Why do I have to send communications in writing to the mortgage company to protect myself?
“Why do I have to send communications in writing to the mortgage company to protect myself?
Often we tell our clients that when they’re dealing with their mortgage company, it’s fine to communicate by phone or email, but they need to verify everything by getting it in writing.
Let’s talk about why this is important.
Many of these mortgage companies are crooked.
Sadly, this is how they operate.
They lie and cheat you.
We had one mortgage company representative tell us, under oath, that anyone who believes what they say over the phone is naive.
This person at a major mortgage company claimed Alabama consumers should expect that the company will lie to you.
Insanity!
But this is what they do.
You’ll see mortgage companies in the paper and on the news because they lied to their clients, so you have to protect yourself.
It’s like when you’re traveling down the road, and you see someone who is going to veer into your lane.
What do you do? You protect yourself from getting hit.
Now, you can go,“That’s not fair! They shouldn’t do that so I’m going to stay where I am because they have no right to do this.”
Then they’ll crash into you.
Let’s protect ourselves, and do what we can to keep bad things from happening.
Document everything in writing when you’re dealing with your mortgage company.
So if they call you and say,“Hey, great news! We’ve canceled your foreclosure.”
That’s great, put it in writing and send it to them.
Do whatever you can to document what they say to you over the phone.
If they ask you to send in documents for a loan modification, don’t just drop it in the mail and hope they get it. Send it certified mail.
Send it via UPS, FedEx, etc.
Mail it out in such a way that you can track where your documents are and have proof that they received your documents.
Don’t rely on conversations over the phone.
They say that those calls are recorded, but I’ll let you in on a secret: those recordings will mysteriously (or not so mysteriously) disappear if they are bad for the mortgage company.
Their excuse is that they were “accidentally erased when there was a glitch in the system.”
If they’ll lie to you and try to steal your home in an illegal foreclosure, they’ll lie about those conversations being deleted for that day, right?
That’s how they work.
Once you get off of the phone with them, type up a summary detailing who you talked to and what you talked about.
Send it to them and tell them that if they feel that your summary was inaccurate, then they should write up a response correcting you on what was said.
They may still lie about it, but at least you have documentation of what was said in your summary.
That is incredibly powerful when we’re dealing with these mortgage companies.
So yes, I know it’s 2018, but it’s so important to get every conversation in writing.
One last thing.
RESPA letters, notice of error and request for information letters, have to be sent in writing.
They have to be sent to a specific address if the mortgage company is designated a particular address.
If you do these over the phone, they’re worthless.
If you send it to the wrong address, even if the mortgage company gets it, they can throw it out and it will be worthless.
You have to follow the rules.
In return, we expect the mortgage company to follow the rules in regards to foreclosure, loss mitigation, etc.
Hope this is helpful to you!
If you have any questions, feel free to get in touch with us.
You can reach us by phone at 1-205-879-2447, or you can fill out a contact form and we will get in touch with you quickly.
Thanks for reading, and have a great day!