Petition: Give Consumers Access to Monthly Mortgage Statements

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This is a petition and national campaign to inform and educate our Regulatory agencies and Legislators on the importance of a borrower’s right to receive a monthly statement when paying a mortgage.

By using payment coupon books, consumers are forced to blindly trust that their payments are being applied timely and accurately.

To facilitate the tracking of our payments, we need monthly statements providing us the breakdown of principal, interest and escrow payments applied monthly. The use of payment coupon books is exacerbating mortgage servicing errors, negligence and fraud. Illegal late charges have been applied when payments were made timely, taxes and insurance escrows are not routinely paid on behalf of the consumer timely, and additional principal payments and/or monthly principal and interest payments can not be verified. Costly errors or fraud against the borrower often go undetected, until too late and then become impossible to correct without placing a huge burden on the borrower to prove their innocence.

These serious errors have the effect of extending the life of the loan and the amount of interest accrued without the consumer’s knowledge. Too many times, costly errors and illegal fees are often discovered too late and force innocent consumers into foreclosure when they believe they have made all payments due and are completely unaware of any problem. They are forced into forbearance agreements that remove a borrower’s right to pursue legal action. 

When HUD once estimated over 1.5 Billion dollars was owed consumers due to mismanaged escrow accounts –nobody seemed to care, or try to fix a glaring problem –no statement = no accountability! Then along came the mortgage crises with creative loans—many that failed. This servicing industry isn’t regulated and the potential for fraud and errors on the part of mortgage servicing companies is very high; in fact, some experts indicate at least a third of all adjustable rate mortgages have significant calculation errors and too often the homeowner doesn’t find out about these problems until they seek to refinance or sell their home –if even then! Even worse, sometimes they find out when their mortgage company starts making almost inexplicable demands and threatening foreclosure action –while you thought all was fine. Then soon you find your credit reports have been adversely affected. One inaccurately charged late fee is enough to stop a borrower from refinancing. Consumers can’t choose their servicing company and therefore can’t shop for one that supplies monthly statements! Even if we were lucky enough to find a lender that offers monthly statements, that doesn’t mean we will continue to have access to them—once the loan is sold!

How can we be vigilant consumers and review our monthly statements as the FTC’s website warns us to do, when we don’t have the benefit of having access to a monthly statement –the required tool to do so? Credit card and utility companies send us monthly statements; shouldn’t mortgage servicing companies be required to send us proof of how they manage a consumer’s largest asset and biggest debt?

Those who are willing to take advantage of an unwary borrower may fight to keep this important form of consumer protection from being implemented, but responsible lenders and servicers who know the value of having informed consumers and are interested in stopping fraud should agree. Some homeowners may not have lost their homes, had we been able to follow the money and payment trail to help both deter and detect fraud—or errors.

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