Habitat Mortgage Solutions

BORROWER BEWARE: Only on rare occasions do I write a review, but my unfortunate experience with Habitat Financial, Shore Mortgage (United Wholesale Mortgage), Robin Tufte, and Kady Sumerlin has compelled me to speak up. In April 2013 I decided to refinance my home. I discovered Habitat Financial through
. They had good rates and after comparing them to other lenders they appeared to have the lowest closing costs. When I asked how they could offer such a good deal Robin didn’t really have an answer but admitted she had heard the question often. Well, you get what you pay for and I’m here to tell you that they offer such a «good deal» because they assess penalties and fees for any of the normal adjustments that need to be made in the financing process. They also made several serious errors that would have cost me a lot of money if I had not watchdogged them constantly.
Robin Tufte was friendly enough on the phone. She works from home so you probably wouldn’t be meeting her in person. She didn’t really have great answers to my questions. For example when I asked how to tell if buying points would be worth it, she answered that it is sort of a «personal decision». Translation: She doesn’t know how to do the math to calculate the payback period for buying points. I’m an engineer, so I figured it didn’t matter as long as I studied the scenarios carefully and she processed the paperwork correctly, but as I will explain there were a few pitfalls that a more qualified mortgage broker would have helped me avoid. I also didn’t realize I wouldn’t actually be working with Robin from that point forward. Robin passed my paperwork off to Kady Summerlin, who I had never spoken to before. Kady also apparently works from home as a «Your Personal Loan Department» agent.
Kady’s job was to assemble the necessary paperwork and submit it to United Wholesale Mortgage, the underwriting branch of Shore Mortgage Company, who would be my new lender. The underwriters made a mistake on my Good Faith Estimate, trying to charge me $ 77.55/month for the life of the loan for Private Mortgage insurance that I should not be paying. I refused to pay for an appraisal until the Good Faith Estimate was corrected.
At that point Kady was rude and pushy. She demanded that I pay for the appraisal immediately, even though the lender had not lived up to it’s end of the bargain by providing me with a true and correct Good Faith Estimate. Kady assured me the error would be fixed at closing. I was beginning to doubt if I could trust this company. A Good Faith Estimate is the promise by which a lender agrees to fund a mortgage. I legally had no guarantee that I would not be overcharged a higher mortgage payment once I entered the mortgage.
I had paid $ 500 for a non-​transferrable appraisal so I felt trapped. I kept my finders crossed and hoped that my loan would close on time «as is». If it had not closed on time, I would have been charged an additional $ 994 because I would have had to pay twice in one month for my previous and for my new mortgage.
To top it all off, they tried to charge me closing fees that were more than 10% higher than my Good Faith Estimate. This is illegal and I called them on it. They reduced my closing fees, but I’m sure many borrowers just don’t notice this and they trick people into paying more. I am not the only person reporting that this occurred to them at closing.
At closing I also had to pay an additional $ 845.28 as a principal reduction because Robin had not correctly calculated my closing costs in the beginning. It did not matter to Robin whether or not I had an extra $ 845.28 laying around.
Then to add insult to injury, after my mortgage was funded United Wholesale Mortgage (Shore Mortgage) conveniently forgot to credit the $ 845.28 in principal reduction to my account. This is equivalent to a bank simply losing your money. Of course I had them correct this, but after their gross negligence they were unapologetic. By the way, even though they don’t technically charge for early payments Shore Mortgage doesn’t allow payments on a biweekly basis and you have to pay $ 7.50 for processing every time you make any payment that is not through their monthly automated system.
I know the details of my experience are confusing, which is why it is so easy for irreputable mortgage brokers to pull the wool over your eyes. But if you get nothing else out of this review, please believe me dear reader, that you should run the other way from Habitat Financial, Robin Tufte, Kady Summerlin, and United Wholesale Mortgage (Shore Mortgage). My advice to you is to choose a lender, be it a mortgage broker or a bank, with a good reputation, not some fly-​by-​night company off of the internet that will drag you through the mud. I learned this lesson the hard way and just don’t want to see it happen to anyone else.