I came to Butler Mortgage with a two-week timeline when I found my previous mortgage company could not provide an open mortgage and I expected to sell within a relatively short time. Will Butler accepted my application.
He was unable to have his referred lawyer extend the deadline by sending the request to pay out the existing mortgage. We went with our own lawyer, who was accommodating. Our existing mortgage company was generous and provided three extensions over the six weeks that followed. To my end, I always provided requested documentation no later than the start of the next business day.
Butler Mortgage set up the standard appraisal of our property, which I had been clear was a rental home with separate basement suite. On the day of the appraisal, Will Butler advised me to outright lie to the appraiser (and effectively to the bank), with the following text called out in his email in bolded red type:
"** It's very IMPORTANT that you are there at the property when the appraiser arrives, you MUST not tell the appraiser the property is rented, rather currently occupied by a family relative. **"
I told Will that this was not possible and re-asserted that I had been upfront from the start about the property being a rental, knowing this to be an important point in real estate financing. He later responded that he had spoken to the bank, and that I no longer needed to be present or to make the false statement.
One other incident stood out in those challenging weeks. In response to my security concerns, Butler Mortgage told me that it was acceptable to black out our social insurance numbers within the documents. I sent the documents encrypted and provided passwords by a different means. Four weeks later, I was told that the documents needed to be re-sent with the blocked-out information visible. With the timing now critical, I sent by fax rather than encrypted email. Will's assistant returned the complete documentation in an unsecured email, with my spouse's and my most vulnerable information on almost every page. Horrified, I asked why.
Will Butler's verbatim one-line response: "Identity thieves hack multibillion dollar corporations, not small business emails."
Go ahead and read that again.
Presumably Mr. Butler is confident perpetrators of Canada's fastest growing crime would never bother with the communications of one of the country's highest-volume mortgage brokers, despite an apparent lack of policies for information security.
The day before our final deadline, six weeks after we had begun, Will Butler's assistant said: "I'm not sure what's happening; this just landed on my desk." I replied: "I contacted you three times this week alone, following up to find out where things were at. You have not replied to me."
On another occasion after I had questioned multiple grey areas, including broker fees not previously disclosed, Will Butler responded that I was clearly not equipped for handling stress, or he would have dropped my file. Sadly, he spared me that kindness.
On the deadline day, I was sitting with my spouse in our lawyer's office to finalize the transaction, when we discovered that the funds could not possibly be transferred in time. At the same moment, Butler Mortgage contacted us to request yet more redundant documentation. We had missed the deadline, and our old mortgage auto-renewed, meaning thousands of dollars in penalties, not to mention the hundreds wasted on the appraisal and legal fees.
I chose to write this review after much careful thought, and felt it was my responsibility as a consumer, after giving myself sufficient time for the emotion to subside after the disappointment, costs, lack of accountability and bullying by the very arrogant Will Butler. Everything I have written in this review is accurate and documented. read more
