My husband and I purchased our first home in 2005 through Yale Mortgage using an adjustable rate mortgage. We were told we needed to fo through them, because my husband is from England and had not been granted Permanent Residency yet, therefore the mortgage needed to go in my name alone. My debt to income combined with my credit score (580 at that time) meant that I would have to pay a higher interest and Yale was the best company for such issues.
The way the adjustable mortgage was explained to us was that we could see a percentage or two increase after one year. There was also a prepayment penalty of 5% (about $6800) if we refinanced within 3 years. That was not a problem for us, because we planned to live in our house for many years to come.
Ten months went by and we paid our mortgage. Then we received a letter letting us know that our mortgage payment would be increasing over $800 dollars a month after the first year. This FAR exceeded the percent or two increase we were told.
Being proactive, we decided to refinance and just pay the prepayment penalty.in trying to close the refinance, Yale stalled closing at every turn. We were in constant commications to them. When our payment was due, they told us not to worry about it, it would just come out of the closing amount. It ended up taking a little over a month to close, at which time our next payment was due. So, they implimented something called an Accelerated Interest Rate.By the time they added all the their charges, it ended up costing us over $30,000.
The fortunate part for my family and I is that we did have a lot of equity in our home, so we did not lose our home. That said, we also lost most of the equity we had to Yale. We were taken of due to our inexperience in home buying. We initially received a mortgage for $120,000 and paid Yale over $150,000 to refinance with another company to avoid a payment which would certainly have lead us straight to foreclosure. So, we were left with no options.in my opinion, Yale is in the business of driving the unsuspecting and inexperienced to foreclosing or unbelievably high fees to refinance.
With hindsight, I wish I had hired a real estate attorney to look over what I was agreeing to. When you at the closing table, it is too overwhelming to concentrate on the documents at hand. I hope by posting this someone will learn from the mistake we made.
0 comments