Guild Mortgage Co

Description of Work: .

Description of Work: In July, 2010, I began the process of an attempted re-finance of a second home that I own in remote, rural Stanley, ID. I contacted the mortgage company (Guild Mortgage in Boise) that managed the original mortgage at the end of 2004. After an initial loan approval from Fannie Mae, Guild Mortgage was not able to identify an appraiser willing to travel to Stanley to carry out the required appraisal. For this reason, 3rd party real estate financial services companies were contacted to outsource the appraisal work. The first two management companies were unsuccessful. NOTE: At this point in the process, it had become very clear that appraisers were refusing this work because of the perception of zero sales activity and a “lack of comparables” appropriate to carry out a standard appraisal. Be that as it may, it was also clear that USPAP guidelines and requirements did NOT make it mandatory to report on traditional “comparable” sales if, in fact, the appraiser reported the reason for the lack of this information. For this reason, efforts continued to locate an appraiser willing to do the desired work. Landsafe was the 3rd real estate financial services company contacted by Guild Mortgage in attempts to identify a willing appraiser. Mr. Barkley was about the 6th appraiser contacted. Mr. Barkley agreed to do the appraisal and originally scheduled the work for Sept. 13, 2010. The fee was $475 and was prepaid to LandSafe. Because the approved lock on my loan was close to expiring, a request was made (through LandSafe) to move the appraisal to an earlier date. No guarantee was made that the date could be changed. Sept. 7, 2010- I received a direct call from Mr. Barkley while I was on a business trip in Florida. He indicated that he wanted to do the appraisal the following day and asked "Are you going to be there?" I explained to him where I was and that I could not be there. I told him that I was renting the house temporarily and that, despite the extremely short notice, I would ask one of my renters to be at the house to let him in. Sept. 8, 2010- The appraisal was completed. One of my renters (the only police officer for the area) was able to let Mr. Barkley in the house. Sept. 10, 2010- Mr. Barkley's report was completed and submitted to the Boise mortgage company (Guild Mortgage). The mortgage company forwarded the appraisal to me for review. Sept. 11-12, 2010- I reviewed the appraisal. It was replete with a large number of factual errors as well as omissions. In his information sources, he listed the "Chief of Police" (presumably, my renter!) and a "store clerk". I spent 4 hours cataloguing his errors and omissions. Sept. 13, 2010-- I contacted my representative at the mortgage company. She and I were both shocked at both the very low appraisal figure as well as the errors and omissions catalogued. My protests were submitted to the mortgage company. Sept. 14-16, 2010- Mr. Barkley submitted a revised appraisal with some changes based on my review; however, several omissions and errors remained that he did not change. Because the appraisal met the financial needs of the loan and we were running out of time, I did not submit additional protests. Sept. 17, 2010. The Senior Underwriter at Guild Mortgage denied the loan (despite a rapid original approval by Fannie Mae) because the appraisal was declared "Unacceptable". The main items that were unacceptable were (1) the comparisons were too old, and (2) the information sources used were unacceptable and apparently fell below the USPAP standards. These comments were taken directly from her email. The Senior Underwriter refused to change her mind despite loud protests by my agent at Guild Mortgage. At this point, an enormous amount of time and energy had been expended by me and my agent at Guild. If a “lack of comps” was the main reason for declining the loan, this should have been conveyed up front to the Underwriting staff by senior management. I feel very strongly that my agent, her supervisor, the initial underwriters, and I were totally misled and misrepresented in this entire process which ended in an enormous waste of time and energy as well as my losing $475 for a substandard appraisal. Needless to say, I did not receive the loan; however, as noted above, the whole process clearly should have been stopped very early on as opposed to allowing it to continue for weeks. This example of exceedingly poor communication on the part of senior management is the reason for some of the “F” grades given to Guild Mortgage.