Donna Slack-Delles spent her childhood driving from Chicago to her great uncle’s house in Pelican Lake, Wisconsin often.
“We learned how to fish. We learned how to swim. We picked raspberries that grew wild by the road,” Slack-Delles lovingly recalled, pointing out the quaint cottage in an old, black and white photo.
Slack-Delles always dreamed of being able to give her family the same memories she held so close, so when she and her husband spotted a property for sale on Uncle Ben Road – named for her great uncle – they didn’t waste any time.
“I have four grandkids and I wanted to give them what I had, just to have a good time up there,” Slack-Delles said, choking back tears.
They decided to take out a home equity line of credit to buy the property, but a title search on their Portage Park neighborhood home revealed a problem.
"They found out that a loan that we had a few years ago as a second mortgage that we had paid off, the satisfaction of mortgage wasn’t filed properly,” Slack-Delles explained. “So even though we had paid off the loan in full, it looked like there was still a lien on our house.”
The problem was a paperwork error made in closing the second mortgage taken out with Green Tree, which has since become Ditech.
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“One digit,” she said. “It should have been 15, but it was filed with a 16 ending number.”
That one-digit error prompted countless phone calls to Ditech over several weeks.
Ditech responded by sending Slack-Delles and her husband a letter that said their account was “paid and closed in full,” but it still wasn’t sufficient for Chase, the lender the couple was hoping to use to buy the Pelican Lake property.
The 2.44 acres of lakefront land, and the $5,000 in earnest money they had already put down, were now in jeopardy.
“I can’t lose this property,”a frustrated Slack-Delles said. “The $5,000 meant a lot, but I think the property meant more at this point.”
Slack-Delles called NBC 5 Responds to look into the problem. We called Ditech and within two days, the paperwork was refiled correctly.
When asked about the error, Megan Keohane, a Ditech spokesperson, told NBC 5 Responds, "Our customer service department worked diligently to address the customer’s concerns. We are glad that we were able to quickly resolve the issue."
Slack-Delles and her husband closed on the Pelican Lake property in mid-August, ready to make up for lost time and make more memories.
“We’re going to be sitting on that pier and watching the sunrise,” Slack-Delles said.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau recommends that you review all mortgage and loan documents very carefully, paying particular attention to amounts, interest rates and spellings.
If you have a consumer complaint, we want to hear it! Call us at 844-NBC-RESP(ONDS) or submit it here.
