Quicken Loans TSI Appraisal Services Improper Fee Disclosure, Deposit Abuse, and Inaccurate Appraisals Livonia, Michigan

In regards to the statement by CHF that TSI and Quicken cannot be closely affiliated because of new lending laws, I am sorry to say you are mistaken. Unfortunately almost all such laws include language that allows "exceptions" if disclosure is made.

As it happens, my husband and I just asked Quicken today to end the refinance process we started with them in late June; however, I do still have access to the application and other documents on our loan account website. One of these documents is an Affiliated Business Arrangement Disclosure form that states, and I quote, "Title Source Inc provides title insurance, title search, settlement, and appraisal management services to clients of Lender (Quicken Loans). Title Source also does business under the name of TSI Appraisal Services. In-House Realty LLC provides real estate brokerage services to clients of Lender. This is to give you notice that Lender has a business relationship with Title Source and In-House Realty. Lender, Title Source, and In-House Realty are owned (subsidiaries) by Rock Holding, Inc. Because of this relationship, this referral may provide Lender a financial or other benefit."

The form goes on to state that there are "frequently" other similar service providers available with similar services and that the customer is free to shop around and determine that they are receiving the best services at the best price, specifying, however "(WITH THE EXCEPTION OF APPRAISAL SERVICES)." This entire paragraph on the form is in all caps, but I wanted to spare everyone reading this from the perception of someone yelling.

The appraisal we received on our home from TSI was much lower than expected, over $10,000.00 less than the payoff amount on our current FHA mortgage despite the fact that we bought the house for well under the appraised value 6 years ago and have paid a significant amount off the principal of that loan in the meantime. As a result, we were advised that we did not qualify for the refinance we had agreed to under the GFE we received, but that we should easily qualify for an FHA Streamline refinance (we are not trying to get any cash-out value, only want to lower our interest rate while rates are so favorable). 

We agreed to the Streamline option (which had not been discussed with us previously despite the fact that we were very clear in the beginning we did not want to finance more than our current pay-off amount, which seems interesting to me now as that would have meant there would have been no need for an appraisal and thus no need for the $400.00 deposit we were pressured to pay before we had received anything in writing) and thought from the information given to us by the Quicken representative (the third different person we had to deal with, and each of them seemed to know nothing about what had been discussed with the person/people before them) that this was pretty much guaranteed to sail through without a problem. They had already run credit checks twice on both my husband and I and had verified that some outstanding medical bills that were an issue had been paid in full, so we were very shocked when we received a call telling us that our credit scores were too low "to meet the FHA requirements for the Streamline refinance." 

We were advised to contact the agencies that we had owed these bills to and ask them to provide proof that they were agreeing to request that these debts be "deleted" from our credit reports. When I did this I was told that the agencies in question don't request deletion of past debts (in fact they said they had never heard of this being an option) but that they would have them marked as paid and closed. 

I tried several times to contact our rep at Quicken with this information but was only able to leave messages. I always gave my own and my husband's cell phone numbers and specific times we could be reached because as we both work call center type jobs we cannot take personal calls during the workday except during our lunch periods. My first three messages were not responded to at all. When the representative did finally call, not at a time either my husband or I could take the call, she left a message stating she was confused by the information I gave her and needed us to call her back as she needed to "actually talk to us." We both made repeated attempts to reach her, and again only got her voicemail and again did not receive replies during times we specified we could actually take her call. My husband was finally able to obtain her email address and sent her the same information I had already given repeatedly by voice message that the agencies involved would not "delete" the records but that the accounts were already paid in full and closed on our credit reports.

We did not receive any response for several days. In the meantime we had paid to check our credit scores ourselves and found that they were above the level we had been told was required "by FHA criteria" to be approved for the Streamline refinance, so I again called and left a voicemail informing the rep of this fact and asking that they check our scores again so we could proceed. 

