Brandy, the Paranoid Mortgage Customer

[Ghel]

Neglects or "neglects" on purpose?

It's hard to say. She keeps saying her phone gets hacked or her stalker gets hold of her number or something. And she's always willing to give us the new number when we ask for it. So I'm leaning towards scatterbrained. Or maybe drug-addled brain.

[Seanette]

*The phone thing is an ongoing thing with Brandy. Every 2-3 months, it seems, she gets a new phone and neglects to give us her new phone number.

Neglects or "neglects" on purpose?

[Ghel]

Oh, I haven't mentioned yet, I'm pretty sure Brandy is a meth user. She's super scrawny. Her face is gaunt and sometimes has the sort of sores you see in those "here's what meth does to you" pictures. She's nearly always twitchy and agitated when she comes in to see me. She can't sit still. She'll check her phone to verify something, then gets up and walk to the door (in part because we have crappy cell coverage inside the building) then comes back and sit down multiple times per visit. It probably contributes to her paranoia, too.

It may also be why she's not working, too. Brandy's a seasonal construction worker, so it wasn't surprising that she was on unemployment for a few months. But then that ran out. In February, she applied for a loan so she could fly to the east coast for training, in the hopes that she could get work in a related field. I had to turn her down since she didn't have any current income.

She tried to give me info on a retirement fund she was cashing in, but there were issues with that, too. First was that she couldn't tell me when she would get the funds or how much she was getting. She had the people who manage the retirement fund contact me. They were able to give me a balance in the fund, but not when the withdrawal would be processed. So I wasn't able to use that as a basis for Brandy's loan. About two weeks after I turned Brandy down, I got an email from the retirement fund people that the withdrawal had been processed. One of the things it said was that they were allowing the withdrawal because Brandy hadn't worked in their industry for at least a year. That means when I did the cash-out refinance of her mortgage loan in September, she lied to me about her employment and income.

But she cashed in her retirement fund. In February. Even if half of it went to taxes, she should have at least $25,000. She should be able to use that to catch up on her loan payments, right? Well, no, she's spent it all already. The biggest single item, she says, is she had to buy a new car because her truck won't start. Because, as I mentioned previously, her stalker messed with her truck. And she bought two years worth of shelf-stable food for herself and her dog.

But now she's wanting to make a year's worth of payments? I'll believe that when I see it.

[Ghel]

Wait...How was she planning to prepay for a year, exactly???

I don't know. I doubt she planned that far ahead. She was going to bring the money in Friday, so maybe she's getting paid then. But from what, I don't know, since I think she's still out of work. Right now, we'd be happy just to get the 2 payments she's past due.

Here's a bit more about Brandy:

Brandy has been my customer for several years. She was originally Ted's customer, but after he moved to the main branch, I had to deal with her. Brandy's a needy customer, and her thought processes and speech patterns are... how do I put this... disjointed? She'll start saying something (usually mumbling), then stop and restart her sentence going in a different direction. I end up interpreting what she's saying and asking her if that's what she meant, more often than not.

I've gotten a glimpse into her mindset while discussing her loans and such.

There's the thing with her stalker. Or stalkers. It started with an ex-boyfriend who would walk down her sidewalk and stare in her window. Then another ex-boyfriend was stalking her? I think? Then a neighbor told her that there were tunnels into her basement that people would use to transport drugs. On that one, I told her it should be really easy to check for, but she said she'd have to pull down the paneling to check. But if there's paneling up, and it hasn't been disturbed, how could anybody be using tunnels behind it? Also, the basements in town are only about 6 feet below ground, so how do they keep the tunnel from collapsing? Then she was sure someone had been breaking into her house and stealing things out of her fridge. But there wasn't any sign of a break-in. She hadn't changed the lock on her garage since she moved in, and she thought someone might have the key (an ex-boyfriend, probably). Why didn't she change the lock? She didn't have a good answer for that. Then her stalker caused her truck not to start. And messed with her motorcycle, I guess? And she's been having noise complaints made against her because she left her barking dog outside all day. She's sure it's someone out to get her because all the neighbors' dogs are barking all the time, too.

Lately, she's been saying that her stalker is friends with the local police chief, which is why the police haven't been taking her seriously when she calls. Yes, I'm sure it's that and not that her complaints are cookoobananas.

[EricKei]

"No, I don't have that much."

Wait...How was she planning to prepay for a year, exactly???

[Ghel]

I just looked through my posts to see if I'd posted about this customer before, but it doesn't look like I have. I'm a little surprised, since I have a lot of stories about her.

Let's start with the current situation. "Brandy" has been out of work since before the stay-at-home order was issued. She called to request a deferral on her mortgage loan at the beginning of April. We explained to her that it would only save her about $50, since the bank is requesting that accrued interest and escrow be paid, even if we defer a payment. She said to forget it, she would just pay the whole payment.

Well, she didn't pay. Now she's past due for her April and May payments. I tried to call and got an automated message that the number wasn't available.* We sent letters.

Brandy finally called yesterday. Initially, she asked if she could make a year's worth of payments so she wouldn't have to make payments until next year. I explained that while she could do that, at the end of the year she'd have a large pool of accrued interest sitting there, and her next few payments would go only to interest.

I suggested she open a savings account, deposit the year's worth of payments, and then set up automatic payments out of the savings. She liked that idea. I asked how much she wanted to deposit - was it her monthly payment times 12? "No, I don't have that much." :facepalm: Ok, how much, then? She doesn't know. She'll have to figure that out and call me back.

I typed up the savings account documents and the automatic payment form, and I waited for her to call back. She hasn't. And she didn't answer her phone when I tried to call her this morning. Hopefully she'll check her voicemail. But she's claimed in the past that she hasn't received the voicemails I've left her. Maybe with a new phone it will be easier to find? I won't hold my breath.


*The phone thing is an ongoing thing with Brandy. Every 2-3 months, it seems, she gets a new phone and neglects to give us her new phone number.