underwriters who want different things, and that is never KNOWN to the staff until it 's denied. They also have too many people touching a file. The mistake on ours was missed by several people. Prospect also does n't give their loan officers competent help. It shows careless disregard for the consumer, although they claim they care a lot. Months after it happened, I got a message that my home insurance had been cancelled. This happened because " XXXX '' had told them they were taking over the mortgage and putting the insurance in escrow! No one bothered to let them know the loan did n't go through and the consumer certainly does n't know to make that call. Very frustrating process.