In 2020, I worked with Sheri to get my first home. Spoiler: I succeeded and now living there.
Sheri worked with me very well and got things done in about 2 months, in total. Sheri was professional and helped me a lot along the way of getting a preapproval so I'd know how much I could work with when looking for a home and then the finalization process of actually getting the loan for the home. The only main issue I had during this was her assistant Jessica who had asked me repeatedly for the same document I had sent her. She asked for specific verbiage which I included. It was evident she didn't actually read the document because what she requested was exactly what I sent to her. I even sent the same document and she finally accepted it after some going back and forth. That was a very frustrating week to have to go through that.
There's another issue that I'll get into in a moment.
About a year later, I was contacted by Sheri to see if I wanted to refinance my home from an FHA to a conventional so I could begin saving money. At first I wasn't so sure about it. Most to do with my financial situation. Money is very tight for me so having to go through with an appraisal just wouldn't work for me so I declined.
Sheri handed my case off to Steve and he began contacting me. Steve worked the numbers and tried very hard to get things to work for me. Steve said he would see about getting a voucher for me that could waive the appraisal fee. That ended up not being something he could do. But Steve said that he found another thing that could work for me which is to put the appraisal on a credit card I have. About $500. I was skeptical about this but Steve said that if he could get the numbers to work, based on the estimate of my home from Zillow and Redfin, I could come out very well because of the equity in my home. I could pay off these credit cards and my vehicle and just have my monthly payment increased by a few dollars.
Well that sounded wonderful. I could consolidate everything into one payment and be much more free financially. Awesome! Let's do it.
So we went forward with it. This was mid September and we were hoping to be done by October 1.
Due to some things out of their and my control, we didn't hit that deadline and ended up going deeper into October. Which was fine, but we were hitting their new deadline for the interest lock-in.
Whoever they chose for an appraiser did not do a good job. Zillow and Redin and other sites were estimating my house to be $280-$330. Because of all these inconsistencies, they couldn't rely on these and said they wanted an official appraiser.
I've done quite a bit to my home since buying it. Stuff that wouldn't show up on Zillow and Redfin's radar, so my home should actually be worth more than what they estimate just having sat here all this time.
Their appraiser said my home was worth $265k. He clearly did not do his job as he was supposed to. And I intend to Yelp his company as well for this awful appraisal that my home didn't deserve. Because of that, we couldn't have my vehicle consolidated into the loan. This sucked big time to hear because that is my second biggest expense. But Steve said that we could still pay off my credit cards and I could get cash in hand. That's cool, not exactly what I wanted to hear, but doable. So let's proceed.
Well now they want my "asset statements". I'm thinking they just need to have my bank statements on file as part of this.
No, now they're telling me they need to see 6 months worth of savings in the event I lost my job, etc. It's standard part of the loan process, so his assistant Wendy says.
I'm shocked to hear this. Because I obviously have nothing like this since I had to put the appraisal on a credit card. They knew I didn't have any extra money set aside. I should, but like I said, money is tight. Well Steve asks if I have a 401k because we can use that. Turns out I don't have that like I thought I did (I never told Steve I had one before this).
So the refinance couldn't proceed. Steve said that my debt to income ratio is too high. Perhaps I could refinance my vehicle and I'd be in better standing to proceed with the refinance for my home.
At this point, I'm just done. Too many promises that fell through and went nowhere. Too many letdowns. I'm done. I'm not refinancing my vehicle only to have another surprise at the end of the road again like we've had so much before. This is ridiculous.
So now I'm stuck with my same financial situation plus an extra $500 to some joke of an appraiser that I now have to pay. I'm in a worst financial position than if I just never went through with this refinance in the first place.
It's still my fault ultimately for not putting my foot down and not going through with this. But I don't appreciate the way they continually kept coming back to me after saying no repeatedly and I don't appreciate the fact that things didn't go half the way we anticipated. read more
