My husband and I were referred to Euro Mortgage Bankers via another company that renovates foreclosed homes and resells them. We saw a property we liked and wanted to know if we qualified for a mortgage. We were told by the mortgage broker who handled our application that we "qualified" for an FHA Loan. Two or three business days later we get a call from the owner of the property telling us, after we placed a $1,000 binder on the property, that he got three more, higher offers on the property and we needed to either offer him more money or forget the deal. We told him to forget it. But wanting to buy a house we called Euro Mortgage back and asked if we still had a mortgage. We were assured that we were "approved" for a mortgage, so we went out looking for a home. We found one.
We had originally put our application in in August of 09. From August of 09, to October of 09, the mortgage broker kept asking for detailed information about us. We kept sending and sending documentation, and asking when we could close but not getting any answer. We were set to close the day after thanksgiving in Nov. 09. We were continually assured that everything was OK, we had the mortgage, etc. And we were just waiting for a commitment letter.
Two weeks before we were set to close on the property, we get a call from the mortgage broker telling us we DON"T have a mortgage. Mind you he has been telling us all along that the mortgage was already approved, all we needed was our letter, etc. He says his underwriter won't do the deal but he has a "friend" who can do it for us from another company, Franklin First Financial (which I looked up on the web and there are a lot of consumer complaints against them). We are upset, we already signed a contract and issued a downpayment on the house and are already packing our belongings to move into what we thought was going to be our new home! He goes ahead and sends our mortgage application and all our financial information to this guy at Franklin First Financial without our prior written or oral consent, figuring we are so desperate at this point we will just agree. We get a call from his "friend" from Franklin First Financial, he tells us our credit scores are not high enough for us to qualify for the FHA Loan we need. Nice if we had been told our credit score was too low when we first met with Euro Mortgage Bankers!
We decide this is not a good situation and begin looking at a different mortgage lender. Somehow Euro Mortgage Bankers catches wind of it (probably by checking our credit report — they checked our credit 4 or 5 times without us knowing which brought our credit score down even further). We get a call the Monday before the closing date, stating that they have good news — they can give us a mortgage but only up to a certain amount of money which is not enough to cover the cost of the house we are on contract to buy. To make up the difference they suggest that we get a "take back mortgage" from the Seller. A take back mortgage means that the Seller would lend us the difference in the price of the house and we would basically end up with two mortgages and two leins on the house — we would pay the mortgage to Euro Bankers, and pay the second mortgage to the Seller. This sounded too fishy for us so we didnt' go for it.
We are now waiting for Euro Mortgage bankers to return our original financial documents such as paystubs, letters from credit references, etc., as they kept all our originals as well, making it virtually impossible to reapply for a mortgage through another lender.
I am very glad that we read the complaint somewhere in the middle of this whole mess. When I saw the comments from other consumers, who had almost identical experiences (taking months to close, asking for more and more documentation, saying they can't approve me but a "friend" can, etc. Etc.) we realized it was a total scam and we got out of it. We lost the house we wanted, etc., but at least we didn't end up in a house we couldn't keep or enjoy due to predatory lending tactics.
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