which loan servicer, no longer like TrustFCI.com

Question

I do a few owner financed sales a year to owner occupants dodd frank compliantly which means re servicing requirements under DF, if you escrow taxes and insurance DF requires you to use a loan servicer.  My view is you are crazy to service yourself just from the IRS tax reporting and tracking late fee issues and how much principal vs interest was really paid each year.

Last year I was recommending TrustFCI.com for servicing.  $30/mo (paid by the borrower if you get this fee onto the closing HUD) if you escrow.

What has recently made me go ballistic, vein popping mad at FCI is:

- They can not and do not email you when the borrower is late.

- They can not and do not automatically send a NOD when late is beyond the late number of days in your specific note.

- Their website is indecipherable for how many days late they are or the total arrears cash total they are in arears.  I have to call customer support and have them find the hidden numbers.

- I asked for initiating forclosure "person" to call me, no call.  They obviously don't take this area of their business seriously.

- The borrower says their monthly statement is un-intelliable as well.  I can believe it from the lender web site.

What I'm looking for and will not settle for less is:

- To be emailed 1 day after a payment is late.

- to be emailed when NOD is automatically sent.

- That the above emails and standard monthly accounting emails are easy to read the total in arears an how many days late the loan is.  Not just how late the current month is late.  IE when you have skipped months, total days late is the accumulation of past skipped months plus how late (or not) the current month is.

Any referals of servicers?  I'm ok with $30/mo and my calling around finds servicing fees to be higher than FCI's and I may suck it up and pay more.   I definitely what simple things that would be free if someone sensible built their MIS/automation system.

Curt Smith · Answer

A follow up.  This is mainly for other investors doing seller financing and thus will need to set up loan servicing with someone.

Here's what I know as of today.

- FCI still the low priced servicer.  Greentree ( notecollection.com ) is same price.  The smaller servicers who have been offered to me are up around $45++ / mo with handling escrow.  Where FCI and Greentree are $30/mo with handling escrow.   But this is a charge the borrower needs to be paying.  Just get the servicer involved before closing and get their monthly charge added to the HUD so it's in the borrowers monthly payment from the start.

- FCI still doesn't email notify you when  a borrower is delinquent.  If you have a portfolio you could loose track.  I just have one note and I ended up letting the borrower get 4 months behind.

- The ONLY way to figure out FCI's lender login site is to call customer support.  Good folks helped me each time.  Knowing this, just give up and phone for support.  You'll get the info you need but you have to know you need to ask and then take the time during CA bankers hours to phone call.

- FCI's monthly statement to the lender still does not mention days late, past due days, or amount past due.  Just a sterile report of what was paid that month.  No summary info.  This is easily fixed but apparently not important enough.  Greentree claims to have what I'm looking for on the monthly statement report.  I have not verified this.

- Re my need to have automatic delinquent notice sent to borrower if past due.  No one can automatically do this.  Greentree ( notecollection.com ) doesn't even offer foreclosure services.  You have to go to your own foreclosure attorney.  Where FCI to their credit does offer this as of course extra expense account status.  Your monthly servicing cost jumps when you press the button to go from performing (regardless of how far behind the borrower is) to non-performing and in forclosure / collections proceedings.   So FCI is way ahead on this feature.

- My next note will be with Greentree to get first hand experience with their claims to have a great lender portal and monthly reports giving arrears and days late (the current month).  Greentree claimed to have the monthly loan status info I'm after but I have yet to see even an example report.  I'll be sure to get samples before I sign up my next note.

Bob Malecki · Answer

I've deployed all 3 tiers of FCI's services as Mike describes and have been pleased with their performance and the results. I have also deployed their Standard program and had my staff do the workout with the borrowers which sometimes can be more effective since my staff have more interest in getting the loan worked out than our servicer.

The bottom line is that as a lender, don't expect your servicer to monitor your loans and take action on your behalf. These are your assets and your ultimate responsibility. If a borrower is late in paying and you have a late fee stated in the note, then FCI will trigger that and it will be added to the borrowers balance, but it is up to you to monitor your accounts with your servicer and take any needed action if something goes sideways.

I know that FCIs web interface is a bit clunky, but it works. I've been a website developer for over 15 years and yes, I get a bit frustrated on their implementation, but the benefits outweigh the navigational issues, IMHO. The fact that their database of loans is very massive I'm always surprised at how quickly my data loads on each page refresh.

Bob

Brian Gibbons · Answer

@Michael Griffith

If you are in the FRIGGING JOB of notifying a CUSTOMER of a PROBLEM where you are in the PROBLEM AVOIDANCE BUSINESS,

get the hell out of the business.

Just sayin'

I know hundreds of note and seller financing investors, you just made a PERMANENT ADVERSARY of me by saying...

FCI is on my "NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS DO BUSINESS WITH THIS COMPANY" list.

@Curt Smith I hope you agree.

Michael Griffith · Answer

Wow!  Welcome me today to my first ever Forum session.  I need to clear a few things up here.  FCI is a nationally licensed and a top "Rated Specialty Loan Servicer" in regards to customer service and compliance, who offers two loan servicing collection programs: "Standard Loan Servicing" and "Specialty Loan Servicing", which is highly used by many Hedge funds and Wall Street firms.

In our Standard Loan servicing department we will collect and disburse monthly payments for $15.00 per month, per lender.  If the loan has escrow impounds connected to it, FCI charges an additional $15.00 per month.  Under the $15.00 basic loan servicing program, many of our Broker and Investor clients prefer to contact their borrowers directly for collection purposes in lieu of the lower monthly fee.

