QWR’s and RESPA

One thing I have been seeing a lot of recently is mortgage companies hiding the ball on consumer loans in bankruptcy. For example, a mortgage company might allocate certain payments from a Chapter 13 Trustee to a “suspense account” and not to principal and interest as they should. Or maybe there is a substantial “escrow shortage” when there was no escrow account to begin with. If you try to get information from the companies just by calling them, it is often like a shell game and sometimes, you just need documentation of what happened. And mortgage companies are required to provide such information under the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (“RESPA”). The procedure to request such information is by means of a “qualified written request.”