North American Savings Bank reviews and complaints

My neighbor decided to sell his house and my wife and I decided to buy it as an investment property. It was sudden. Using all the money in our available accounts, we had just enough to cover 20% and a few thousand dollars in closing costs. We also had a preplanned vacation coming up and no way to cancel. After shopping around, I settled on North American Savings Bank. I explained to the loan officer our situation and that I would need a no-origination fee loan because I only had enough to cover the down payment and closing costs and NOTHING more. So, we worked out a loan at a higher interest rate. I got him all the paperwork quickly and urged him over the phone and in a cover letter to let the loan processor know I was leaving the country in a week and that he or she should review my paperwork immediately to see whether something was obviously missing.

A few days into our trip, I get an email from the loan processor casually requesting more documents. Huh? I said. Why am I getting this request now. The loan processor was dense, but eventually acknowledged that she had not been informed I would be travelling and if she had, would have gotten her request in before I left. So, I dance the tune called by the incompetent loan officer and coordinate for the delivery of the documents. A couple of weeks later, still while I am out of town and one week before closing, the loan processor emails me and says that because $15, 000 was no longer in my money market account (I had transferred it to a local bank in preparation for the wire transfer) and was no longer available for the reserve funds the lender required, I needed to send statments for other accounts showing I had the necessary reserves.

Huh? What reserves? The loan officer knew, because I told him repeatedly, how much money I had and that it would just be enough to cover the down payment and closing costs. Who said anything about needing to have more money available? Nobody, until a week before closing. The loan processor refused to acknowledge I had been screwed over, so I spoke with her supervisor in the hope of obtaining full information. After all, if the person I was dealing with was too dense to understand that I applied for the loan because I didn't have any money beyond the down payment and closing costs, and that her request for documentation of additional reserves was not simply a minor nuisance, then what else was she unclear about?

I figured I had just barely enough to cover the six month reserve that had been thrown at me, but not wanting to continue dancing to the tune called by fools and spending my time sending statements for all my accounts with next to nothing in them, I needed to speak with someone who knew what she was talking about. A minute into the conversation, she informed me that in addition to the six month reserve on the investment property, I needed to have two months reserve for my own.

Meanwhile, the loan officer is sending me emails with his ideas on how to solve the problem (that was resulting from his ignorance). They could make x amount more available if I took a higher rate. Perhaps they get away with renegotiating in this way with desparate people who think they are about to close and move into a new home. Probably. I told him to take a hike, not mentioning that my confidence in him was zero. As it turns out, even after he was made aware of the problem, he was still unable to come up with the right numbers. The x he mentioned was still far short of what was needed because of the other reserves.

The backdrop is that the seller is leaving the country a few days after the closing date, again something NASB knew.

The appraisal I paid for is worthless, of course, as no lender these days will accept it.

So, if you want to deal with what seem to be children who have no idea what they are doing, who refuse to acknowledge their errors, but who offer to fix them by having you take a worse deal, then by all means go ahead and do business with NASB.