[gigi in fla]

It seems like my husband and I were the victims of a corrupt mortgage broker, appraiser, lender, title agent - you name it. Little by little we have unraveled all of their scams and they may have thought they got the better of us, but we are fighting back. I see many people on here sending QWR (qualified written requests) to their lenders re: RESPA. If you refinanced your home and there are TILA violations you are entitled to rescind your loan.

TRUTH IN LENDING ACT

A federal law enacted in 1968 with the intention of protecting consumers in their dealings with lenders and creditors. The Truth in Lending Act was implemented by the Federal Reserve via a series of regulations.

The most important aspects of the Act concern the pieces of information that must be disclosed to a borrower prior to extending credit: annual percentage rate (APR), term of the loan and total costs to the borrower. This information must be conspicuous on documents presented to the consumer before signing, and also possibly on periodic billing statements.

In our case, the lender did not disclose the actuals terms and cost to us prior to closing, because they switched us from a fixed rate mortgage to an ARM. You can't do that, that is exactly why this law was passed in 1968. We sent a rescission letter to our lender, and they did not respond within 20 days, and in doing so, they lose their security (mortgage) on our home. We have filed suit to enforce the rescission and in the meantime, we are not making mortgage payments because by rescinding, we told them take the house, and put us back to where we were before we bought and refinanced. Since we filed suit, the lender cannot report us to the credit bureau due to the Fair Credit Reporting Act so our credit is not affected. There are many violations which were committed by the lender in our transaction, too many to mention but Moe has been kind of enough to help out. We also have a forged mortgage application delivered to the title company by the broker several days after the closing. We have an inflated appraisal, again, the perfect storm.

Unless you save at least 1% in refinancing or modifying your loan, you better think twice. It is a form of predatory lending if you refinance less than 18 months after a purchase or refinance, unless the interest rate is much lower and your payments are substantially lower. Also, you should not have to pay for full title insurance if you refinance within a short amount of time, because the title agent can just re-certify your prior policy and save you a lot of money. If they don't, then fight it.

We are still going through all our documents and keep finding more and more violations. This is the most informative and helpful site I have found, and there are some extremely nice people here and I thank them for their assistance.

I guess my point is to make sure you check all your options, don't settle for something that may not be in your best interests.