I am very regretful that I chose to do business with U.S. Mortgages. I have had nothing but problems with this company and I ultimately ended up losing $5,000 in earnest money and $525 that I had paid for an appraisal by working with them. I write mostly positive reviews on Yelp but I wanted to share my experience to warn others to avoid this company.
Below is a summary of my experience. Please note that that my credit score is above 700 and all documents were submitted to U.S. mortgages within 24 hours of them being requested.
On 11/12/14, I notified U.S. Mortgages that I was under contract to buy a house. The contract had an appraisal objection deadline of 12/2/14, a loan objection deadline of 12/5/14, and a close date of 12/11/14. These are typical time frames for a purchase contract and I was told by their loan processor, Cassie, that there would be no problems in meeting these deadlines.
About a week had passed after notifying them that the house was under contract and I was getting concerned because the appraisal had not been ordered. I was finally told by Cassie on 11/19/14 that the appraisal had been ordered and I saw that my credit card was charged for $450 that same day. I trusted that everything had been taken care of but to my dismay, I found out just three days prior to the appraisal objection deadline that Cassie had, in fact, not ordered the appraisal. This was very alarming as it was going to put my earnest money in jeopardy if the appraised value came back less than expected.
To make matters worse, I was also told a few days before the appraisal objection deadline that the appraisal would be $900 because it was a "mountain property". This property is inside the town of Lyons and does not fall into a mountain property category. After complaining about what felt like a bait and switch, the price was lowered but I still had to pay more for the appraisal than I was originally told. It bothered me that we were so far into the processes and the price of the appraisal was changing at the last minute. When the appraisal finally did come in, it was 12/12/14, a full 10 days after the objection deadline and one full day after our scheduled closing.
Even if the appraisal had been completed prior to the deadline in the housing contract, we still would not have been able to make the 12/11/14 closing. The loan objection deadline was 12/5/14 and I was being asked to provide additional documentation as late as 12/9/14 and 12/10/14; nearly a full month after I started the process. Again, I should have realized that I had been misled about this company's ability to meet the deadlines in the purchase contract and backed out of the process. However, it was after the 12/5/14 loan objection deadline and I could no longer get a refund on my earnest money. To add further insult, on 12/8/14, almost a full month after we started the process, I was told that they would be increasing my interest rate to 4.125% even though my rate had already been locked at 3.875%. This last minute rate increase, similar to the last minute increase in the cost of the appraisal, felt like another bait and switch. They knew it was past the loan objection deadline and if I didn't agree to the rate increase that I would lose $5,000.
Even though we had missed the closing deadline, I decided to continue to work with this company because we were so far along in the process and I was able to get my realtor to have the sellers agree to a new closing date of 1/2/15. They made a request on 12/10/14 that I was not able to accommodate so I was told for the loan to get approval I would need to have a co-signer. I did as they asked and after weeks of very little work being done on the loan (which they say was due to it being the holiday season), and then a last minute scramble for additional documents, they issued a denial of the loan on the day of the closing on the house! In total, it took them 51 days to issue a denial on the mortgage.
The reason for the denial was because my income was not sufficient to meet the ratios needed for the loan. They told me that my income on my tax returns under FNMA and HUD guidelines was close to -$3,000/month. Back in September 2014, they reviewed my tax returns and everything was fine. I do not believe they used FNMA and HUD guidelines when issuing my pre-approval because no approval would have ever been issued if my income was really -$3,000/month.
I expressed my concern about my experience to David Shamansky, the managing member of U.S. Mortgages, and asked what he would do to make things right. He did not apologize for what had happened and suggested that if I had additional concerns that I could talk to his lawyer.
After receiving a denial from U.S. Mortgages, I was able to buy the house with a loan from Elevations Credit Union. They completed everything within the deadlines of the purchase contract and there were no last minute surprises. read more
