American Capital Funding

Do your own homework, but everything I say here is true. American Capital Funding Group, in particular mortgage broker, Ken Flora, made gross oversights when handling the financing of my home purchase. While he started out very well- good attentive service, good interest rates, etc., some of his promises fell short at the close of escrow. There are three issues. First, Ken Flora and his staff provided incorrect information about my financial situation on the loan documents. He grossly overstated our financial net worth. Even if it was a simple oversight, his office requested my financial statements three times in two months and so was well equipped to report it accurately. Also on these documents they wrote the incorrect ethnicity and residency status of my wife, and in some cases, the incorrect spelling of her name. At this point, they're only crimes are being sloppy and unprofessional. Second, due to the rapidly deteriorating housing market, the terms of our loan changed per the lender. Not Ken Flora's fault. However he proposed a workaround (I was originally putting down 10% and going to finance the 80/10) to this by increasing the downpayment to 12% and incurring the PMI only for a few months. The reason is the home appraised quite nicely, so making a few payments would bring the loan-to-value ratio beneath the industry standard 80%, at which time PMI could be removed. Ken Flora offered to subsidize the PMI payment until this happened. It's a nice gesture. But again, upon signing the loan documents, we discovered that the lender requires a 75% loan-to-value ratio before being eligible to remove the PMI. Ken Flora was apparently unaware. So now, what began as a few months of PMI has now turned out to be 4 and a half years of payments. Ken Flora has agreed to make the payments to us nonetheless, but as of today I have nothing in writing, nor any money from him. So the extra downpayment served no purpose. O, one more thing... Third, Ken Flora underestimated our settlement costs substantially. Days before closing he advised that I add a particular amount to escrow to cover the settlement costs (downpayment + closing costs). I mentioned to him twice, once upon receiving the Truth In Lending disclosure, and once upon receiving the final loan documents, that the escrow estimates were about $3,000 higher than he recommended. He assured me repeatedly that the amount was fine, and that it even included a refundable pad (cash which escrow companies collect in case there are additional fees). It did include a pad. I had that conversation with him the morning we expected to close. Literally, an hour later, he emailed me the final closing costs: we needed an additional $4731.55, a whopping 38% higher than he originally estimated, and almost 60% higher than what he told me to put in escrow to cover closing costs. That really set me back. I had to scramble to find the funds, most of which came from money set aside to fix our place up. He also stressed from the beginning that American Capital Funding Group only had two charges. They were clearly marked in the final closing costs, along with two others payable to them. Needless to say, I have a low opinion of Ken Flora and American Capital Funding Group. Granted, I credit him for his integrity to offer to subsidize the PMI, but his overwhelming carelessness and negligence leaves me with a bitter taste. ------- One more word of caution, I am the first to write a review for American Capital Funding Group and Ken Flora on yellowpages.com, merchantcircle.com, and Yahoo! local. Today is 03/12/2008. If there are all of a sudden a bunch of favorable reviews for American Capital Funding Group and Ken Flora after mine, it's likely an attempt by them or their peers to artificially inflate the low rating I gave them. Thanks for listening.