Consumer complaint received 2021-12-22
Product: Mortgage — FHA mortgage
Issue: Struggling to pay mortgage — 
Company: AmeriHome Mortgage Company, LLC (UT)

We have had several unfortunate medical and financial burdens happen to us, including XXXX and it's after effects, since XX/XX/XXXX. We have an FHA Loan for our mortgage and was never offered a proper explanation about forbearance and our FHA loan options. They never put us on the forbearance plan like the CARES Act says that they are supposed to. They ultimately offered me a loan modification plan, but neglected to put the delinquent payment amounts as a partial claim, as is required for an FHA Loan in the CARES Act. 

Here is the chain of events that happened - On XX/XX/XXXX we were handed the keys to our new home. 

On XX/XX/XXXX I lost my job and was not able to find employment for 2 months. 

In XX/XX/XXXX I was able to get a job. Unfortunately, I found out that the Health Care plan available to me was a high deductible plan that resulted in high out of pocket costs for everything medical until the deductible was met. The out of pocket cost per individual being {$3000.00}. There are XXXX people in our family and because of the high deductible for each person, we had not met it and were still paying, out of pocket, full price for all medical including Dr. visits, prescriptions, procedures, etcwell into " COVID '' affecting jobs and the economy. The out of pocket cost ( s ) for prescriptions and dr. visits has been a huge burden. The monthly cost of my medications alone was over $ 1,000/month. My wife has chronic health issues and must go to the doctors often. And all XXXX of our children were in XXXX for various reasons which were all new things that have happened since we moved into our new house. 

Because of my initial job loss, coupled with my wife 's unexpected/unplanned XXXX, it was determined that we could not keep up with all of our bill payments. We fell behind and I ultimately claimed XXXX XXXX bankruptcy in XX/XX/XXXX. The house was never part of the bankruptcy and I filed that way. As a term of the initial bankruptcy filing, I was required to have less than {$300.00} in my accounts. Because of this requirement I sent a cashiers check to my Mortgage Company on XX/XX/XXXX to go towards XXXX mortgage payment. I found out later that by paying this way, the money sent does not go towards the mortgage payment, just the general principal balance. I am assuming that this was applied to my overall mortgage, but have never received confirmation in any statements showing this. 

My wife started a new job, at a High School, shortly after the beginning of the school year in XXXX of XXXX. She was only able to work 17 hours a week. All of the schools were shut down for COVID in XXXX of XXXX. When this happened her job at the school district ended. My wife stopped getting paid by the school at this point. 

My wife 's ex-husband has not been current on child support since XXXX, only making very sporadic payments, which we had used to pay for medical bills in the past. Per her divorce decree, he is ordered to pay 50 % of all costs associated with our daughter but to date is significantly behind. This had contributed to the financial burden we found ourselves in. 

My ex-wife is also not current on her financial obligations. Per the divorce decree, she is obligated to pay 50 % of all costs associated with our children but to date is behind as well. This had also contributed to the financial burden we found ourselves in. 

I tried to access the online portal to make my mortgage payments but was unable to. By the time I was able figure out why a couple months had passed. After getting transferred to several different people, my mortgage company finally told me that I had to coordinate communication through my bankruptcy attorney because I was in a bankruptcy. I told the Mortgage Company that I didn't understand why they wouldn't talk to me because the house wasn't part of the bankruptcy. They wouldn't give me a straight answer. This happened in XXXX of XXXX. 

On XX/XX/XXXX I obtained a letter from my bankruptcy attorney that I sent to my Mortgage Company authorizing them to speak to me. I faxed this to my mortgage company on XX/XX/XXXX ( attached file named 01 - XX/XX/XXXX Letter faxed on Attorney ). They called me back and told me that I was delinquent on payments, but that there were options. I asked what the options were and one of the options they offered was a forbearance. I asked what that meant and they said that my payments would be put on hold and at the end of the forbearance I would have to pay the money back in a lump sum. I told them that there was no way I could do this and they offered another option of a loan modification. I asked them to send me the paperwork on this. 

The mortgage company sent me the loan modification paperwork in the mail. I filled out all of the paperwork and faxed it back in. I'm not sure of the exact date and my record of this was lost. The application and hardship letter was signed on XX/XX/XXXX ( attached named 01a - Loan Assistance Submission XX/XX/XXXX ) .There were several subsequent letters from my mortgage company stating that I was missing this document or that document even though I had sent them a complete package. On XX/XX/XXXX I faxed over the final " missing '' documents they asked for. ( attached named 02 - XXXX Fax with Missing Docs. ( Wife 's 1st check since COVID ) ). 

