“Wells Fargo refinancing and credit crunch”

In January 2009, when mortgage interest rates fell down to 4.875%, I decided to refinance my existing home mortgage and had contacted my Wells Fargo mortgage banker. He gave me a free 3 month rate lock and charged me half a percentage point refundable at closing plus the appraisal fee $350. This was the same mortgage banker who did an excellent job four months earlier assisting me in buying my first home. Therefore, I knew and trusted this banker. My appraisal happened quickly and even though my house lost fifteen grand in value within a mere four months I still had enough equity for it not to be an instrumental problem. The rest of the paper work took another month to complete and by the mid of February everything seemed to be in order. I received a commitment letter from Wells Fargo and started waiting for the closing date calling in once a week just to remind them that I’m still out there waiting.
After the passing of one month, there was still no news on the closing. Anytime I called or emailed I was hearing a repetitive story about waiting for CEMA. Apparently, it is some kind of mysterious entity that not even my mortgage banker can get through. I should tell you that I tried calling Wells Fargo customer service hoping to get a better result but after 20 minutes holding and being transferred from one customer representative to another, I ended up backtracking to my starting point. My mortgage banker told me that Wells Fargo receives 9000 refinancing requests per day and their system is designed to handle only 1100 so they cannot keep up with the demand. In addition the bank is tightening up there credit standards therefore their employees must undergo additional training and learn new procedures which further increases the wait time. Meanwhile my rate lock has expired and my appraisal and credit check will expire soon and there is nothing I can do but wait and hope that Wells Fargo doesn’t screw me up. So be careful with paying them refundable points upfront because you will loose the f

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