Consumer complaint received 2020-01-01 00:00:00
Product: Mortgage — Conventional home mortgage
Issue: Closing on a mortgage — 
Company: Chesmar Homes
State: TX

Complaint narrative:
In XX/XX/XXXX we put our earnest money down on a new construction Chesmar home. At this time, we applied for a loan through their lender XXXX XXXX. 

We closed in XX/XX/XXXX. During all of XXXX our mortgage payment was {$1700.00}. In XXXX it jumped to {$2500.00} as we were {$4100.00} short in our escrow. Although we were paying extra into our escrow account, we were still short. We could not make the new payment of {$2500.00}. I called the bank that has our loan and asked what my options were. They spread the shortage over 36 months making our new payment {$2300.00}. Not what we had originally been told our payment was when we closed but it was better than {$2500.00}. 

Now we are struggling to keep up. We decided to try to see if we could get into a home with a lower price point in hopes to have a more manageable mortgage. Working with a different lender this time we have investigated what options are available to us. At this time, we were informed that our escrow account should never have been set up to the unimproved amount and should have been set up to the improved amount of the home and land. It also appears our debt to income ratio was too high, and had they used the improved amount, we believe we would have been denied for the original loan. On reflection, we feel we never should have been approved for a loan of this amount but were guided by the lenders at the time. 

We are now in a difficult situation as we do not qualify to refinance due to the debt to income ratio and selling our new home will be hard as our neighborhood is still a new construction area. There have been no homes sold yet by the original owners to even compare our home. If we sold, we would walk away with less money than we even started with, resulting in us not being able to purchase another home. 

Being approved for this loan has put us in a financial and emotional hardship. At closing we signed for an estimated {$1700.00} and we are now paying {$2300.00}. We trusted XXXX to approve or deny us honestly, but we feel we were just approved even though the numbers didn't add up. We feel XXXX failed to set up our escrow account correctly resulting in a substantial shortage. Following closing I reached out to XXXX multiple times asking what the appropriate amount we should be putting into escrow each month and I never got a response back. 

My husband and I are both XXXX  in the community. We were also never told about the numerous programs that are available to XXXX   and feel as though this should have been information provided to us at the time of the mortgage process. 

We feel taken advantage of as first-time home buyers and were pushed to go with the builders lender. I would like XXXX XXXX to be held accountable for this. I would also like your assurance that this will not happen again to other naive first time home buyers.

Company public response: Company believes it acted appropriately as authorized by contract or law
Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation