Consumer complaint received 2015-05-14
Product: Mortgage — Conventional fixed mortgage
Issue: Settlement process and costs — 
Company: Finance of America Mortgage LLC (NJ)

My wife and I decided to refinance our mortgage this XXXX. I checked with a number of mortgage lenders, including our existing XXXX, and chose XXXX Mortgage, a division of Gateway Funding XXXX due to their offering the best rate and assuring good service. The originator I dealt with was XXXX XXXX XXXX, NMLS # XXXX ( his phone number is ( XXXX ) XXXX and his email is XXXX ). 
We locked in a refinance rate on or right around XXXX XXXX, 2015. This was for a very standard 30-year fixed rate mortgage that was eligible to be resold to XXXX of the big gov't agencies. We had just taken out this mortgage in conjunction with buying our home a few months prior, and had absolutely no issues or delays in doing so, based on our credit, income, assets, etc. 
We locked in the rate for the standard term and the rate was to expire on XXXX XXXX, 2015. This left us plenty of time to complete the refinance. Based on the rate we chose, Gateway agreed to provide us a lender 's credit of {$4100.00}. Rates started increasing right after we locked in our rate, so we were quite happy with the rate we got. However, through no fault of our own, Gateway took an extremely long time during this process. It took them a full week just to order the appraisal, which then took another couple weeks, and at every step, the folks at Gateway were very slow and unresponsive. We provided them all the information they requested without delay at every step of the process. I called them many times to ask them to hurry and they did n't even reply to my messages most of the time. Towards the very end of the rate lock period, when rates were much higher, they came up with yet another issue for delaying the process. This issue was a credit check that was done by some other mortgage company at the time I was checking rates in early to mid XXXX, and Gateway admitted it had been on my credit record all that time. Yet, they only checked my credit again right before the rate lock was ending. It course turned out not to be an issue, but now our rate lock had expired and Gateway said they would have to charge an extension fee, so they reduced our credit by {$920.00}. 
I complained multiple times about this. Gateway admitted it was n't their fault but they refused to do anything about it. Finally, they said the best they could do was to knock off {$250.00} from the extension fee. So they reduced our credit by {$670.00}. At this point, rates were much higher and I felt I had no choice but to take this deal. 
I believe this is outrageous as well as highly suspicious. I know how these finance companies work, and that they hedge their interest rate risk on such rate locks by shorting Treasuries and those sorts of transactions, but that by delaying the process when rates have risen and recutting the terms, they can benefit themselves at the cost of consumers. I think CFPB should investigate Gateway and see how many times their underwriting processes go over the rate lock period during times when rates have gone up vs. times when rates have gone down. I 'm willing to bet it 's asymmetrical. In any case, it 's outrageous that they should reduce the credit when the delay is entirely their fault.