
Rose of Las Vegas, NV on Aug. 31, 2009
Woodside Homes WON'T return my $5,000. earnest money deposit. WOODSIDE HOMES FORCED US TO USE THEIR LENDER WHEN WE ALREADY QUALIFIED WITH OUR OWN! J. ARAMBEL INC.(Woodside"s lender) STRUNG US ALONG FOR 6 MONTHS ONLY TO FAIL IN GETTING US A LOAN. WOODSIDE IS REFUSING TO RETURN OUR $5,000. DOWN PAYMENT!
On February 21st, I signed a contract and put down our $5,000 earnest money with Woodside Homes - Pebble Creek. I was pre approved (letter was faxed to Woodside office stating so) by our lender. I was told that we could not use our lender because there was a lawsuit against him. (We did not find out until months later that this was a lie and there was no lawsuit.) We then were referred to Met Life one of there preferred lenders.
After supplying all paperwork asked of us, Met Life, after several weeks told us that the loan was not possible. We called Woodside and they referred us to J. Arambel inc. mortage broker there other preferred lender. J., after another 3 weeks said I was approved by (Amtrust bank) and we would close about May 1st, then it went to May 15th. I already got/paid for the appraisal ($340) and had done our walk thru of the house.
May 15th came and went. J. emailed me and said there was a problem with the lender. Everyday he said, "two more days, next week, next Monday!" At this point the house we rent was half packed up and I had given notice to our landlord. J. finally called and said that the division of the loan company for my loan was with just closed down, so the loan would not be funded. He later said, they changed criteria with no explaination. Whatever the reason, we still did not have the loan.
J. said he would submit to another company. Luckily my landlord gave us more time - until the end of June to move out before the new renters moved in. June 31st came and went....still no news on the loan. I was getting nervous so I questioned Jared and he said things
didn't look good, so I insisted he go to another company...we were running out of time...this was insane!! How can a loan take so long!
J. got us approved..finally again! This time he added my grandson on the loan (per J.'s urging to more easily qualify), I had to pay for another appraisal ($400) and pay off about $700 in debt to improve his credit score (again J.'s directive). Another 3 weeks of waiting and finally the loan papers were signed on August 4th by me and my grandson was to sign the next day August 5th at the Title Company. On the morning of Aug 5th J. called and said, Taylor Bean & Whitaker Mortgage Corp had just went under and The loan was dead again! this time 2 days before we were to move in.
By now, we are so frustrated and fear we are not going to have a place to live since the landlord has rented our house. J. spent another week and told us that Wells Fargo now had our loan and we should know soon...."tomorrow....a couple days.....next week?" He never returned our call and we felt used and abused and cursed at this point. He finally admitted he could not get the loan from Wells Fargo.
August 18th we called up our original lender (who Woodside) would not use because they insisted on their preferred lender, and asked to please help us get this loan. We got them paper work at 7pm that evening and within 24 hrs they gave us an approval. Our original loan company called Woodside to say we were pre approved and told them they were trying to close quickly and are trying for funding in 2 weeks.
i received a letter from Woodside that week stating that my contract was cancelled and the $5000 would not be returned to me.
I contacted B. Skaggs and C. Gerenstein at Woodside and they said they would hold the house for us at a rate of $87 per day until we got our loan. We paid Woodside another $609.00 -recieved by B. Skaggs. Two days later, our loan company told us that our loan would be approved with another 10K debt buydown. There is no way we could come up with that amount of money in 2 days and Woodside was not willing to extend our contract withour charging us $87 daily until the loan was funded.
We feel like Woodside extorted money from us when it was their fault we never got the loan back in May and again in July. I do blame Woodside for referring us to J. Arambel who did not do his best to secure a loan for us. The fact that we could not use our lender was crucial in this scenario. Had we been able to use the William Zeigler Group initially then the loan would of been funded months ago.
John (salesman at Woodside) stated there was a lawsuit against our lender. This, we found out later was a lie and in actuality, there was a feud between this realtor and our lender. The feud was over Woodside's questionable appraisal.
WE SHOULD GET OUR $5000 earnest money back as well as the $609 holding fees! 6 months of HELL!