A big thanks to our friends, family, and friends of friends and family that tweeted, shared the video, and shared this blog.
We closed our loan on our 4th scheduled closing date, 12/16/11 at 4:00pm. Bank of America agreed to pay for our per diem charges.
Also, thank you to those Bank of America employees – especially ^ek at the Social Media Services team for her quick response and follow up on our claims.
We’re glad it’s over and that our garden gnome will finally have a home.
We are asking that Bank of America contact us at closeourloan@gmail.com. We are approaching our 4th closing date on our 203k FHA home loan. As of 12/13/11, we have been attempting to buy this home for 76 days.
We are asking for an internal Bank of America advocate to take control of this process and close our loan.
We have had two Bank of America employees quit during the course of our loan. E-mail and phone messages continue to go unanswered. Seller now charging per diem for multiple Bank of America delays.
Bank of America: Close Our Loan! 
My Bank of America Loan was supposed to Close on December 8th. I have a conventional loan with more than 20% down. Every day it’s a different excuse. Last week, the processor was on vacation, so nothing could get done. On Friday, the underwriter was on vacation, so nothing could get done. Yesterday, Dec 12th, I was told that the the “fulfillment center’s system was down” and nothing can get done. Today, Dec 13th I’m being told that everyone is too backed up due to yesterday’s outage to get anything done. My loan is in limbo and no one can give me any answers as to when things will progress. I got my pre-approval letter on 9/28/11. Can you tell me what Bank of America Social Media representative helped you?
If you have a fixed mortgage I have a suggestion for you.
If you will add one add’l mortgage pymt each year from the beginning (divide by 12 and add with ea pymt with directions to add to your principal), you will reduce your 30 yr mortgage to 22 yrs. If you can do 2 add’l payments per yr, you have made it a 15 yr mortgage. You can make it even a a little shorter by paying 2X a month (by paying, for example the first half of February’s mortgage on jan 15, the second half Feb 1, then the first half of March’s on Feb 15, etc).
My neighbor socked every extra penny he and his wife made into their mortgage (before kids) and paid their mortgage off in 3 yrs (in the 1990s)!!
I paid mine off in 13 yrs. Now it’s the equivalent of one pymt for homeowner’s and another for taxes. Now I have 10 mos of “extra” cash every yr!
Thanks for the tip!!!
I hope that you’ve closed your loan by now! We were helped by ^ek at @BofA_Help — she was very helpful and quick to respond. She even gave us her direct line to call her back, and she always answered. We were very pleased with her assistance.
I went through Synovous Mortgage with a 203k loan, it was a nightmare!! Took 4 months and nonstop delays and requests for paperwork. It really seems to be a problem with that particular loan program, not just the bank itself. My offer was in June. We didn’t close until September and getting my reimbursement was even worse!! Good luck!
We have just started the renovation process… so we’ll see how it goes. Who knows, we may have to make ANOTHER video!
I have a relative going through the same situation. There closing has now been delayed twice. They receive emails almost daily requesting more and more paperwork. There closing is now being postponed for the third time and they have to pay a penalty of $50-$100 a day. BOA sucks
Your relative should really try to tweet to @BofA_Help — we found that they intervened quickly and helped us to understand exactly where the breakdown in communication had occurred.
I am having similar problems with BOA on a refinance. I went to BOA because I am a current customer with (in their words) an excellent payment record. They have asked for ridiculous documentation on my federal pension. I sent them information that informed them that I had a pension and they said it didn’t say that it did not expire in three years. I sent links to government web sites that gave information on federal pensions. My contacts are constantly off and in a different time zone. I understand why they have all their current problems. It is the inability of their staff to make informed judgments.
Howard — It’s extremely frustrating. Especially when you are providing them with the exact documentation they have requested, and then even by their own standards, that documentation is suddenly insufficient. I really recommend tweeting @BofA_Help — I had never tweeted before — but my constant “tweeting” and getting others to tweet to get their attention truly helped the process. We were simply desperate to speak to someone who could advocate internally for us — which we did find through that process. I’d be happy to tweet on your behalf!
