In 2006 I bought a home for the first time only to find my original mortgage company immediately sold my loan to CitiMortgage. At the end of 2006 CitiMortgage made my first property tax payments.
In early spring they issued me a refund check with very little explanation other than I had a surplus in my escrow. Me being new to all this thought nothing of it until I received a letter from American Tax Funding in late Septemberer 2007 stating they were holding a lien on my property due o the fact they purchased a delinquent tax certificate pertaining to 2006 taxes on my property. This was news to me as I never received any notices from anyone until this point.
I turned to CitiMortgage who assured me the lien would be taken care of and the taxes would get paid. Several weeks later I get another story about how my taxes are in fact current for my property. I provided them with further details including the parcel number & the contact info for American Tax Funding.
Next time around they tell my that the parcel number I provided them is not the parcel number associated with the legal description of my property. ONce again i had to provide them with more details. I sent them a copy of records from the county clerk showing I did give them the correct parcel number and that they had the wrong number. I even faxed them the newest tax bill with the same parcel number on it that I gave them.
As it turns out, they have been paying my escrow money towards a house across the street and 3 doors down from me. For the first time I realized why I was refunded a surplus in the Spring.
While I was asking them to correct their error and reminding them that they were about to repeat the same mistake again, they went ahead and paid my taxes wrong again. Before the money was refunded back by the city and county, they made another payment towards the correct parcel causeing a negative balance in my escrow.
By December the lien still hadn't been taken care of and they continued to make a mess of my escrow. They did an analysis and determined I was projected a shortage in my escrow so they raised my payment by $40 which I contested due to their on going mistakes.
I was issued another refund for $70.14 despite a projected shortage. I mistakenly cashed the check only to find they put a stop payment on it a week later. During that time they determined that a portion of my taxes were still unpaid and made additional payments creating another shortage for May.
As a result another analysis was done and they raised my payment another $30. Thats $70 in 2 months time and still no sign of the lien issue being taken care of.
In all, over $1000 has been paid to taxes for which if I am not mistaken is well over the billing amount I received in late October. I have not finished researching that portion yet as I discovered it last night. If there has been an over payment that would certainly explain why they have a projected $609 shortage in my latest escrow analysis.
In all of my years of having loans and many other bills, I have never encountered any company that was so inept at handling something as simple as making once annual tax payments on a property.
I have made repeated attempts to have all of my tax related issues addressed by Citimortgage for 8 months now with no end in sight. Each time I go to them for resolution it seems that things only become worse. I can never get any answers by phone or email. No one knows what to tell me other than "I will submit a research request". Even then the company rarely contacts me with any findings.
Michael
Elizabethtown, Kentucky
U.S.A.
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