Consumer complaint received 2020-06-15
Product: Mortgage — Conventional home mortgage
Issue: Applying for a mortgage or refinancing an existing mortgage — 
Company: MUFG AMERICAS HOLDINGS CORPORATION (CA)

FYI I have resolved this, but am calling out the issues that I had during this process. I recently closed on a mortgage with Union Bank, but only after I openly accused them of slowing down my closing process to cross into a new month, thereby requiring new documents and new paycheck stubs. I believe their underwriting process and scrutiny of my file went beyond what was called for in this situation. If it weren't for the patience of the sellers, I would have lost this home and this is happening entirely too often to peole of XXXX. Details below : 1. My loan application was submitted XX/XX/XXXX, and everything was in order - by XX/XX/XXXX, the loan had been denied due to my Debt to Income ratio, after the bank determined that my XXXX taxes were too complicated to count all the income. 
2. My loan broker addressed this with the bank and I filed my XXXX taxes in less than 2 business days in order to give the bank more visibility to my finances. My loan was approved with 24 conditions against it on XX/XX/XXXX. Among the conditions were requests that I pay off my car and a personal loan at closing. My DTI should have been fine without needing to pay that off, and the bank has not been able to provide me with the calculation that would have supported this request. Nonetheless I complied. 
3. In addition the bank requested that I pay my XXXX taxes prior to closing and provide them a cancelled check, although taxes aren't due for another month and a half. 

In total - the bank was asking me to come up with an extra $ XXXX in order to obtain this loan. Failure to show proof that I had access to these funds would of course lead to an inability to close. The bank worked tirelessly to push expense after expense at me to make it almost impossible for me to close. 

4. I was told that a loan of my size was small enough to not require a secondary review, yet on two separate occasions I was told that my loan was undergoing secondary review. When I asked for explanation from the Customer Resolution team, the representative suggested that they were overwhelmed and junior officers were underwriting, before a senior officer conducted a review. The rep suggested that this is not their normal secondary review process. She suggested that covid and working at home were causing them to have challenges in their process. I would have believed all of this, but I asked this very same rep for a video conference call and she told me she did not have access to video at home. However, on our call, this same rep told me that Union Bank issued them new computers and hardware to work from home. I truly question everything she has said as a way to silence me and prevent me from further investigating the concerns I found disturbing. I will stop short of saying that she blatantly lied. 

5. On the day my loan should have moved to closing docs, the bank came back to me asking for proof that bathroom mirrors and appliances were not " premium '' in nature, which they wouldn't pay for. These items were written into the addendum of my purchase agreement. The sellers said they were leaving them. Nothing in this wording should have raised an eyebrow, but it stalled my loan and prevented it from moving to the next phase for 2 additional days. 

On XX/XX/XXXX, I contacted Union Bank directly about my concerns regarding how bias conscious or not has been impacting my loan. The purchase agreement scrutiny should have happened earlier, or could have been handled via the settlement agent. There was no reason to hold up the loan. After this email and my conversation with the Customer Resolution Manager - who tried to placate me ... things began to move a lot faster. Truly - I don't think that we would have closed had it not been for me speaking up. I asked them if they were trying to get me to cross into the month of XXXX so that they could request new documents and paychecks, to make sure I hadn't doctored my file ... this question was never answered. 

I want banks to treat all applicants fairly, I'd like to understand in detail the debt to income ratios and calculations that made XXXX worth of payoffs necessary, I'd also like to know why i was asked to pay off my taxes although it is not a requirement, I want to know if my interest rate is higher than another applicant with a similar profile?