Our problem was that National City Mortgage said they did not have funding for the buyer of our condominium at 4:00 pm the day before (25th January) the scheduled closing (26th January). I understand closings occasionally need to be rescheduled, but it is unacceptable for this to happen one hour before business closing time the day before the closing. Since we were not able to sell our condominium and gain the funds from the sale, we were not able to purchase our new house.
This impacted my wife and me in the following ways. My wife took off three days of work (25th, 26th and 29th January) for packing and unpacking. As she is a physician, her schedule was cleared of patients so there was no work for her to do and she was forced into taking unnecessary days of vacation. Likewise her patients were not able to see her for the treatment they desperately needed.
Although I was able to still work, I was forced to take precious time out of my day to reschedule the disconnection of our old services and connection of our new services since I had originally made the arrangements. Our movers were also inconvenienced as we were not able to call them in time before they closed on Thursday, 25th January to tell them not to come on Friday, 26th January. They showed up early in the morning on Friday, 26th January and were sent home as our closings did not occur.
There were monetary damages as well. We had belongings in storage that we were going to move out before the end of January so we would not have to pay for the month of February. However, since the closing took place so close to the end of January and we would not have had enough time during the work week to move our belongings out of storage, we were charged $99 for the month of February. Since my wife was unable to come to the rescheduled closing because she went to work on Tuesday, 30th January we were forced to pay our lawyer $75 for power of attorney privileges for myself to sign for my wife.
Additionally, there was $42 extra in closing costs because of the extra days. My wife had packed all of our kitchen supplies on Wednesday, 24th January and since we did not want to go through the trouble of unpacking, we were forced to purchase $75 in prepared food until we could unpack in our new house.
In addition to the above inconveniences, my wife and I both suffered great psychological trauma because of the stress we endured. As I said in the beginning, I understand closings must sometimes be rescheduled. However, receiving notice of a rescheduling at 4:00 pm the day before the closing is to occur is unacceptable. We contacted Bill Sullivan of National City Mortgage, the loan officer of the buyer of our condominium. He was unable to give us an explanation for why this occurred and referred us to a National City Mortgage District Manager, Dave Rank (630-684-4563). We spoke to Mr. Rank; however, he has not returned our phone calls. We would like compensation for our temporal and monetary losses, but we would really appreciate an explanation for what happened.
A reply from Mr. Rank of National City (only after complaints filed with a government agency) is as follows...
We are in receipt of your complaint which has been filed with several state and federal agencies. This filing ultimately was placed with The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency under Case No. Xxx. We fully understand your disappointment with the transaction which closed on January 30 and we regret any inconvenience which it has caused you or your wife. It is truly unfortunate that these circumstances occurred and created difficulties for your household.
To address the fact that you were not notified of the postponement of the closing: our records indicate that we had been in constant contact with the buyer's attorney throughout the week preceding the closing and further, that your attorney had been informed on several occasions of delays in the process. As you have been informed, due to federal privacy laws, it is not possible for us to share with you any information regarding Ms. X's personal financial information, credit or other information disclosed to us during the application process.
Sincerely,
David Rank
Vice President
cc:
OCC
Kim Perdue
In addition to filing with the OCC, we also filed a complaint with the BBB. While I cannot access their response there, I included more information since I did not accept their response...
As I have already said, the statement that our "attorney had been informed on several occasions of delays in the process" is untrue. I asked my attorney if she had been informed of any delays. She told me she had not been contacted by anyone with that information during that week. Furthermore, my attorney told me that the buyer's attorney was notified on 11th January of the closing date, as the title company was able to schedule the closing at that time. At that point, the title company notified National City of the impending closing.
National City did not contact anyone, including the title company, with information about any delays in the process. The fact that the buyer's attorney may have been notified of any delay should have no bearing at all on this issue, as the only person to whom we should have had contact with was our attorney.
Secondly, we spoke to Ms. X ourselves during the walk-through on 26th January. She was as perplexed as we were as to why there was a delay in the process. She did not have any reason to believe there were issues with her finances. We believe she would have freely given us that information since she provided us with the information of her loan company and representative.
These facts put Ms. X and her financial status in good standing at the time of the incident and rather put fault on National City's services for the improper change in closing date.
As I said before, we can accept that closings sometimes need to be rescheduled. However, rescheduling a closing the hour before business closing the day before the closing is supposed to take place is unacceptable. This put my wife and myself in a very stressful and costly situation. We would have gladly accepted a rescheduling if we had been notified
of one even a few days in advance.
Gregory
Addison, Illinois
U.S.A.
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