I became frustrated with their moronic process and went to another lender and got a lower rate and lower closing costs. I am only sorry I wasted time and $500 with Bank of America. I think the saying should be “Too big to succeed.”
Thanks for your help.
Thank you. I began to think I was dealing with someone in Bangalore who hadn’t read a U.S. newspaper or magazine in ten years. I had two 401k plans and they initially told me to only provide one as it was more than enough for their purposes and then they ask all types of information about withdrawal rules. Once again the one I provided was a federal TSP account. The supposed gold standard of 401k’s. Many financial advisers bemoan the fact that it is only available to federal employees. I think BOA cannot differentiate between a federal program and one offered by a small employer with 20 workers. I want them to end the process so I can go to someone else. Why do they solicit applications and then treat their customers so poorly.
Same situation – Great credit, All the data needed, Currently paying Insurance, Utilities, and all the other fees and itmes – Some how the bank “They” added some eronious funding source, as if they cherry picked a deposit from prior years that a typical bank statement worked forward would negate.. After Title request for items I don’t own, Bill of Sales on items sold last year, Getting My wifes name wrong as well as date of birth all the time having all forms of ID except the passport, and not to mention, the items they find is completely unrelated to this year or requirements to buiy a home – We are Sitting with closing funds in one account ready to close and moved the close 4 times now.
One office is always waiting on the other office to provide a time line on close yet, even with added support from a Supervisor or Upper Management, we still can’t get anyone to call us, email is or give out Relestate Agents the time of day..
Next Step – Call our agent, tell her to call the seller and have them request the fake funding source the bank has made up as perdiem on their wait to close, which is most likely caused them to be either close on a payment if not behind.
And this is a bank in the USA calling itself a Bank of America… Sad thing is, even if you meet all the needs, have the funding and cover all the bases, they’ll mess us the paperwork and cause the undue worry – If PTSD wasn’t in my Veteran background, it is now.
We are going through this right now. It’s unbelievable. We are selling a two family home and purchasing two single family homes. We are 5 days from closing, and BOA still has yet to schedule the appraisal. We are being told nothing except BOA is dragging their feet and won’t return phone calls. I’m so glad I found this. I will make it my mission to get them to close the loan of the person who is buying our house. Had we known they were using BOA, we never would have accepted their offer.
I truly recommend reaching out to them via Twitter — and having your friends do the same. There’s no way you’ll close in 5 days if your appraisal hasn’t been scheduled — what a nightmare! We’ve since sold that house and purchased another through Quicken Loans. I cannot tell you the difference in customer service we experienced — it was not simply that we were attempting to secure a 203k loan — it was 100% incompetence and lack of customer service on the part of Bank of America. If you read our timeline, all of our paperwork was in order — the Bank of America staff was truly the issue.
Quicken Loans called us daily to give us an update on the progress of the loan. If things don’t work out with BOA, I highly recommend using Quicken Loans and can even give you a referral number to use.
We would love to switch. The problem is, our buyer of our current home is using BOA. The manager there just put the first delay by 16 days. However, the buyer of the house has a loan officer still telling him there is no issue with closing in 5 days. We know that it’s not happening. The buyer doesn’t even believe the manager at BOA that is specifically stating they need to delay another 16 days. This is going to push out the purchases of two new homes we are purchasing. We went with Quicken for one and PMAC for another. Same thing, FANTASTIC customer service. They are both on top of their game. We own a two family house and two separate families have gone through the whole process and are ready to go, it’s just our buyer and BOA at this point. After reading your blog and watching the video, and reading thousands of other reviews, we are not even confident that BOA will even meet the delayed closing date we were just given last night. We’ve requested that our buyer switch lenders, but unfortunately it’s not our choice. We are confident that he would get it done with someone else, just not BOA. I’m going to try using social media! Thank you so much. Your story has been very helpful!!!!!