Troubled About Mortgage Handling? Let Us Know

Have you had problems with how your mortgage payments are handled?

Have you been erroneously charged late-payment penalties? Have your escrow-account payments been miscalculated, or your insurance premiums or property taxes paid late because the bank forgot to tap your account to pay the bill?

If so, we’d like to hear about it.

Many financial institutions make loans and then hire a mortgage-servicing company to process the borrower’s monthly payments. Other lenders simply sell their loans to other institutions.

Either way, borrowers wind up having to make their future monthly mortgage payments to a new company that they typically know nothing about. Sometimes, the company is located on the other side of the country.

And while most servicers do their jobs professionally and accurately, a handful have been charged with being nothing but “boiler room” operations designed to cheat homeowners out of thousands of dollars.

If you have had a problem with your servicer and would like to tell us about it, please send a letter detailing the trouble to Dick Barnes, Real Estate Editor, Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles 90053. Or fax it to Barnes at (213) 237-4712.