Grievance against credit union/lender

[phil1ben]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Texas Proud As far as getting it to not happen again, might as well forget about that... After leaving I asked about her stmt.... she said that we would do nothing... the guy wanted to think he made a difference and she gave that to him.... that if it did happen again they would take their business someplace else anyhow so that was that... next time offending company sent in a wire and all was good.... BTW, the trust said they were supposed to wire the money so they made the mistake.....

That woman knew what she was doing. Hopefully, she became president of the Bank.

[skipro33]

If you haven't funded anything with the developer, I'd contact him and tell him the deal has fallen through unless he's got any ideas. My bet is he has some commercial contacts that would help him (and you) out for the short term it would take to liquidate your HI asset.
Otherwise, walk away from the whole mess. Deals come, deals go. Don't force what's not turning out to be a smooth transaction. Should be a huge alarm bell for both you and wife. Consider yourselves lucky, because, who knows why fate is trying to save you from making this deal.

With that said, you are dealing with a credit union. Not a bank. The primary difference is that the CU is a co-op of sorts where you are a member-owner. As such the CU has the fiduciary obligation to you as a partner. This is NOT a lender-borrower arrangement, this is a partner with a fiduciary responsibility to you. I've sat on a jury where just such argument was made for a development and the CU lost. Big time. (I'll let you imagine how much we awarded) The CU had made decisions that harmed their member/partner financially and it cost them. These were BIG San Francisco lawyers coming to a Podunk little town of Placerville (AKA Hangtown). They were lucky we didn't get a rope!

[Van-Guard23]

OP here with an update. I sent an email to the CEO detailing our horrible experience (led with a quick summary so he didn’t have to slog through the details) and within a day, an apologetic Senior VP called vowing to reimburse us the EWPs we paid for cashing out CDs and promising to review their processes. While I don’t know if he was simply giving me lip service and it will be business as usual, I felt better after our conversation. Small victory, I suppose...but we aren’t soon to forget the angst we experienced dealing with them

[ivinsfan]

Did you get your money back?

[Van-Guard23]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ivinsfan Did you get your money back?

Just spoke to them a few hours ago...was told they'll deposit money (exact amount down to the penny) in my account with them. Should see the money in the next couple of days...hopefully

[PoorOldCountryBoy]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Van-Guard23 DW and I are FIRE’d and are relocating from Hawai’i to Central Texas’ Hill Country later this year. We own a house in HI that we are listing for sale this spring. We started the process of financing a lot purchase and for a new construction home. We thought about selling our house in HI first then just pay cash for the house and lot...the builder owns the development/land and will be the builder of the house. However, we wanted to take advantage of incentives the builder was offering (i.e. 35% off lot premiums and 20% off Design Options) and timelines will not line up if we wait to purchase the lot and begin construction until after we sold our house in HI. Needless to say, we felt we had to secure a new construction loan for the property in TX, not only to take advantage of builder incentives but for some additional flexibility. We went with a well established and recommended credit union with competitive rates. We told the loan officer of our plan to list our house after we return from TX to close on the lot. All was going well until 3 business days before we closed on the lot...when we were told that since we haven’t sold our house in HI that they can’t do the loan, citing our debt to income ratio (we do not have W-2 income but have enough assets in stocks/mutual funds/CDs to cover the purchase) would be higher than what they can support. Are you kidding me? In all our dealings with the bank, which began in November/December, we’ve always been up front about our plan to sell the HI house after we return from TX and after we closed on the lot. After I asked what our options were, they returned with new “workable” loan terms, namely a 30-yr fixed (up from a 15-yr), higher APR (from 3.5% to 4.625%) and lower loan amount (from $600k to $400k)...which meant our cash to close doubled (using round figures for illustrative purposes) from $100k to $200k. We were told late Wednesday night that someone would contact us the following morning to go over details of the loan. We cashed out some CDs to have enough cash, and some fluff, to meet the $200k cash to close. The following morning, I had to call the bank since nobody contacted us. I left a message which was returned late afternoon. This new contact then proceeded to tell us that, after looking at the numbers, our cash to close would be close to $300k! At that point, I lost it and DW became sick to her stomach. Cooler heads prevailed and after additional conversations with this loan officer (this time without DW), he was able to get his VP’s approval for a higher loan amount with the same rate and term, meaning our cash to close would remain at around $200k. I had to write an email stating when we would be listing our house in HI, how much we would net on the house, and our intent to pay the loan off in full once we receive the proceeds from the sale of the house. At this point, I intend to write a letter to the CEO to express our disappointment and displeasure with how we were treated and request to be reimbursed the early withdrawal penalties (~$1,200) we incurred by breaking the CDs prior to maturation. I also plan on contacting the CFPB and the NCUA to file a complaint. Aside from the above, what other actions can anyone suggest we take for some measure of accountability for what the credit union put us through?

Sorry to hear of your issues with financing. Yes, banks are horrible. To be fair though, from the bank's point of view they are 10-to-1 leveraged so everything must be 100% guaranteed or they'll go broke. By not listing the HI house that got them all flustered and that broke their financing "rules". They tend to not give you every possibility unless you ask them, sadly.

The main frustration non-bankers have as they see it as a personal/trust relationship, where everything is a technical issue for the banks. So normal people get emotional about the changes since they see it as an insult to their personal integrity (ie YOU DON'T TRUST US) . Not to mention the extra costs

Truer word were never spoken:
"A bank is a place that will lend you money if you can prove that you don't need it." - Bob Hope

I would love to know why you are moving as both HI (big island or Maui) and TX (Horseshoe Bay) are on our list of possible relocation sites. my biggest concern with HI is encountering some prejudice from the natives, which we noticed a bit the last visit. (i.e. they love you to visit but not to stay).