First State Community Bank

Honestly I would select 1 star if possible. The service I received from my mortgage loan agent Andrew Huhman was absolutely deplorable. When I first talked to him at the bank I was very straight forward with him, I told him I was unemployed for part of 2017 and had been at my job for about 1.5 years, and that a large portion of my income is commission and overtime. I was completely prepared for him to say this would cause an issue and we would need to edit, he said this wouldn’t be a problem at all. We also told him that due to my husband being a 1099 position we weren’t going to put him on the loan since we know he wouldn’t qualify at this time and it would be a very difficult process if we did, which he said wouldn’t be a problem either. I asked him a ton of questions about how the process would work, and what information would be needed for the loan, and he even gave us estimates of what our payments would be with different purchase prices. He said the USDA loan would be best for us as it has a lower PMI than FHA and wouldn’t require a down payment, although I told him we had a down payment ready just in case. He generally seemed very friendly and informative at that time, and said that I shouldn’t have a problem getting an approval. I specifically confirmed with him that it was likely I would get approved even with my gap in employment and without my husbands income, and he said it was, though he couldn’t 100% promise it. Due to the information we were given we decided to move forward with the application. Within a few days I got the pre-approval and we found a house just under a week later that was well under the amount I was approved for. I gave him the information of the house and he said he were fine to move on with the process, so we put in an offer on the house that was accepted later on that same day. At this point Andrew sent me some documents to sign and we went ahead and ordered the inspection since it was in our contract that it had to be done within 2 weeks. The inspection went well, the information was forwarded to Andrew, and he said we were good to go and we just had to wait on the appraisal that had already been ordered. At this point Andrew had been very friendly and quick to respond to my emails and phones calls. About a week later I still hadn’t heard back, assuming the appraisal hadn’t been done yet, and happened to check my email around 9:30pm, only to find an email from Andrew marked as URGENT. He never attempted to call me, and what I found in this email was very upsetting. It stated our loan had been suspended until I sent them more information, and A LOT of it. I had to send a letter explaining my unemployment, which I knew was a possibility, but the biggest issue was actually that we had to verify my husbands income. Now I specifically told him before I put in the application that this is exactly what we did not want to do as we knew it would be a freaking process, but he felt that was not important information to tell me and said it wouldn’t be a problem. So we spent the next two days gathering the information, writing letters explaining my husbands paychecks, making a profit and loss statement, and many other things to verify his income. It was Thursday when I saw the email, and I got most of the information together by Friday and Andrew said he would go ahead and submit it to be reviewed before the weekend while I got the rest together to be submitted first thing Monday. He said all this was just a formality for the underwriter and once I submit it we will be good to go. I emailed him the remaining information Saturday and then called him Monday to confirm he got it. At that time he told me that he didn’t submit anything Friday because they have to get a verification of employment from my employer and they have to submit all the information at once, so nothing could be done until my employer responded. I was off work that day, so he said he would give them until Tuesday to send it, and if it wasn’t sent he would call me so I could have HR send it to him. He never called Tuesday so I assumed it was taken care of, and he had mentioned earlier that once it’s submitted we should hear back within 1-2 days. By Thursday I still hasn’t heard back so I called him. It was at this point that he became practically impossible to get ahold of. I called him 3 times Thursday and left messages but he never answered or called me back. Finally around 3 he did email me, giving me an hour before they closed to get back in touch with him, and only to tell me that he JUST looked at my file and they still hadn’t gotten the verification. So he hadn’t even tried to get this information prior to me contacting him. So I spent the rest of the day trying to get in touch with HR to get the verification myself. The following day, Friday, I called Andrew multiple times and sent multiple emails with no response. So I called the bank myself and asked to deal with a different agent as I was tired of being ignored, and the lady I spoke to was able to talk to the processing department to confirm my verification was received and my information was submitted. Shortly after I finally received an email from Andrew telling me he was out of the office but he had just talked to processing and the verification was never received. At this point I didn’t know who to believe so I just called HR back and they confirmed it was sent and received. I also received a call from my landlord that day, since the bank confirmed our rent with him