I received a voicemail in response today informing me that the rep "really needed to talk to me, to explain some things, because the way they check credit is different and if those accounts weren't completely deleted it wouldn't change our scores at all, and if they checked it again they would have to take more money out of our deposit and it would probably cause our credit score to drop so that when they checked it again right before closing like they have to do the score would almost definitely be too low." 

After getting this message I finally realized that I had gone into this whole process woefully unprepared and without doing any research or having any unbiased information, so I started reading the HUD/FHA website; nothing there about minimum credit scores. I then researched a bit further and found out that FHA does not require a credit check for a Streamline refinance, your eligibility is based on your payment history on the existing FHA mortgage. However, lenders are allowed to "overlay" their own requirements onto the FHA guidelines. That is fine, but on at least two occasions we were led to believe by the Quicken rep that the credit score requirement was a federal, FHA criteria. At that point I contacted the rep and asked to have our file closed. As of this time we have not seen the full report from the appraiser, just a statement of our home's appraised value but no information as to how that value was decided. We have also not been informed as to the charges we have incurred from our initial deposit for the appraisal and multiple credit checks (and keep in mind that Quicken/Intuit has their own credit report company, Quizzle, but that is not what they use for determining loan eligibility according to our rep).

I am to blame for getting into this - I know better than to agree to pay a deposit for anything without first having information in writing about refund policy, etc. Giving up your credit card number over the phone on a first call for this type of service is not a good idea, but I did it because I believed Quicken to be a reputable company (I have a distant relative who works for one of their subsidiaries and another relative who got a pre-approval for a home purchase mortgage who were both complimentary about the company and I let this override my normal caution).

I can't speak to all of Quicken's business practices, and I am sure many people have had a positive experience with them, but I can't say that I did. We are now having to look for a lender with different criteria for this type of refinance. The one bright spot, since I doubt we will ever see any of our $400 deposit back based on the estimated costs of TSI appraisal services we have been able to get, is that since the Streamline doesn't require an appraisal we at least won't have to pay for that service twice. 

Bottom line - before you agree to ANYTHING, with this or any other company, do your homework. I should have, and I know it, and I really regret that I didn't as much time has been wasted on a process that got us nowhere but $400 poorer.

I'm not an employee of Quicken or have any interest in Quicken. So take this for what it's worth. By the way you wrote "random" in quotations your being sarcastic, however since the real estate and mortgage crisis happened a few years ago, all appraisals are through 3rd parties and the broker (quiken loans) has no say or contact with the selected appraiser. Thats part of new mortgage regulations. As for the appraiser cherry picking the comps; thers absolutely no benifit for an appraiser to cherry pick comps. Wether the appraisal comes in low or high has no bennifit to the appraiser. Once again the regulations on appraiser is much more strict now. They select comps that best fit your homes match, and yes that can include foreclousers. As for them running off with your $400 deposit, the appraisers by regulations now have to be paid in advance for their work. Appraisal run anywhere from $250-500 dollars, so I suspect your deposit was used for that. Before you get a loan decision you have to have an appraisal, before you get an appraisal it has to be paid for wether you get the loan or not. even though your appraisal didnt come in you should inquire qabout the government HARP program wich will allow you to refinance even if your home is under water.

I am going through a similar process with QL / TSI Appraisal right now.  While trying to secure a re-fi at a lower interest rate I had to get an appraisal.  The "random" third party assigned to my house by Quicken Loans was TSI Appraisal.  This all happened after a $400 deposit was placed to get the process started. 

TSI has since turned in my paperwork on the appraisal and valued my house at 20% less than it was just 30 months ago.  The comps used were cherry picked so that the home value appeared to their liking.  The only house they showed on the market is a foreclosure.  A house 2 houses down that was bank owned sold for $83 / sq foot and my appraisal (After new windows, doors, carpet, roof, and fence) was valued at $68.50 / sq foot.

I will not be able to secure the loan desired now because of the low ball number provided by TSI.  However, QL is still in position to get their $400 and ride off into the sunset with minimal work and no risk.  The $400 will be fought until they realize that the services paid for were not performed.