Low Mortgage Rates: 7 Things You Need to Know to Refinance

A Five hundred dollar fee even if you don't take their offer!

I was recently laid off from my part time job and so my husband and I called our lender, First Horizon to inquire about a possible refinance to make adjusting to one income easier to manage. (I do realize how blessed we are to have the one income.)In minutes we were told we would qualify but there were no specific answers available about the actual closing costs. Still we were lead to believe that it would run $2,500 to $3,000 so we asked that they send us the full information. Our lender over nighted a full loan application! But with closing costs written at $6,000 and they did not set up the loan as we had asked at all. We had never signed anything and had only given the loan agent information on the phone. When the loan application came so very quickly and was not written as we expected and with closing costs double what expected, we got spooked and just emailed the loan officer that we were not going to do a re-fi right now but maybe later. I received a letter from our lender, First Horizon stating that they are going to bill our credit card company $500 dollars because we did not go through with their offer! This is supposedly legal because deep in the last pages of the loan application is a statement saying that by law the lender can charge this fee. I could maybe understand a $50.00 fee for the paper work as long as the lender warns you up front that you will be charged that fee. But $500.00 is outlandish when you have no way of knowing the charge will be made until it is too late. You really need to warn people that just finding out if refinancing will help you is going to cost you $500.00. Lesson here. NEVER, NEVER TRUST A MORTGAGE PERSON OF ANY KIND!

Chris of TN @ Mar 26, 2009 10:15:33 AM