If we recently had our mortgage bought by a new mortgage company, what are our rights?
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If we recently had our mortgage bought by a new mortgage company, what are our rights?
We recently had our mortgage bought by a new mortgage company. They started charging us a ‘rural housing annual fee’. We have only had them a few months but they charged us for last year and next year also. We have had the loan for 4 years. We have looked over our contract and we can’t find anything related to this. Our previous mortgage company didn’t charge this. The new company raised our payment $150 per month above our normal payment that was guaranteed to stay the same for the life of the loan. Is this legal? They also misplaced our escrow money for a couple of months causing our homeowners insurance to cancel for insufficient funds. We had to find new insurance even though we had been with the previous company more than 25 years.
Asked on June 29, 2018 under Real Estate Law, Missouri
Answers:
SJZ, Member, New York Bar / FreeAdvice Contributing Attorney
Answered 5 years ago | Contributor
Your right is to be charged only what the mortgage states you can be charged. The mortgage is a contract: even though someone else can buy or "assume" that contract, they can not change its terms. They cannot charge you anything not allowed by the mortgage, and if they have, ou could sue for "breach of contract" to recover any improper charges you paid. No one who takes over a mortgage can charge more than the mortgage allows.
You also have the right to receive compensation for any costs or losses you incurred due to their negligence, or unreasonable carelessness, such as if the new insurance you purchased due to their misplacing the escrow money is more expensive than the old insurance you had, and again, you could sue for the extra you have had to pay.
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