Consumer complaint received 2022-02-07
Product: Mortgage — Conventional home mortgage
Issue: Trouble during payment process — 
Company: Freedom Mortgage Company (OR)

XXXX XXXX we purchased a home, financed by Freedom Mortgage. We worked with loan officer XXXX and asked that impounds/escrow for property taxes and insurance NOT be included in the loan. He assured me that it wasn't a problem, but the impounds showed up on the good faith estimate and later on the the final contracts. Each time we questioned it, XXXX reassured me that it would be removed, post-loan completion, no problem. It's a year later and the impounds/escrow have still not been removed! They originally claimed that the loan needed to be " seasoned '' with no missed payments for a year before they would consider our request. Now they have pushed the " seasoned '' date out to XX/XX/XXXX because that was the first month we received a mortgage statement from them, even though we closed on XXXX XXXX, XXXX. We've paid on time and put up with their delays for a year. In XX/XX/XXXX we began reaching out to Freedom to proactively remove the impounds/escrow beginning with XX/XX/XXXX since that is what they stated they would do. The impounds represent money we could be saving and earning interest on because our property taxes and home insurance are current/paid in full. 

The reason for our added concern is that, when we went into the bidding process for the house, we -- like a lot of buyers in todays market, bid over the asking price. Fortunately the appraisal matched our bid and so we thought we were good to go. Wrong! Freedom Mortgage Underwriting refused to accept the appraisal and made us pay cash out of pocket for the difference between the asking price and our bid. This is not a typical practice within the mortgage lender community. Appraisals should be honored, but we went ahead with them because we wanted the house and had the cash. By XX/XX/XXXX, Freedom Mortgage was already contacting us via email, text, mail and phone to offer us a re-fi/cash out because -- they now agreed our home value represented the equity identified by the appraiser was real. After much consideration about the re-fi fee 's and with the agreement to get the escrow removed by the new Loan Officer XXXX  we decided to go ahead and get the interest rate reduction without bothering about with a cash out. We started the re-fi in XX/XX/XXXX. When you're going through a re-fi or major loan purchase the mortgage lender asks the client not to open any new credit accounts or make any major purchases which is understandable. What is not understandable is that they held our credit hostage for five months while claiming to be working on the re-fi. Finally in XXXX XXXX the appraisal came in at an even higher figure than the original one done in XXXX XXXX. At the end of the day, the re-fi never happened because once again the impounds were included in all of the final documents and we didn't want to go through another 12 months or longer of " seasoning '' a loan. 

We want to be able to pay the property taxes and insurance directly. The difficulties getting the original loan closed, the unsatisfactory way the re-fi was handled, the continued push back from them on removing the escrow and getting bombarded with marketing offers promising to lower our interest rate and provide cash out immediately after refusing to accept the original appraisal are all examples of their poor business practices. Their practices need to be examined and rectified. We are very concerned that they will never remove the escrow account from the loan ( which is in excellent standing ). This is our money to invest as we wish, not theirs to hold and use.