For FCI's low base fee of $15.00, our customers have direct access to all their loan information, such as loan status reports, delinquency reports, aging reports, portfolio reports, loan reinstatement reports, loan payoff reports, all conversation logs, all attachments on the loan including loan documents, and so much more for the low servicing fee of $15.00.  Basically, with our system, you can know anything and everything about your loan, it is so much more than a simple push of information of an email.  On top of that we ACH all borrower payments to our customers on a daily basis.  In addition, at month end a complete report listing of all the Investor's loans, payments, advances is emailed to our customers, informing them of current loan statuses.  If anything happens out of the ordinary, our customer service department calls the Investor/client directly and informs them immediately.  This is a complete service for someone who only wants basic loan servicing, and also understands the loan servicing industry.

In regard to the blasting I am receiving, I do not understand how some professionals in this business would offer such strong opinions before knowing the facts.  The fact is, our customer only authorized FCI to do basic loan servicing.  At any time, FCI customers may easily switch over to our Specialty loan servicing department if their loan becomes a troubled loan, or want additional services beyond our basic servicing program.

FCI offers "Full Service" Specialty Loan Servicing to our customers for $95.00 per month.  Most other rated servicing companies charge hundreds of dollars as incentive fees for our same fixed rate program.  In this department, we work directly with our Investor clients to determine their goals with their problem loans.  FCI will determine which one of the "six borrower traits" their borrower falls under, and based upon those traits, FCI will execute an "Exit Strategy Model" for our customers to receive the highest and best return (ROI) on their investment.  In this program, we are in constant contact with our investor clients.  We work diligently with them to contact their borrowers, trying to help facilitate them in getting back in a current loan status with their loan payments.  All possible collection efforts are made to work with the borrower directly and their lender to get their loan re-performing or make other arrangements with the borrower such as "cash for keys" or a "deed in lieu of foreclosure".  In worse case scenarios, the client will direct FCI to initiate foreclosure proceeding on the property.

Each year, FCI successfully handles thousands of specialty loan transactions of this type where we work directly with the lender/investor and their borrowers.  We have thousands of customers who are very happy with our services.  Unfortunately, we can not make everyone happy - even though we try.

Tom A. · Answer

I don't mean to jump in the middle of something that's not my issue, but it seems strange that FCI is looking for the customer to login to check if a borrower is late, rather than allowing the customer to specify an automated email notifying them of any late payments.

The "log in to get info" approach sounds like the way email used to be, you had to log in each time you wanted to check it.  We've had IMAP ("push") email for a long time now -- it's clearly more convenient for the email user or the note servicing customer to get a "push" notification rather than logging in constantly to check on something.

Michael Griffith · Answer

As thousands of our customers know, I take great pride in trying to accommodate our customers.  Mr. Smith is asking for us to notify him personally when his borrower becomes late on their payment.  This is an unreasonable request, FCI already provides this information on his lender login, available to him 24/7.  FCI's web login gives him everything about his loan(s) from posting of our conversation logs, payments, letters, late notices, etc.  These hundreds of items are posted within one second from creation or conversation logs.  All available for Mr. Smith's  immediate review on our web site

If this lender would just use their FCI login, they would be able to see everything about their loans.  I do not know how to make it any clearer.  We have tried to make the website easy to use for lenders who only have one loan with us, to our most sophisticated lenders who have hundreds of millions of dollars in loans with us.  FCI is the nations leading private loan servicer with an unmatched web login for all sizes of investors - One Loan at a Time.

In regards to automatically sending out an NOD (Notice of Default), that is not going to happen either.  In today’s environment, with all the lawsuits and court cases, it is better to workout, workout, and then workout some more.  If the workouts are unsuccessful, then we will get specific instructions from the lender/investor to then foreclose.  As for Mr. Smith's request, we would never automatically foreclosure on a borrower’s loan, without specific instructions from the Investor.  We have many customers who would disagree with him and his request on this point.

The FCI name and reputation is very important to us, and we take great pride in offering great service and investment tools to our dedicated customers.

Brian Gibbons · Answer

@Curt Smith

Try http://notecollection.com

Curt Smith · Answer

Posting a follow up.  Mr Griffith a big cheese at TrustFCI had his tech guys work on the website and the monthly statement email that goes to lenders.  Both now shows a flag, "current" vs "Delinquent" and number of days late.  Which is a big help and solves the main issue I raised.

Greentree.com the new big dog ala carts their charges making it difficult to estimate what your costs will really be.  I made one call and found it would seem to be the same as TrustFCI's, $30/mo with escrowing.  My view is that every sane lender will escrow for several reasons, one being Dodd Frank urges the lender to want escrowing, the other is for someone else to keep track of what's paid and to be a 3rd party accountant for payments including taxes and insurance.

Also TrustFCI has a big leg up on all servicers I talked to in that they have a forclosure department.  Will send the proper letters and demands to the borrower.  I didn't look into how far they handle the foreclosure process...  But no one even will send the proper demand letters.

In summary: I'm still using TrustFCI, the new feature makes it easier to detect when a borrower / loan is in trouble.    I now gladly take back my original bitch.

@Bob Malecki

Thanks for hooking in Michael.

Curt Smith · Answer

Hi Dawn,  Good question.  I haven't asked that of these services.  I will next time I am talking them.

From a current lenders perspective it maybe a don't care. Since the borrower is already a borrower.  Why do I care about their on going FICO?

From a caring person about my renters and borrowers I do care about their lives getting better with lower borrowing costs for their CC's and car loans.   I don't know at present this answer.

Bob Malecki · Answer

Hi Curt, you are welcome, where is that flag displayed?

Bob

which loan servicer, no longer like TrustFCI.com

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