You just found out your mortgage switched companies, what to know

CHARLOTTE — A Charlotte couple contacted Action 9 after their mortgage switched companies and they were concerned about the new lender.

Xavier Wise and his wife bought a house in northeast Charlotte in 2022. Their mortgage company was AmeriHome. “A company that we were familiar with. A company that we had heard of,” Wise told Action 9′s Jason Stoogenke.

“A couple months ago, we got a letter from AmeriHome saying that our mortgage account had been transferred over to Mr. Cooper and they would be picking it up from there,” he said.

Wise looked up Mr. Cooper and found the company reported a data breach. It says it happened in the fall and thieves gained access to customers’ personal information, including social security and bank account numbers which made the Wises even more uncomfortable with the switch.

“We paid our mortgage on time, we had a good standing account, and just to be told all of a sudden, ‘Hey, we’re transferring you to another company.’ It put us off a bit,” he said. “And why? That’s the biggest question that we have is why?”

“It’s certainly a valid question: how did I get stuck with this company that I didn’t choose?” Bankrate’s Jeff Ostrowski told Stoogenke. “It can be kind of a head scratcher the first time it happens to a borrower.”

Sometimes, the lender sells the mortgage. Other times, technically, it sells the servicing rights (another company takes over the basics of administering the loan). “Things like collecting the payments, recording the payments, keeping up with escrow if you’ve got an escrow account for your property taxes and insurance,” Ostrowski explained.

Both are perfectly legal and common. “Lenders are churning out millions of mortgages and borrowers like to think of ourselves as being the customer and we are the customer in a sense, but we’re also the product in a sense. So our loans are being resold to investors,” he said.

But it can still be frustrating for homeowners like Wise, even though he acknowledges he hasn’t had any problems since Mr. Cooper took over his loan.

AmeriHome emailed Stoogenke that it wouldn’t comment on any of this.

Mr. Cooper didn’t respond in time for this report, despite multiple requests for a statement from the company.

There’s not much you can do to prevent this or after it happens. You could always refinance, but that’s a pretty drastic step and there’s no guarantee your new lender wouldn’t do the same thing.

Two things to know:

1. As long as you keep making your payments on time, it should be a fairly invisible relationship.

2. Whether it’s your first or last lender, it should be doing right by you. If it isn’t, report it to the right state agency:

To report in North Carolina, click here.

For South Carolina, click here.

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