In late July of 2007, I was contacted by a customer wishing to take out 2 mortgage loans, one to buy a new home, and one to refinance her existing home. I was very happy to help her as we were a commissioned based company and were under extreme pressure to close a set number of loans per month. The unique thing about this case was the type of loans the customer sought. She was trying to obtain 2 loans that were deferred interest loans.
These type of loans allow a borrower to make payments BELOW his/her monthly interest payments. What this means, for example, is if you were supposed to be paying $1,000 a month (just on interest), you were only required to make a payment of $500. In other words, after one month, you would owe $500 more on the home then you previously had. (I am not sure if these loans still exist as they were one of the big reasons for the housing crisis that occurred in early 2008).
The problem in this case was that I did not know the reason they wanted these loans was because they could not afford to own two homes at the same time. So after asking the client to document the income to substantiate what they had told me on the phone, I found out they did not make enough money to qualify for these loans. It is true that Amerisave did require upfront deposits which both the clients and the employees were told were to cover the Appraisals on the homes. It is because of this policy and knowing the client couldn't qualify for these loans, that I immediately cancelled the appraisals in hopes of getting the client a refund if they were unable to qualify for another type of loan. I told the client that there was no way they could qualify for those loans and even went as far as to tell them they should try to sell there current home before purchasing the new one. Through all this it was my understanding that if they chose to cancel the whole loan process, that there deposits would be refunded to them as no appraisals had been performed. I even specifically requested my manager to put in a request to have them refunded. The problem is that I had no direct control over this money so I had no way of refunding it myself.
The other dilemma in this situation is that I resigned from my position 2 days after putting in the request for the refund (Aug 6th,2007) so I have no knowledge of how this situation turned out.
I cannot speak for the integrity of Amerisave, but I hope that since this customer made this compaint so shortly after the refund was requested, that she was fully refunded all of her deposit. It is unfortunate that this situation ever happened and that I did not know about Debra's compaint on this site until almost 3 years after the situation occurred.
It is just my hope that by me not trying to push these loans through knowing it would harm her and her family, that I may have helped prevent her from being one of the many victims of the housing crisis of 2008 and possibly losing two homes in the process. Debra, if you ever get to read this, I hope everything worked out for you and am truly sorry if you ever thought I did not care about what happened to you.
