Consumer complaint received 2025-09-08 00:00:00
Product: Mortgage — VA mortgage
Issue: Trouble during payment process — Payment process
Company: Freedom Mortgage Company
State: VA

Complaint narrative:
Back on XXXX, I signed an agreement to transfer my existing Veterans Administration ( VA ) mortgage then being managed by XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX, XXXX Before I did so, I asked for an amortization schedule from XXXX to determine when the mortgage would be paid off if I stayed with them under the then current arrangement paying an interest rate of 3.25 %. As can be seen from the document contained in Attachment # 1, paying just an additional principal amount of $ XXXX  monthly, I could expect to have the loan paid off with a maturity date of XXXX. However, I was able to obtain more favorable lending terms from XXXX XXXX  so I made the switch. The new VA loan was to be a 25-year fixed rate refinance at a 2.25 % interest rate as seen in Attachment # 2. Consequently, if no changes were made to the baseline agreement, the property was due to be paid off on XXXX. However, by the time the actual first payment was due, unbeknownst to me, the mortgage had been passed on to Freedom Mortgage Corporation ( XXXX ) as seen in the initial monthly mortgage statement provided as Attachment # XXXX. As listed in that document, the total balance due or outstanding principal amount was {$220000.00}. In order to accelerate the payoff of that loan, I arranged to have payments made on a biweekly versus monthly basis, and increased the additional principal payment to a biweekly {$250.00} ( or at least + $ XXXXmonth ). Under these circumstances with a 1 % lower rate mortgage than before, I therefore had a reasonable expectation that my home would be fully paid significantly sooner than in 25 years. 

In XXXX XXXX  my wife began to ask me how close we were getting to having our home paid off, so I began to investigate the matter. The remaining outstanding balance at the time of was still over {$160.00} XXXX which just didnt seem right, and the calculator on the XXXX XXXX wasnt particularly helpful since it only computed the effect of paying additional principle on a monthly basis starting with the next payment due moving forward, but it couldnt look back in time. I then proceeded to make calls to Freedom Mortgage Customer Service @ XXXX to ask questions and request a new amortization schedule properly reflecting my payment history since the origination of the loan. I eventually was able to get them to send me a written, tabular amortization schedule on XXXX as seen in Attachment # 4, but of course was greatly disappointed because it didnt reflect that additional principal was to be paid, and the payment schedule was only monthly and not a biweekly basis. Furthermore, as seen in my monthly XXXX mortgage statement in Attachment # 5, the content in general seemed to be questionable. Simply compare the information the statements content to that of the initial payment in the new schedule from XXXX. I found it pathetic that a national mortgage company servicing loans under the VA didnt have the capacity to satisfy this simple request, so in frustration I ended up making my own calculations in the spreadsheet included as Attachment # 6. 

I produced the spreadsheet for Attachment as a convenience to XXXX and the CFPB because it is based on years of data that has been encapsulated into this greatly simplified form. The sources were all of the XXXX statements to the present day as well as the transactions reflected in the statements from the financial institution, XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX ( XXXX ), from which my payments were being made over the loans lifetime. If XXXX wishes to waste their time and actually examine those dozens of documents to confirm the accuracy of the content contained in my spreadsheet, Im certainly prepared to furnish them as well. The spreadsheet contains three tabs. The information in the first tab reflects the actual numbers for the principal, interest, and escrow payments directly taken out of XXXX  own monthly mortgage statements starting from the beginning of the loans history at the bottom and working up to the payment due on XXXX as seen in the latest XXXX mortgage statement included as Attachment # 7. Note the highlighted remaining balance of {$130000.00} forecast on that date and compare it to the outstanding principal of {$150000.00} as reflected in Attachment # 7. That already corresponds to a difference of {$15000.00}!

In the second tab of the spreadsheet, I factor in the additional principal payments amounting to at least $ 500/month. Trying to perform this calculation to actually reflect biweekly payments of {$250.00} was too difficult for me to perform on my own, but even then, the remaining balance projected on XXXX is only expected to be {$100000.00} versus the {$150000.00} shown in Attachment # 7. Already, XXXX accounting is now off by at least {$42000.00}. If XXXX officials attempt to come up with some explanation to dispute this, the content in the third tab will not only provide definitive proof of the validity of my calculations, but it will actually show how much money has been robbed from me over the last 120 months. Thats because it contains the dates and amounts that were withdrawn from my XXXX account on a biweekly basis over that period of time. Ive highlighted every other calendar month in the listing so it is easier to spot the ten months when three payments of equal amounts were made rather than just two. Again, this information is pulled directly out of my monthly XXXX  statements, and if XXXX wishes to manually review those 120 documents, Im prepared to furnish them with electronic copies. What this third tab shows is that as of the last biweekly payment made on XXXX, the total amount of money Ive actually already paid to XXXX is {$120000.00} XXXX and as of this date, the remaining balance to pay off the mortgage should merely be {$99000.00} versus the {$150000.00} reflected in Attachment # 7, a humungous difference of {$52000.00}! Obviously, my intuition all along that something was very wrong with XXXX  accounting was correct!

Company public response: Company has responded to the consumer and the CFPB and chooses not to provide a public response
Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation