Consumer complaint received 2023-12-18
Product: Mortgage — Conventional home mortgage
Issue: Struggling to pay mortgage — Trying to communicate with the company to fix an issue related to modification, forbearance, short sale, deed-in-lieu, bankruptcy, or foreclosure
Company: Onity Group Inc. (CA)

Our father passed away on XX/XX/XXXX. He left the house he was living in to my brother and I in his will. He had some type of loan modification in place with PHH Mortgage. We notified PHH soon after his death and asked for assistance moving forward to straighten it all out. Numerous phone calls and emails took place, and there was constant confusion and different people saying different things. In XX/XX/XXXX, a representative approved a new monthly payment of approximately {$2400.00} and agreed to put the money past due at the end of the loan and we set up an automatic withdrawal of the payments to PHH. Suddenly, with no notice or explanation, they raised the monthly payment substantially, and stopped taking the payments from the bank account we set up. They took some of the payments we made and put them in an escrow account instead of applying them to the amount due. We did not know what to do because we didnt want to continue to make payments that were not being applied to the loan. 

Eventually someone there said we had to fill out a Family Mortgage Transfer, which we did. We sent the documents requested many times, and they kept requesting the same things and did not respond when we showed we had sent them in over and over. Then they said they could not approve a Family Transfer because the loan was now in default! This whole process took more than one year, and the loan was falling behind. At one point they sent a notice of default and we called their company called XXXX XXXX and they said there was no such thing on file. Later we saw that PHH was sued for this activity and had to settle in a class action agains them for unfair business practices. 

We made numerous calls and asked them to provide us an amount to bring it current, and to see if they would waive penalties or give us other other relief of the past due amounts. They would respond with canned email responses that someone would look into it and get back to us. But no one ever got back to us. We asked an XXXX  to write to them, and authorized PHH to speak with her. They would never respond to her, sent us numerous forms again saying she was not authorized to get information, and did not respond to any of us on our repeated requests for assistance to become current on the loan. The representatives are in a call center which seems to be out of the country, and they never have access to the file to see what has gone on before. Since they never responded to her, she asked for their attorney contact, and they said the company did not have one. They gave us a name of someone who was supposedly our single contact and could help us, but this person did not seem to exist as every time we called, he wasnt available, and another random person would talk to us and they did not know what was going on and could not help. 

Then, another Notice of Default was filed on XX/XX/XXXX, this time it was sent to us by the XXXX XXXX XXXX. As soon we received it, we contacted a family friend who is an attorney to help us. Beginning in early XX/XX/XXXX, he sent letters, made phone calls, and tried to get in contact with someone at PHH to get help for us again. He was finally able to get PHH to have an XXXX  contact him in early XX/XX/XXXX. Our attorney began negotiations with the PHH collection attorney to see if PHH would agree to putting the money on the back end of the loan, waive late fees, approve the Family Transfer, and begin to take payments again. He also asked the PHH XXXX  what was the amount owed to bring it current, and the XXXX  said he did not know the amount. However, the XXXX  said he would recommend a settlement to PHH and hoped to respond with 48 hours. This was on XX/XX/XXXX. Despite this, and a number of follow up letters to the PHH XXXX, there has been no response whatsoever from PHH again. We are afraid they are delaying on purpose so they can steal our fathers house as it has substantial equity. We are concerned if we make any payments, PHH will not apply them to the loan and will continue with a foreclosure sale. PHH seems to be engaged in continued bad faith in settlement and unfair business practices. An online search shows numerous lawsuits against them for different types of unfair practices. We need help resolving things with them.