Made Homeless by Countrywide Mortgage Company

We were so excited about selling our home and purchasing a new home. My husband got a new job about 100 miles from where we were living and we needed to relocate. With the rising cost of gasoline and the harsh Mid-West winters, we needed to shorten his commute. We contacted a real estate agent to sell our home and one to help locate and purchase our new home. But, of course, we pre-qualified for a new mortgage first, or so we thought we did.

Home owners selling homes and buying homes rely on the experts for advice and guidance, right? We relied on the professional expertise of the Countrywide mortgage company and our realtors to steer us in the right direction and to keep us on track for closings to occur for both places. Well, when the financing interaction was taking place, some funny business was also taking place.

Trusting that the person at Countrywide knew what he was doing, we fell in a trap no one should ever have to experience. Our mortgage application was supposed to include both my husband and my assets and liabilities, but it only included his. We live in a "community property" state and all real estate transactions must include both the husband and wife. Throughout the entire process, my assets were never considered, only my liabilities and only in the last three days leading up to the closing day.

We were also given an incredible interest rate of 5.35% and were told we qualified for the amount needed to purchase our new home. We trusted that all was well and moved forward with selling our home. Trusting that Countrywide was correct in what they were doing, we lifted the two contingencies that were placed in the contract for the purchase of our new home: (1) selling our house, and (2) obtaining the mortgage loan.

Closing day for the sale of our house and the purchase of our new home was scheduled for the same day. The closing on our house occurred at 9:00am. Then, according to plan, the closing on the purchase was to be at 4:00pm. At 3:00pm, Countrywide called and said they disapproved the mortgage. Now we were in a serious pickle. We had lifted the contingencies and were legally liable. We had just sold our home, the movers had all our worldly possessions on the truck and we were completely liable for buying the house. Now, at this point we were HOMELESS and had no where to lay our heads that night. Talk about a stressful situation!

When we asked why we were turned down for the mortgage loan, we were told that the underwriters would need to revisit our application to determine the amount over the allowed income to debt ratio, and that would take three weeks. THREE WEEKS, ugh! What were we to do for a place to live in the meantime?

Needless to say, that closing day was the day our world got turned upside down. So here we were no place to live and forced to find a place and quickly; our household goods had to be delivered and we did not want to have them placed in storage. What were we to do? We found a hotel room for the night and slept (or tried to sleep) on this disastrous day.

The next morning we drove around the town and did manage to find a suitable place to call "home." However, this place came with a mandatory twelve month lease. Ouch, there went three weeks to wait for another try at a mortgage and there went the house deal. This placed us at odds with the seller, and rather than just accept the earnest money ($1,000) as a consolation, they sued us for $8,000. Talk about being between a "rock and a hard place," we did what anyone else would do in this situation, we borrowed the money and paid the ransom. I call it "ransom" because at that point in time, that became the price for our sanity and freedom from this nightmare.

We are still in the process of recovering from this displaced trust. To this day, we don't actually know just how much over the mark we were that caused Countrywide to decline our mortgage loan, and we probably will never know. I share this horror story so that others do not fall into the same trap and lose out like we did.

So, in conclusion, if something does not seem right and you suspect "funny business" especially with a mortgage loan process, ask questions and don't automatically place trust in those "professionals." If you are in need of a mortgage loan, I highly recommend you research the mortgage lender before you start the process. I wish we had.