Three years ago I refinanced an investment property. It turned into such a comedy of errors that at the time I wondered if it would ever be corrected. I still do not know how it should have been handled. The advice to borrowers when funding was delayed, was make your mortgage payment. My question was which mortgage and for how long? I did not file any complaints with regulators. What the mortgage company did, beyond making the corrections remain a mystery.

It started after online mortgage estimations. Later I received a call from a mortgage broker explaining the options available to me. I found the terms acceptable, applied for, and received a mortgage that allowed cash out for repairs previously made on the house “out of pocket”.

Refinanced mortgages have a right of rescission for 72 hours before the loan is funded, the old mortgage is paid, and funds paid to pay designated debts or to the borrower or. I had signed paperwork making me responsible for 2 first mortgages on the property, the new one to pay off the original mortgage and the old mortgage. It took nearly 3 weeks for my old mortgage to be paid and the balance to be “Zero Balance ” owed. In the meantime, after checking the status on the mortgage every day, I decided to make the payment so it wouldn’t be late. I also made a payment to the mortgage broker according to the statement provided for the new mortgage. I made two first mortgage payments in one month on the same property.

Then I began getting letters claiming to be the new servicer for the mortgage. In 4 months mortgage payments were sent to the broker, a mortgage servicer, the broker again, and my current mortgage servicer. The last servicer asked me to resign my mortgage agreement because the broker did not have their originals for their review. The documents were faxed to me and I carefully compared every line to my copy of the original documents. My instructions were to sign and date them with the original date used for the refinance.

The first statement from the last mortgage lender was at a higher interest rate and showed the mortgage was new. The term did not reflect the number of payments made prior to their acquisition of the mortgage. I faxed copies of previous statements, cancelled checks, mortgage term, and calculation for the mortgage balance. The corrections were made, but not without effort and proof. Fortunately reconstructing the mortgage documents provided me with a name and fax number internally for the new lender. That information allowed me to get past the gatekeeper. Instead of being bounced around in the voice mail system I was able to speak with a real person in a real department.

I invoiced the mortgage brokerage for 18 days interest. I prepaid interest to them based on their promptly paying the original mortgage as agreed. There was no response then, but one year later an agent for the broker called me about refinancing again. I explained the situation and told them until I received satisfaction, there was nothing they could do for me. I was told to resubmit the original invoice and they actually did pay the interest calculated. I wish I had the nerve to be more like brokers and lenders. If I had, I would have invoiced them for the original amount, added multiple late fees, over limit fees, and interest onto their balance.