he knew we would be moving and let me know he already had a waiting list for our apartment, so we could move as soon as we are ready. The sellers agent had also called that day to see if we could move up closing, so I let Andrew know this, so he would know that it was important to speed up the process as my landlord and the seller need this to move forward. He never responded, and I didn’t hear anything back until I received an email on the following Tuesday telling me the loan was denied. He didn’t even call me to give me this news, just sent an email just like he had before. It stated in the email that I was denied because I had been at my job for under 2 years, which means I can’t claim overtime or commission, and this made my income too low. I very specifically told him this before I put in the loan application and this should have been told to me that day instead of telling me it would be fine. This was EXTREMELY IMPORTANT information that he flat out lied to me about. It also said that my debt to income ratio was 57% which was far too high, and that the income limit for USDA was around $87,000 and with my husbands income we were over the limit. He never once told me we would have to include my husbands income, even though I very specifically asked if it would more than once, and he also never said there was a limit for the usda loan. If this information had been given to me when I asked the first day we talked to him I never would have gotten into this situation. I would have waited until January when I hit 2 years with my employer, and we would have gone with the FHA loan since we already have to down payment. But due to Andrew withholding such crucial information and just flat out lying about things we are now stuck. We have already paid for the inspection and we put earnest money in our offer so now since we can’t get the loan we are out of pocket almost $550. And to make things worse the seller had already moved back to Texas and is in the process of buying another house since we were at the very end of the process here. So now we are out $550, the seller is out the money for his contract as well, he will have to move back to the house to start from scratch, and I had to tell my landlord we won’t be moving. Thankfully he was very nice about it and said we could stay, but he very easily could have told us we had to leave and then we would essentially be homeless. When I told my realtor about the situation she said that some other people in her office had worked with clients that had similar situations with Andrew, so I am not the only one he has done wrong. I am working with another mortgage broker to see if we have any other options, but I doubt this will work. This is the worst experience I have ever had with a business, and I will never use first state bank again after this ordeal. Absolutely disgusting the way we were treated by Andrew and the situation he single handedly put us in. He withholds important information, just checks out once the process gets difficult, ignores phones calls and emails, and hides behind his computer to give unpleasant news instead of being professional and calling so that you know it’s urgent. As soon as my car payment with first state is fulfilled I will close my account with them and NEVER go back. And I will tell every single person I know not to get a him loan through them and chance going through this nightmare.

I've been with them for 7 years out of location convenience and sheer laziness, took 3 years for them to successfully set up my online banking, I've been begging them for years to at least call me if I ever have overdraft charges pending as I have other accounts I can transfer in from, or to at least set the account up so that it simply won't pay a transaction if there isn't adequate funding in the account at the time of transaction, both requests they flat out refused to implement, and then charge overdraft fees and on the rare occasion that they wave one, they act like they're doing me some huge favor, last summer they overcharged my account by $2k and took two weeks refunding the overcharge, and now in the past week, they charged me $7 to refund my former 401k company a $103.80 check that had been written to rectify an underpaid distribution when I left my former employer, without any form of authorization from me, no notice whatsoever that they were giving the money back, and no apology for the issue at all, He even tried to tell me initially that it was because "the check says void after 120 days and it's been a while," the check was written on 2-21-18, cashed on 4-20-18, so what you're telling me is that the guy handling all of my money can't do basic math, awesome, time to talk to the manager... ***, the downtown manager, tells me, "that's policy." and that he couldn't wave the $7 because he'd already waived too many fees in the past year, referencing all the overdraft fees they had to waive when they overpaid that $2k last summer and took two weeks to give the money back, like that was somehow my fault. The day my income tax return clears that account, I'm closing it and never going back. The best part, the stop payment that caused the bank to refund that $103.80? according to Transamerica, that was a mistake on their end and the check was immediately mailed back out. So tell me again *** why it is that I'm penalized $7 for someone else accidentally cancelling a check in error. $110 isn't a ton, but it certainly isn't pocket change, and to do all of that without even a courtesy call?