Consumer complaint received 2015-08-07
Product: Mortgage — Home equity loan or line of credit
Issue: Loan servicing, payments, escrow account — 
Company: BMO Bank, N.A. (IL)

We currently have a home equity balloon XXXX mortgage with BMO Harris Bank. We have paid this loan for 10 years and we have never been late or missed a payment until this point. XXXX XXXX lost his job XX/XX/XXXX and XXXX XXXX also is not working. As a result of our financial difficulties we could not pay the new balloon payment which went into effect XX/XX/XXXX. When we took out the home equity loan we were lead to believe that if we were unable to pay the balloon payment amount the loan would be re-set to interest only as long as we were current in our payments. 
BMO Harris purchased our loan from XXXX. We contacted the BMO Mortgage Dept. to see if the loan could be refinanced. BMO Mortgage informed us that because our credit had eroded due to our current financial difficulties that there was nothing they could do and referred us to the BMO Loss Mitigation Department. At the time our loan was not delinquent. The BMO Loss Mitigation Dept. informed us that there was nothing they could do because the loan was current. They went on to say that only after we were delinquent could they work with us on a solution and loan modification. They also went on to say that our credit score was going to be negatively impacted because they were going to report us as late to the credit reporting agencies. 
We have been working with the XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX. They are a HUD certified mortgage housing counselor. ( Attachment ) XXXX advised us to first work out a plan with the XXXX mortgage holder and then work with the XXXX mortgage holder. XXXX recommended that approach based on the fact that we could not commit to a payment plan on the XXXX mortgage when we did not know what our XXXX mortgage payment would be. As a second mortgage holder we told BMO that we were first trying to work out something with the XXXX mortgage company before dealing with the BMO XXXX mortgage because until we knew what our first mortgage payment was going to be it was not possible to commit to a payment plan with BMO that we might not be able to maintain. ( Attachment ) However BMO has not been sincere in trying to help us with a XXXX mortgage modification. After we got a loan modification from our first mortgage holder we notified BMO and they filed a " Notice of Foreclosure ''. ( Attachment ) BMO is not working with us in an honest manner. They are continuing with a foreclosure while making unreasonable documentation requests within a limited time frame. ( Attachment ) The foreclosure notice was only sent to us and our condo association. Sending the foreclosure notification to our condo association was not a legal requirement on the part of BMO. They notified our condo association of the foreclosure in order to embarrass and intimidate us. We think BMO is using fear and intimidation toward us because we are XXXX, XXXX and have a large amount of equity in our home. BMO Harris wants to railroad us into foreclosure with a minimum amount of effort toward modifying our XXXX mortgage even though we had an excellent 10 year history in the past.