Legal Question in Real Estate Law in Virginia
follow-up on adding/removing names on mortgage and title
We were in well into a re-finance
with a bank
where the primary purpose was to
remove one
sibling from the mortgage and add
three other
people (two other siblings and a
sibling-in-law).
At the beginning the bank said as
long as one
name remained on the
mortgage/title then they
could re-finance. Several days
before closing they
claimed the ''underwriter'' would
not allow it and
they declined the re-finance. I am
annoyed by the
failed re-finance but I also want a
refund of my
$600 application fee. I am waiting
for further
explanations from the bank but is
there any
recourse here besides filing a
complaint and
trying to find another good bank to
move all my
savings/investments too?
I like the bank b/c they are typically
not out to
shaft their customers but now that
attraction is
gone. This mortgage is relatively
small and less
than 50% of the house's currently
depressed
value (they did assessment as part
of the re-
finance) so I don't think it is a risky
loan for the
bank but maybe they are looking
for reasons to
get out of loans.
1 Answer from Attorneys
Re: follow-up on adding/removing names on mortgage and title
I don't think there is any way to force them to extend you a mortgage, but you could file a claim in small claims court for the return of the application fee.
Normally, I think that they would not be responsible to return an applciation fee (though $600 sounds very high for "ONLY" an application fee.)
However, if you were applying for a type of loan that they could not offer you, and they knew what you were trying to do, then I think they were trying to offer you something they did not have. In that case, you might convince the court that they were not able to deliver what they were offering. Use the term "MUTUAL MISTAKE." You both made assumptions that were false, about the availibility of that type of loan, and the contract should be canceled because of "mutual mistake" (about whether they had that kind of loan available to offer you).
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