I've posted here several times about the importance of choosing a good lender. If this story doesn't convince you, nothing else I could say will!

I've cut and pasted this from another blog. The writer is a real estate broker who wanted to remain anonymous for professional reasons. Hey, it can happen to anyone!

After an exhausting fight with Taylor, Bean, & Whitaker my mortgage has been sold to Bank of America.

The year leading up to this event has made me an emotional mess. Never have I felt so helpless and small. I was so distraught I sought out comfort from other victims of TBW scams. Some of those new found friends had lost their homes in foreclosure. The rest of us were holding on by a thread for our dear lives.

Now, for a real estate broker, foreclosing on your home is simply embarassing. Seeing my name in the legal section was my worst fear. People would automatically think I was in financial trouble or irresponsible. So my husband hugged me every day and told me there was nothing more I could do. The lawyer in my said otherwise.

So I went in search of others who were facing problems with TBW and found a class action lawsuit against them for effectively forcing people into foreclosure. The stories sounded eerily similar to mine.

1. The online bill pay site was down almost 24/7. When you did happen to find the website running they made it virtually impossible to pay online by hiding their payment system somewhere within the site. After 4 hours one day I managed to find it. I tried to pay and the system would not process the payment due to technical difficulties.

           Because online bill pay was down we tried to mail our payment in.

2. I keep immaculate payment records. So I sent my payment through the mail.

25% of the time TBW claimed they never received the payment(even when mailed in their own envelope) and it never was seen again.

50% of the time TBW claimed they never received the payment and it showed up as being cleared on my bank statement. They refuse to use bank statements as proof of payment and marked my mortgage as late.So who was cashing my checks then?

25% of the time they received the payment but took 45-60 days to process it. Because their billing system took that long they tacked on late fees.This happened even if my payment was received weeks before the due date.

Now I am three months behind on my mortgage and receiving demand letters from TBW. I write them a long letter begging them to TAKE MY &**$% MONEY. I have been sending the payments but no one will process them or acknowledge ever receiving them.

3. I send by certified mail a payment for all that is currently and past due. I receive verification that they have my letter.

4. I receive a foreclosure notice because I have not paid(according to them). My credit is ruined at this point. I call them and am put on hold for 4 HOURS until their business is closed. I get a message that says to call back tomorrow.

5. I call back every day and wait on hold. My maximum record was 7 HOURS.  I pressed the operator buttons, trying to trick the system into giving me a live person. No luck.

6. Even though I have verification of them receiving my payment it has not been processed yet.

7. I try the Pay-By-Phone option. They have a live version(supposedly) so maybe they will talk to me if I offer to throw more money at them. No such luck. The operator told me my account was in "Lockdown Status" and I needed to contact their attorneys in order to pay.

At this point I was pulling out my hair, drinking every night, and my temper was flaring. I wrote them one more nasty note before I intended on joining the lawsuit. They responded: You're mortgage has been sold to Bank of America. All payments received by us will be forward to BOA as required by law.

BANK OF AMERICA SAVED ME! I have contacted them and they have no records of any forwarded payments from TBW. So TBW has approximately $4800.00 in complimentary payments from me that disappeared from my bank account but was never credited to my account. And yes, I did verify the mailing address because at one point I thought I was being scammed by a private individual.

I wanted my story to be told because there are still at least 100 people that I know of who were forced into foreclosure or on the brink by Taylor Bean & Whitaker. And no, they were not doing this randomly or to everyone.  Being a real estate agent I instructed other individuals to get a BPO or appraisal done on their house just in case they needed to sell fast. I presented their findings to an anonymous banker who knows the costs of foreclosures. He noted that TBW stood to make a sweet profit on each of properties if they foreclosed and sold themselves. Whether or not that is what they were planning I don't know.

I haven't followed the class action suit. From what I heard the majority of them were suing because TBW refused to take their monthly payments and forced them into foreclosure. But TBW has received a cease and desist order for FHA loans and are under investigation for fraud.

Just remember when you talk to people who are foreclosing, it  isn't always their fault.

Now I'm with a new mortgage company so hopefully I don't get screwed again and this is all behind me. And I hope this never happens to any other person.

A smarter agent/blogger would no doubt have waited to write this blog. Emotions are still pretty raw.

