Anyone Else Fed Up With Loan Servicing Companies?

[Steve K.]

There must be a lot of trading going on in the secondary mortgage markets, because so many of our loans have changed hands recently and it has been super annoying.

For example one of them has switched several times just in the past few months, from the originator to SLS to PennyMac to Lakeview (subserviced by Flagstar but then a month later switched subservicer to Mr. Cooper), and now to Newrez (if I got that right, I may have lost track honestly). One of them dinged our credit and sent a late notice before I even had time to set up ACH payments with them. I had just gotten done setting up the new ACH info with the last servicer, and had not gotten anything from the new one yet. I think they may have tried to call because I got a call with caller ID "Newrez" but when I answered, nobody there. Another time the ACH info should have transferred automatically. I got a notice saying "Don't worry, your payments will automatically be transferred to us", however my bank didn't recognize the new servicer's info and the payment didn't go through, making us late and again dinging our credit and triggering late fees. My credit is still just over 800 but I was proud of that 840 score. It's just annoying trying to keep track of payments when they keep switching companies and having to pay these fees. Not to mention scams are so prevalent these days, it's stressful vetting all these companies and making sure my financial info isn't getting into the wrong hands. I'm just annoyed. 

I wish I could go back and have all my loans with my local credit union who keeps them in-house to avoid all this. It's not so bad when you only have one property but with a portfolio of properties, it can take up a lot of time if they keep switching all. They are also not easy to deal with. It's frustrating to finally have it all sorted out then get a notice that the mortgage has been sold again and there is a new servicing company taking over and the mess starts all over. I've been talking to a lot of folks in the Philippines. On the plus side they are super friendly there and I'm learning some Tagalog, but I'd rather be doing something more remunerative with my time obviously. Plus it makes bookkeeping and doing taxes etc. more complicated and annoying/ expensive. It almost feels like they make it difficult on purpose so they get extra revenue on late fees. Maybe they are trying to annoy people with low rate mortgages on purpose to get them to refinance (conspiracy theory alert)? If somebody out there has a bunch of sub to deals, this could create big problems for them I imagine. 

If it didn't mean trading 3-5% rates for today's rates, I'd refinance and have all these loans with my local credit union who doesn't sell them. Basically just venting with this post, but if anyone has any advice that would help, I'm all ears. 

Anyone else dealing with this lately as well, or just me?