Real Estate Mortgage Legal Question: How can a lender force place insurance for an escrowed loan? ?
Author: admin / Category: Legal QuestionsI’m doing some legal research - this has not actually happened to me, but I have seen it happen. If you have an escrow account with your lender, you pay a monthly payment for them to take care of your annual hazard insurance premiums as well as property taxes. In some cases, the lender may pay the premiums to the insurer, but for some reason not be able to actually get a copy of the policy or proof of insurance. In a situation like this, after requesting the proof from the borrower and not recieving it, a lender can Force Place another insurance policy for the structure just to ensure that they’re covered.
From a lenders perspective - they need to be insured and the borrwer should have responded.
From a borrowers perspective “Hey, I pay you guys to handle my insurance. You go get the proof since you pay the premiums.”
In the end, the borrower gets charged an insane amount of money for a useless policy. I’ve read through Reg AB and found nothing. Can any attorneys tell me the legal risk that the lender is taking?
It appears to be predatory and gouging but also a necessary evil.
I work for a lender. If we promised to pay your insurance through escrow and are unable to contact your insurance company- or the company refuses to send us the documents- the borrower is responsible for giving us that information. Lots of times it’s sent to the wrong location or the fax doesn’t make it through.
I am an underwriter and I’m responsible for entering in the insurance information. At times, mistakes happen and I might type in the wrong phone number so the escrow department can’t reach the agency.
Thing is, if your house burns down the first day we haven’t paid your insurance premium- WE are responsible to completely re-build your house. Our company lost a 600K house in washington to a fire and the insurance was one day late- we had to rebuild the house for the borrowers. So if we can’t get proof of insurance, and you won’t provide it, we’re going to force you to buy our coverage until you provide it. There’s nothing illegal or predatory about that.
If you obtained the insurance to begin with, you should have no problem contacting them for your renewal page to forward to the lender. Shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes. If it does, I suggest finding a new insurance agency since a longer timeframe suggests they don’t really care about your business.


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