Consumer complaint received 2023-04-07
Product: Mortgage — Conventional home mortgage
Issue: Trouble during payment process — 
Company: CrossCountry Mortgage LLC (NJ)

I closed on a mortgage on XX/XX/XXXX. I was told my mortgage would be {$1400.00}. I continued to pay that amount until XX/XX/XXXX, when they decided to up my mortgage by {$200.00} for no reason. At that point, no new property tax amount had been recalculated. They used their own vendor to decide what they thought my property taxes would be and upped my payment by {$200.00}. At closing, I paid {$1100.00} toward property taxes. For all of XXXX, other than the amount I paid at closing, the mortgage company continued to collect the amount from the mortgage but never paid the town. I paid the additional {$200.00} for many months, all the while asking for updates from the company. I am attaching chat screenshots. This does not include the multiple phone calls I have made to the company. For the first {$200.00} increase, they stated my property taxes for XXXX would be {$710000.00}. You can see attached here emails from my town and invoices showing that my taxes for XXXX were, in fact, {$4900.00}. The fact that they make up numbers and then adjust my payment based on false information is crazy. They then give tons of trouble adjusting, especially over the phone. They have stated your taxes are this amount, and before I was able to confirm with the town, this caused extreme stress. Even after hearing from the town, this has been such a stressful process that is so unnecessary when life is already hard for people. Especially in an inflationary time where prices for everything are so much higher. Multiple people have been very rude to me on the phone. I have worked in customer service for many years, so I am always conscious of that and try to be nice to anyone I speak to. I know there are tons of people who are nasty, and I myself have had to deal with many in my job. At a certain point, though, when no one cares, they are rude, you are lied to, and they do nothing to help you, you just have enough. Eventually, they adjusted the payment, and it was wrong again. I checked in chat with them because it did not make sense to go below what was established at closing. You can see in the chat that I questioned them on it, as I did not want to end up in a bad situation yet again. They confirmed it was correct. Payment went to {$1100.00} and stayed that way from XXXX XXXX XXXX. In XXXX, it went up to {$1500.00}. I did not say anything, as this made more sense than the {$1100.00} figure. It remained this amount until XX/XX/XXXX. Then, as of XXXX, they upped it to {$2600.00}. An amount I can not afford. This is an additional {$1100.00} a month. You can't just do this to people. What is the point of getting a mortgage and owning a home if this can happen? I have a fixed-rate mortgage as well. All the while all this is going on, they never reissued the escrow payment that I am owed. Between paying more than I needed, especially in XX/XX/XXXX, where I overpaid to avoid late fees, I hoped this would be resolved by the time the next month came along. ( Here we are not resolved. ) I tell them all this, and they threaten a late fee and say they will not push the due date. They tell me over and over again they will reissue the check and will email me with an update on its status, but they never do. They have my escrow in the negative and are overcharging for it ; meanwhile, they have the money they owe me that more than covers the escrow shortgae and they owe me some. No one at this company has made this process easy. Since day one of closing with them, I have regretted the decision to use them. It is abuse and has caused so much distress financially for me. I want the money I am owed back. I want whatever needs to be applied to the escrow balance to be adjusted, and the rest to go to me in cash. I want this over with, and I want them watched so that this does not happen again. They can not make up property taxes, and they need to pay my property taxes on time. They can not charge me a late fee for XXXX since I have not paid this ridiculous amount since I do not owe it. I can not afford this, either financially or emotionally. I am very tired of this, and I need help dealing with them so this can be resolved.