Paramount Equity Mortgage

A few years ago I refinanced my house, and used Paramount Equity Mortgage. Honestly, the transaction went 'okay'. One of the benefits of the loan was the ability to refinance/change the mortgage very easily in the future. I did attempt to re-finance that loan a few years later to take advantage of lower rates, and some other savings. I expected to save about $180/month, but when I called Paramount, they told me it would be as much as $245. Nice, I could really use that money. So I started the refinance. Every aspect of my financial life had substantially improved since the original loan. My salary had increased, the value of the home had increased, my wife was making more. We had HARP programs, my original loan was modifiable (I don't know the exact term) Should be a shoo-in. Unfortunately the person assigned to my loan was completely ineffective, and nearly incompetent. I am busy, but I understand the loan process. I told him repeatedly, "Tell me which documents you need, and I will send them right away. But please, be specific, because I don't have a lot of time to work on this, but I will get you what you need." We did anything but that. Every document was requested repeatedly. They'd ask for documents they already had. Over and over I was told that something in the paperwork was not meeting their internal protocols, so I had to do something again. I wish it had worked out, because I would have saved a lot of money. But after about 2 months of dealing with them (after they told me the entire process would be 15 days) I finally gave up. Dealing with this company cost me a LOT of wasted energy, frustration, and money.

Loan Pal aka Paramount Equity Mortgage (PEM) is a risk you should not take. You will be wasting a lot of time, money, and causing yourself undue stress. I contacted PEM for a refinance. I spoke to Missy F****s aka Melissa Megan F****s. I was given an excellent loan scenario followed by a Loan Estimate (LE). I specifically asked several times, "How solid are these numbers?" or something very similar. I was told, verbatim, "This loan should only get better, based on the value of your house." Let's be very clear here, I was excited about the loan, and I wanted to make sure that there would be no surprises down the road. Missy supposedly "locked" the rates that day, which should have made the values of the LE fairly stable. I understand that prices can fluctuate a few $100 based on services, but this is not what happened. You can imagine my surprise when I ended up with a loan that was worse than Missy's pie-in-the-sky LE after my house appraised for a higher than expected value. Over the course of 2 months, yes 2 months, after I was told that the refinance could be done within 3-4 weeks, I received no less than 4 different L.E.s all with wildly fluctuating numbers. In every instance, when a document was requested, I usually got it to them within 24-48 hours. I practically had to beg, call every day, email constantly and even had to show up to their offices just to get some answers about what was going on with the loan. They had numbers on their L.E.s that apparently they were not even sure how they got there. How is this possible? LoanPal aka PEM was so inefficient in their execution of this loan, they blew a rate lock, which of course I ended up having to pay for. They also promised to pay for the appraisal, which ended up in the fees, which means that I paid for it. Let's list the lies that I was fed, followed by the actual outcome. Lie #1: You are getting a 0% of Loan Origination Charge with a total closing cost of $2,564. Reality #1: After multiple wildly varying LEs, I ended up with a 0.625% Loan Origination Charge with a total closing cost of $4,358.03. Lie #2: We can have this loan completed within a month. Reality #2: It took over two months. We had to pay for a rate lock extension because they blew it. Lie #3: I locked your rate today. Reality #3: My rate was not locked on the day indicated by Missy/Melissa. I have, as of yet, to get a clear answer on when that supposedly happened. Lie #3: We will pay for your appraisal. Reality #3: I ended up paying for the appraisal. Lie #4: You can make biweekly payments. Reality #4: Closing documents state that partial payments are not accepted. Lie #5: Your loan will only get better and the numbers presented in this LE will only get better. Reality #5: My house appraised for more than expected and my loan got worse on virtually every measurable metric. Please do yourself a favor. If you plan on gambling by allowing PEM/LoanPal to provide you with lending services do yourself a favor. Hedge your bets. This means, go through this process with multiple lenders at the same time. The PEM/LoanPal offer may be the best one, but they will not follow through. They will not be timely. They will not honor their word. When they start to mess around and miss deadlines or start to change their LEs, you can drop them and continue on with a reputable company. I timed my refinance at a good time to get a great rate offer from multiple companies. PEM/LoanPal had the best offer at the time and because they were so slow, I ended up having to make a decision on the other mortgage company offers. After getting multiple reassurances along the lines of, "Don't worry about the numbers, we will fix them at the end. We will take care of you.", I decided to go with PEM/LoanPal. This was a mistake and it ended up costing me in opportunity and real money costs. PEM/LoanPal will lie to you. They will offer you great loan terms only to change them at the end. Don't fall for it.