I learned today that a house I have listed for sale in Fauquier has gone into foreclosure.

We've had this listed as a short sale for at least seven months. For slightly less than six months we've had an offer on the table, an offer very close to what the bank's own BPO came in at. We've been unable, despite daily phone calls, to get the bank to move forward with that offer.

In the interim, as the house has sat empty, it's been repeatedly vandalized. The first incident resulted in the theft of both heat pumps. The most recent theft involved copper plumbing and the water heater.

And, over these six months, property values have continued to decline.

The bank is now sitting on a property worth substantially less than the offer they had in their hands.

The owners will have a foreclosure on their credit record rather than the short sale that would have been less damaging.

The potential buyers have wasted all these months and so many hopes and dreams on a house they won't be buying any time soon.

I'm out many months of work for no compensation at all.

And, it didn't have to work this way.

This is the first short sale that I haven't been able to get to settlement. I'll admit to being angry as well as sad.

Would I take another short sale where this same bank held the note? Absolutely not! Will I be warning other agents about dealing with this particular bank? Of course!

If there are days I seem less than sympathetic to the losses being suffered by many financial institutions, here's a good reason why.

Buyer clients of mine were advised this week by their lender that they did not need to do a pre-offer home inspection on a foreclosure listing because, since they are getting a VA loan, the inspection is automatically part of what they get. Voila! Save money!

Bad lender!! Unfortunately, he doesn't quite have the whole picture.

When you get either a VA or FHA mortgage, as part of the appraisal, there is something of an inspection done. What these entities are doing is making sure there are no significant issues with the home that will cause the buyer to have to come up with money for repairs in the first year or two of home ownership. It's a worthy goal. But the inspection has gotten increasingly cursory over the years. And, things that the VA or FHA consider to be a problem, may in fact be things that are not a problem at all. (I've seen deals fall apart over these things!)

A real home inspection takes around 3 hours, sometimes longer, depending on the home. Each system will be tested. The home will be evaluated for water issues. The inspector will go into the attic to look for leaks. Better yet, the potential buyer gets a better understanding of what they're buying, how the systems work and what they'll need to do to maintain their home in good condition.

The VA or FHA appraisal doesn't come close to performing any of these functions.

But there's an even bigger problem here. The lender assured my clients that if they find anything significant, they'll simply increase the size of the loan so they can immediately have it fixed. So, no worries about having to walk away from the contract and lose their earnest money deposit to the bank.

So, even if the appraisal says the home is worth only the contract price and the place needs a brand new roof, no problem loaning them the extra money? A lending institution, given our current situation is willing to loan over 100% of the value of the property to first time home buyers? (Yes, this is going to be a no money down transaction.) And, they'll say this up front without even limiting the amount? If the required repairs bring that number to 110% of the value of the home, are they still going to approve the loan?

I think the answer is "no" and I think they've badly mislead my clients. Lending institutions should do what they do best, make lending decision. (OK, that may not be what most of them do best any more but we're giving them the benefit of the doubt!)

Lending institutions should not be offering advice that puts my clients at risk for losing their earnest money.

I got a call from a lender yesterday on a deal we're working on together. She's got some potentially bad news for my clients and wanted to let me know the scoop. It's the kind of heads up I very much appreciate!

But she also proceeded to tell me that she wasn't going to call my clients with this information for a couple of days. She wanted to research all the options and have every potential question answered before she called them.

I understand that instinct. It's hard to call someone and know they'll have questions and know you won't instantly be able to answer all of them.

But, I have a basic belief that I shouldn't know something about your transaction that you don't. This is NOT part of the canon of ethics for the National Association of REALTORs. There are plenty of other agents who think this goes a step too far and that in some cases we should be protecting our clients from things they don't really need to know.

But, I don't necessarily appreciate it when other people decide what I should and shouldn't know. I can't believe most of my clients would appreciate that.

In this instance, it's not permanently hiding information from anyone. It's just a couple of days delay in relaying the information. We're not talking about someone doing something immoral or unethical.

Still, it's the kind of thing I struggle with.

So, what do you think? If you're a consumer, do you want to know everything I know as soon as I know it? Would you rather I only told you things when I think you must be informed and that I spare you some of the scary details? If you're an agent or broker,  how do you deal with this question?