mortgage bank won't take my money

[REWahoo]

Then sit back, eventually they will come to you and beg you to payoff the loan.

Or foreclose.

 

[BigMoneyJim]

Or foreclose.

"The bidding starts at one penny..."

 

[MissMolly]

I would not recommend that you try to screw around with your mortgage company. Most mortgages are held by very large, very impersonal companies. Their systems are automated. If there is an active loan sitting on their books with even a .01 balance and no payment is made, that loan will be reported delinquent to the credit bureau. Is it really worth risking your credit to screw around with a company that really doesn't care and you really aren't hurting?

 

[pb4uski]

Or foreclose.

Get real REWahoo. Long before they initiate foreclosure proceedings they would need to contact the borrower. They would probably take a penny out of their pocket and settle it just to get it off the books. I would have back in the day when I ran a residential mortgage servicing operation - and would have smiled at the borrower's imagination - it would have made my day.

Let's say they did foreclose - I would love to see what the judge would do if they brought a loan with a 1 cent balance to foreclosure court. Can you imagine?

The point is that the bank is being wholly unreasonable in requiring a certified check to do the payoff. If they can show the borrower where the terms of the loan require a certified check, then fine, otherwise they have no right to make such a demand even if it is their "policy".

Actually, the paydown to a minimal balance for a period fo time would minimize the risk to the servicer/lender from a bigger check that is returned that MissMolly explained.

 

[REWahoo]

Get real REWahoo.

I see your humorectomy was successful.

 

[leyland]

My story. About 10 years ago I had finally had it with our mortgage company (another story) and went to our bank and opened up a HELOC. I told our bank I wanted to pay off our mortgage. They said no problem and offered to contact our mortgage company and get a payoff amount and wire the money to the mortgage company. They did all that - no problems. A year later I decided to pay off the HELOC and went back to our bank and asked for the exact amount to pay off the HELOC and wrote them a check on the spot (from our checking account with that bank). They miscalculated and I overpaid by 1 cent. This stayed on their books for two years until we went to sell the house. The title search did not come up clean because the bank owed us 1 cent. It took 3 visits to the bank to get them to release the lien even though they owed me money. If the balance had been zero it would have not been a problem but the fact that they owed me money was an issue that nobody seemed to know how to fix. I even offered to let them have the penny ;-)

So I had enough cash laying around to pay off the mortgage. Called Chase Finance to find out how much would pay it off and they gave me a quote and advised I send my payment to X address. So I did, feeling good about paying it off. Low and behold they send the check back to me. They claim that I have to get an official payoff statement and send them a "guaranteed" check. I tried to explain to them that this isn't like I am selling a house and need them to release a lien by a certain date. They can wait until the check clears for all I care. Morons admit I can pay principal down to $1, but claim the last payment (e.g. $1) has to be a guaranteed check.

I pitched a huge fit but it was wasted on the low level customer service rep. Has anyone else encountered anything like this?

 

[scrabbler1]

I did not reply to this back in 2010 but here is my quick, uneventful story.

Back in 1998 after I had paid down large chunks of my mortgage in 1997, I decided to pay down the remaining balance of about $6,000. One phone call to the mortgage company and the friendly rep told me I could simply change the amount of the automatic, electronic payment from its typical monthly amount to the payoff amount. All I had to do was to fax them a letter giving them permission to do this. I did just that about 10 days before the end of the month and everything went fine. About a month later, I received the documents including the original stock certificate (I am in a co-op). I had to file a small form with the county clerk's office after that but no big deal.

 

[trustee]

They ask for a certified check because they don't want to deal with a bounce/stop pay on a personal check once they start the lien release process. People like to jump the gun on banks and how stupid their policies are but a lot of these things are in place for a reason.