My experience with AmeriSave Mortgage Company

You’ve gone through the long and tedious process of finding your perfect home… You’ve made an offer, it’s been accepted, and now it’s time to apply for a mortgage. Who do you turn to?

There are many banking options when it comes to mortgages and when it comes to selecting the right banking partner to help you get the home of your dreams. There are many things to consider. Most notable are the interest rate, the length of the loan, the closing costs, etc.

However, one thing I have learned after buying a few properties is that the bank you select should be a real consideration. Although banks aggressively try to get your business, once you select a bank, the tides begin to turn, and that once friendly and understanding bank suddenly becomes very difficult to deal with.

That is, if you select the wrong institution…

Once the process has started, switching to a new bank can be an expensive decision and shady banks know it. The change process would be a hassle for all other parties involved, such as your real estate agent and your title company. Also, if you were to switch after just a few weeks, you may have to pay a significantly higher interest rate if interest rates rise.

You do not want that! Therefore, choosing the right company from the beginning is essential so that you can access the house of your dreams in the best possible way.

I learned this the hard way when I decided to go for an AmeriSave mortgage. After going through this process with other mortgage companies, even in late 2008 after the financial crisis, I had a reasonable understanding of how the mortgage process worked.

But I had an unfortunate wake-up call just weeks after my AmeriSave mortgage experience. From my perspective, the banking company pressured me just for sport. It seemed they almost enjoyed making my life a living nightmare. Making me fight to obtain documents that were difficult to acquire. The fact that they are asking me for some of these documents is absurd…

What kind of documents could I request?

First was the number of documents. At first it was 10, then 20, when I finally thought I was done, I had 10 more, then another 10. In total, when I finally completed the process, I must have submitted 50-60 documents.

Some of the weirder ones include:

• Current year K-1 tax papers for stocks I no longer even owned. He didn’t have them, and unlike other documents, tracking them down proved extremely difficult. In the end, I found out that those documents did not even exist. I then had to provide proof if none existed.

• I had the chase for one of the HOA bills for my rental property. This shouldn’t have been a big problem, since I provided AmeriSave with the document initially, but it turned out that the HOA bill I provided was from the previous quarter, and that wasn’t good enough. I had to get the HOA bill for the current quarter even though it was the same dollar amount.

• Since my wife had sent me a gift to help me purchase the property, AmeriSave wanted my partner’s bank statement. It’s not a big deal, I ordered it and got it. Unfortunately, they also required him to provide his other bank accounts that were NOT part of the gift. Why does someone who is not on loan have to provide bank accounts that have nothing to do with the loan? My partner was reluctant and for good reason. What business does AmeriSave have to demand to see someone’s private bank accounts that are not connected to the loan and not on loan? Good thing they didn’t ask for my mother’s bank accounts!

• AmeriSave also asked me to contact my accountant and write a letter stating that my business was currently active. This seemed like it didn’t make much sense for several reasons. For one, I had been in business for almost 20 years and I just gave them a new tax return. Did they think I would dissolve my business? Second, my accountant only does my annual return, so he doesn’t have any first-hand knowledge of my business other than what’s on my tax return, which AmeriSave already had. Finally, they had already provided that my business was active by providing real-time statements showing company receipts. So, they can see firsthand that money was pouring into the company. So why did they want me to contact the third party that had less information than they did and beg to create a document for me? It’s one thing to make me chase documents. Still, it’s even more complicated when I have to go to a third party and ask them to create a document, especially when that third party doesn’t have firsthand knowledge of the information AmeriSave wants me to provide. Why would that matter when they see the business make money? It would be like demanding a copy of a document when you already have the original.

It took some time, but after completing all the requirements, I finally got a Certified Loan Approval that was good for eight weeks! That shouldn’t have been a problem because the loan would close in four weeks. I worked hard to get everything they needed, including begging other parties to give me personal information or creating letters for me to get certified approval before we lost our collateral money.

I was ready… or wasn’t I?

A week before closing, AmeriSave sends me another huge list of requirements! What? Oh no! Wasn’t it already certified? Is the official document that I received certifying me not real? Do I have to start this painful process all over again? Why did you wait almost three weeks to tell me that I would have to do this all over again?

The first time I went through this process it was pretty stressful, but now I’ve given the landlord 30 days notice and sold half my belongings in preparation for the move. I did this because I was confident in the fact that it was certified.

Now we have another massive list of absurd new requirements, even though they are already certified.

• AmeriSave wanted a disclosure and waiver document from my broker. When I asked him, his response was, “Hahaha. I can honestly say that I’ve never had a lender ask me that before.”

• AmeriSave wanted me to provide a lease for my rental property because it wasn’t on my tax return… The problem was, it was on my tax return. Stop wasting my time!

• They wanted a copy of the deposit check. The problem was that we paid by transfer and they already have the transfer documents. You are idiot?

• They want another letter from my accountant that my business is active. So now I have to contact my accountant again and ask them to write the same letter that he wrote three weeks ago?

It’s like AmeriSave makes me do things for the sake of making me do things. Quite frankly, I called and emailed my loan originator, trying to figure out what was going on, asking him to call me back ASAP. I did not receive any return phone calls. Instead, I received a short, dismissive email saying that I had been pre-approved, but now a few things need to be updated.

However, that is not the case! I had an official certified loan approval that was good for a specified amount and good for eight weeks. I sent him another email asking him to get back to me ASAP, and with only a week to go I think he was justified, but no response.

I ended up missing my closing date because they didn’t approve my loan. Once again, they wanted more documents. I missed the second closing date because they were still slow to approve me.

The worst part is that when they don’t approve the loan by the deadline, they delay the process. When the process is delayed, many of the documents that were filed now become outdated. So now they demand new documents again.

Wait… So I have to get new documents now because you didn’t do your work on time?

In the end, I must have submitted 120-140 different documents and missed two closing dates, finally closing right on the third deadline after complaining to AmeriSave management about my loan officer, who had no sense of urgency. .

I was lucky enough to barely get out of one of the most stressful situations of my life when the sellers threatened to walk away, so I missed my third installment.

In the end, it worked out fine, but I can tell you that I would never work with AmeriSave again. My warning to all homebuyers, unless you want to deal with a lot of extra stress and a bank that doesn’t care about their customers’ closing date, stay away from AmeriSave.