Consumer complaint received 2024-04-01 00:00:00
Product: Mortgage — Conventional home mortgage
Issue: Struggling to pay mortgage — Trying to communicate with the company to fix an issue related to modification, forbearance, short sale, deed-in-lieu, bankruptcy, or foreclosure
Company: BANK OF AMERICA, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION
State: AR

Complaint narrative:
I got XXXX. I was in the hospital. My husband and I are both self employed. We both lost work as a result of my illness. Ive had it multiple times and suffer long XX/XX/XXXX. 
We reached out to Bank of America to discuss options to protect our home and mortgage while we worked to get back in our feet. They were very helpful and gave us the option to not pay any payments for a few months. They said when that period was over and we were ready they could offer us options of a loan modification, deferment of what we owe or lower our interest rate to help us be able to make out payments easier. Weve lived in our house for almost 26 years. We refinanced about 12 years ago with Bank of America. 4.75 % rate. 
Anyway, we took them up so we could work on getting things back in order. We were told they would not report negatively to credit reports, they would not charge interest and our escrows would continue to be paid. 

We were ready to start making regular payments again and they said they could offer a modification where our payment would stay the same but we would have to show we could pay for three months before it would be permanent. 
Great. We paid as we were told. They said dont pay early. Dont pay extra etc. it could keep us from qualifying. We paid on time. 

We got the loan modification documents thinking that all was good and we could just keep making our regular payments. The payment looked good. Our interest rate was still the same. But something caught my eye in the documents. It said they were adding 22 years to our loan. That our loan would be paid in full in XXXX! XXXX! Ill be XXXX XXXX XXXX. Thats 40 years! 
I called and asked them if it was a mistake. They said no. I asked for a manger to call me. When he called he insisted that was correct and that is the offer. I asked why I wasnt given the opportunity to defer the balance to the end as I was told in the beginning and he said we didnt qualify for that. I didnt know we had to qualify. He said that was the option I chose. I ask what the other options were because I wasnt offered any others and he just said this is the offer we are giving you and said they arent offering anything else. But then would say other options but refused to give me any. I was never told that they would add 22 years onto my loan that Ive already paid on. They acted like they were helping me at first. They acted like this was put in place for people like me who suffered hardship do to XXXX. They took advantage of my hardship to put hundreds of thousands of dollars in their pockets. I am not signing the loan modification. Now I am in jeopardy of foreclosure. My house is worth four times what I owe in total. This is my home of 26 years. The home I raised my kids in. I wish I would have never believed they were helping us.

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 non-monetary relief