My fiance and I began the process of buying a home, owned by CIT Financial.in April. We have a pre-approved FHA Home Loan. The home is located in Pittsburgh, PA.
Our real estate agent is through Howard Hanna of Pittsburgh. CIT's selling agent is Northwoods Realty, of Pittsburgh, PA. They advertised the home we picked as FHA Mortgages Accepted. We began the process of buying the home.
CIT accepted our offer for the home and Northwoods Realty took our hand money, cashed it and put it in an escrow account. CIT had one caveat we had to go to closing by the beginning of May or pay a per diem fee.
We signed the contract and were ready to go ahead with the closing.
The first illicit thing CIT did was to knowingly accept the FHA Mortgage but tried to dodge the FHA rules and terms. The FHA demands that any FHA financed property be in reasonable and livable condition. This includes all major aspects, such as structural issues, electrical and plumbing in good working order, etc
The house had uncertified electrical work that was unfinished and plumbing that was not finished. The FHA assessor came in and demanded those items be remedied by the seller. According to FHA rules the buyer is not allowed to make any repairs or improvements until they own the property. CIT tried to get us to pay for the repairs.
Knowing our rights and the rules, we refused and threatened to back out of the sale. Suddenly, CIT approved Northwoods to get the work done. This set our closing date back. It also put us in jeopardy of having to pay a $150 per day per diem fee for every day we went past closing, Furthermore, it could cause us to lose our interest rate and be charged by our own lender a $110 late closing fee.
Northwoods assured us we would not be liable and had us sign a new addendum to the closing. We were then due to close May 21st. While we signed off on the new closing date CIT has yet to even return their own signed copies to their listing agent.
CIT also demanded we get the utilities turned on in our names in order for the work to be done. We should have known they were shady when they asked us to do this, but, nearing a move out deadline of our own we agreed. The final work was finished on this property May 18th and the water was turned on May 20th.
However, because CIT took so long getting approvals back to their agent for the work and certification filings our closing date was moved again to May 28th.
We visited the house on May 10, saw the completed work and felt we were ready finally, to close. Nope. CIT somehow sent the Power of Attorney (needed to go to closing with) to the wrong place. They state, at this moment, they sent it to some county in PA A Huge mega million dollar corporation doesn't know where they sent their own POA?
It should have gone to their selling agent. Right now, some poor clerk in some Pennsylvania county office is looking at this POA and probably scratching their heads. Either that or CIT is not being honest and they did not even send a POA at all.
Now, as we sit among our packed boxes, with no where else to go, and we have to be out of our rental on June 3rd we find out that because of the MIA POA the closing may need to be moved back a few more weeks! Why?
CIT does not respond to their listing agent and disregards their own closing date demands. They still haven't signed off on the addendums and for all we know they could be stalling so they can hit us with a couple of thousand dollars in per diem fees.
Our own lender says they cannot get away with this but I found this site and all the complaints against CIT Financial of Oklahoma City and now we are terrified that they are dragging this out to squeeze us for more money!
On June 3rd we have to be out of our current home. We have no where to live. Oh, did I mention that my fiance and I are both blind? Our belongings will go onto storage and we and our guide dogs will be living on the streets because all our money is tied up in this purchase.
I am supposed to start a new job in mid June in Pittsburgh. My fiance and I have been through four years of vocational training (college) and personal adjustment to blindness training. We saved every penny we could, while getting through Clarion University of PA with honors. Now, thanks to whatever shenanigans CIT is up to we may end up homeless and I could lose my chance to start my new job and finally feel like a normal person again.
All we can say is we are VERY glad we got our mortgage through our own bank and not CIT! While we would like to place some blame on Northwoods Realty in fact they are also stuck in the middle of a mess CIT has created.
We will be contacting the FTC and the state attorney generals of Oklahoma and Pennsylvania, tomorrow. Stay away from doing any business with this unscrupulous company. We cannot imagine a multi million dollar corporation is this stupid so the only other possible explanation is they are trying to defraud us and scam us for more money once we finally do go to closing.
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