Frisco Mortgage News

Have you ever wondered if the extra principal payment you made was properly applied to your mortgage loan balance? How about your escrow account – how was that dollar amount figured? Or do you think you were erroneously charged a late fee?

The Consumer Finance Protection Bureau has recently issued rules requiring the company where you made your mortgage payment to respond to your inquiry within a certain amount of time.

But they also suggest certain things you should do if you have questions about your current mortgage. Regardless if you phone or send a letter, here is the information the servicing company will need from you before they are required to respond:

• Exact names that appear on your mortgage documents
• Address and loan number
• Try to provide exact details of when you believe the error occurred (like on July 1, I sent in a check to pay my mortgage payment, the check was cashed on July 7, but I was charged a late charge…)
• Do not write a note on your payment coupon. The coupon usually gets thrown away right after the payment has been recorded.

Here’s what to expect from the servicing company when you make an inquiry:

• Servicing company must “acknowledge” your complaint within 5 business days (either email or letter)
• If you are paying off your mortgage, they must respond within 7 days
• If the company asks you for additional information, they have an additional 15 days to respond
• For all other “general” inquiries, (late charges, payments to principal balance, escrow accounts) they have 30 days to respond
• They cannot charge you a fee for research or responding to an inquiry
• They must confirm if the error has been corrected
• If there is no error, they must explain why they are not going to make an correction.

If your loan has been transferred to another mortgage servicing company, you have a time limit of 12 months to inquire about errors. After the one-year time period, they are not required to investigate your inquiry.

For more information about mortgage servicing rules, visit ConsumerFinance.gov.