American Financial Resources, Inc.

This is by far the worst financial institution I have to deal with My mortgage was sold to them two years ago, and during these two years they are always late paying my city and county taxes I am constantly receiving letter that my taxes are past due This is unacceptable as American Financial maintain an escrow account from my payments, plus I am always two months ahead on my payments

Also know as eLendThis company for more then months dangles a carrot of a fictional loan and then ask me for another home appraisal while the rates and my patience are going upThis company is flat out liersThe do nothing and end up costing you more money in the Long runThey are basically sleazy used car salesmanWith unscrupulous tactics of delaying your fictional loanGoogle them and find out how bad there company is

My entire housing payment with AFR is completely botched up. I went online to make my monthly payment in November. As a surprise, with no notice or explanation, the monthly payment due (mtge + escrow) had suddenly increased by $316.37. I called, and they explained the increase was due to a change in my escrow, as my property taxes had "increased." I called the City Assessor's office and the City Treasurer's office, both of whom told me that no such increase had occurred. I relayed this to AFR, who called the City, confirmed this, and called me back to admit they had made a mistake. Sounds easy enough to fix, right? No chance. I was told that a "new analysis" had to be done to correct the issue, which would be completed by "November 19th." Since then, I've had many phone calls, with many different reps, NONE of whom could tell me if/when the new analysis had ever been -- until today, December 18th, when a rep (finally) explained that the new analysis actually had been done back on November 23rd. No explanation as to why no one had ever told me this. So, problem fixed? Not so much. Here's the rub: (1) my "new" escrow amount will actually be $1.33 LESS per month than my old one, and yet my "new" total housing payment (mtge + escrow) will be $149.32 MORE per month than my old one (what kind of math is this?!?); and (2) even though they admit they screwed up my escrow amount back in November, they say I still have to make payments for both Nov & Dec that are $316.37 MORE than my old payment amounts, only to have a "credit" added to the account and my overpayment "refunded" to be later (allegedly). This is because their computer system will not recognize that an updated payment amount until January 5th (18 days from today!!!), even though earlier in the conversation she that that this normally takes 48-72 hours. There are just no words to explain how dissatisfied I am with AFR. I am not a fan of large banks and lending institutions, but I wish I were still a customer of CitiMortgage's, where there was NEVER a mistake made with my mortgage or escrow accounts, for the nearly 12 years that they serviced our mortgage. I refinanced our home earlier this year in pursuit of a little better rate than Citi could offer, and ended up having the note sold by the mortgage broker to AFR. It took AFR less than a half a year to completely screw up my account. I cannot recommend them, whatsoever.

I started a refinance on a condo at the end of March and closed at the beginning of August with American Financial doing business as eLend; it took over 4 months for my loan to close. This is unheard of.
To be fair, eLend was ready to close by the end of July, but I was away on vacation, so they charged me points to extend my rate in order to able to close when I got back. Speaking of vacation, I had told them in May that I was going away in July. No one cared. I never thought it would have to take so long, but I told them anyway just in case. So in July a few days before my international trip, I told my loan officer, Lorraine W[redacted], that I needed a power-of-attorney so that my brother could sign the papers on my behalf while I was away. She said it was no problem. Come the morning of the day I was leaving, still no POA. She eventually sent it to me after 4PM when I was on route to the airport. I could see in the email that the POA was sent to her before noon. Her excuse was that she was in a meeting. This is how incompetent they are. Knowing that I’m leaving the country and have to get a POA notarized before leaving, she still couldn’t get important paper to me on time. Frankly, she didn’t care. While I was away, they miraculously were ready to close, so they charged me points to push the closing back a week.
Also, my loan took so long that the rate had dropped during the 4 month period. I asked about the “free” float down, which they heavily advertised while I was loan shopping. I was denied a float down not because the rate hadn’t dropped enough to warrant a float down, but because they had extended my original rate as a courtesy. Mind you, the lock rate was only good for 30 days. So after every 30 days, they had to give me a “courtesy” extension of the loan rate because it was no fault of mine that the loan wasn’t moving. So how does one get a float down if it’s more beneficial to them to just extend my lock rate? This is false advertising. They also charged me $695 for a home inspection and on the Good Faith Estimate, it clearly said $550. When I asked about it, no one even responded. On my closing papers, the inspection cost went up to $695 to match what they charged me. The inspection cost should never change. This is a fixed cost.
I even complained to eLend’s customer service and to a different loan officer because my own loan officer went on vacation. The case was supposedly reported to management. Guess what the response was? That’s right, nothing. As in, there was not even a reply acknowledging the situation. The only reason I ended closing with them is because they had already taken $1000 from me between the home inspection cost and condo questionnaire cost. That is how they get you. Give you a good rate, get the inspection done immediately – so you’re already financially invested, then drag it on to see where they can sneak in more fees. There are some majorly deceptive practices going on here.