On XX/XX/XXXX I received another letter stating that more documents were missing. This was incorrect. ( attached named 03 - XXXX Letter Stating that Docs Still Missing ( Incorrect ) ). They were asking for information that I had explained I did not have, namely paycheck stubs. I had explained to them that she had not received any paycheck stubs because her job was suspended/terminated due to COVID. 

I received another letter from my mortgage company on XX/XX/XXXX stating that my application was incomplete and the deadline passed therefore was denied. ( attached named 04 - XXXX Incomplete Application - Deadline Passed ). This was very confusing and frustrating to me because I thought that I had sent everything in, multiple times. 

On XX/XX/XXXX I received two letters. One stating that I was in default and the other giving me notice of options ( attached named 05 - XXXX Letter Default Notice and 06 - XXXX Letter Notice of Options ( Forbearance but not good- Highlighted ) ). 

At this time I didn't know what to do. I got a hold of a HUD counselor to see what they could do to help me. The HUD counselor tried multiple time over the course of 3 months to get answers. Because we weren't getting any straight answers, on XX/XX/XXXX I submitted the application, along with another hardship letter, for another loan modification to my HUD Counselor. She sent this to my mortgage company. ( attached named 07 - XXXX Copy of Info Sent to HUD Counselor for Submission ). 

On XX/XX/XXXX a letter was sent from my mortgage company stating that my loan modification was approved ( attached named 08 - Loan Modification Approval - XXXX ). This loan modification was NOT what was discussed, or what I was supposed to receive. They did not treat this as an FHA Loan. They took all of the delinquent monies and added them to the backend of the loan. They did not file a partial claim ( as is required for an FHA Loan ), they did not reduce the payment amount to be 30 % of my income ( as is required for an FHA Loan ), they did reduce my interest rate by .5 % but because they added the delinquent money owed to the backend, this only reduced my monthly payment by {$27.00} which is not realistic or doable. 

On XX/XX/XXXX my HUD counselor and I filed an appeal letter to the mortgage company stating reasons that we felt their conclusions were wrong. ( attached named 09 - To Whom it May Concern ). My HUD counselor tried for months to get someone at the mortgage company to talk to her clearly and intelligently about my case and what was going on. She got nowhere with them ; transferred from department to department, person to person. 

Finally on XX/XX/XXXX my HUD Counselor and I were able to have a conference call with my mortgage company and after being transferred to three different people, spoke to someone in the Single Point of Contact Department. We got nowhere speaking to him and threatened to file a complaint with Consumer Finance since the mortgage company wasn't helping. The mortgage company said that they would escalate this to the underwriter to see what they would do. 

I received a packet in the mail on XX/XX/XXXX with a letter dated XX/XX/XXXX providing, for the third time, the loan modification application with no explanation ( that was promised ) as to why they are denying the partial claim ( attached named 10 - Letter with Loan Modification Docs & No Explanation XXXX ). 

This is a never ending process, with no clear communication from the mortgage company nor any reasonable understanding of what they are obligated to do in my situation. 

In the meantime, my wife only started earning money again from her job, in XXXX of XXXX as the new school year started again and kids went back to school. Unfortunately her hours were greatly reduced because the school she worked at adopted a hybrid online-in school learning model. Between being quarantined because she works at a school, and the fact that she was exposed to COVID, coupled with the fact that my wife got XXXX on XX/XX/XXXX, she was out from work until XX/XX/XXXX, and was not able to go back before then, or get paid for that time. 

When she went back to work after her bout with XXXX, because of the condition of the student she was following/helping she was relegated to only working 1-2 hours a day, 4 days a week, through the remainder of the XXXX school year ( which ended XX/XX/XXXX ). 

It is my understanding that since I have an FHA loan, the mortgage company was supposed to not only automatically put me on the forbearance plan after payments were missed, but once the forbearance period was over, file the delinquent payments as a partial claim to be a 2nd mortgage in which payments wouldn't start until the 1st mortgage was paid for. This is clearly stated in the CARES Act but not one of the 1/2 dozen or so people I have spoken to over the course of the last 16-18 months will listen to.