Borrowers complained more to the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau about mortgage servicing issues than any other problem with their mortgages.
Fully 11 percent of the complaints the bureau received were mortgage related, and 42 percent of them were from borrowers that had “trouble during [the] payment process,” according to “Complaint Snapshot: Mortgage” from the CFPB.
According to an analysis of complaints the CFPB received between Nov. 1, 2016 and Oct. 31, 2018, borrowers were most likely to complain about their statements, payments, escrow accounts and payoff requests.
- Complaints describing issues with periodic statements suggest some consumers are not receiving statements on time, resulting in a lack of information about whether payments were applied to their balances or the status of loans. In some of these complaints, consumers attributed a missing statement to a recent transfer of servicing of the loan. Other consumers complained of periodic statements containing inaccurate account information such as late fees assessed to their loan despite payments made on or before the due date.
- Borrowers complained about servicers not applying payments to their loan account as intended. For instant, despite submitting extra payments with instructions to apply them to principal, payments were either misapplied or held in an unapplied funds account and applied only after the servicer was contacted.
- Consumers complained of escrow account analyses indicating a shortage of funds. In these complaints, some consumers stated they received an escrow analysis statement that indicated a shortage because of an increase to hazard insurance, taxes, or both. But after researching their tax bill or hazard insurance premium, they did not find an increase in costs, and therefore, considered the escrow shortage unwarranted.
- Some consumers complained of payoff information requests that were either not addressed or that were inaccurate because the consumer did not receive the information on time. In some of these complaints, consumers reported multiple unsuccessful attempts to obtain payoff information, or an inaccurate payoff amount delayed their attempt to pay their loan in full.
Compared to the monthly average compiled over the past 24 months, borrowers submitted 18 percent fewer mortgage complaints in October 2018. And there were 15 percent fewer mortgage complaints from August to October 2018, compared with the same period a year earlier.
