A 70-year-old Florida woman is fighting the foreclosure of her home after Ameriquest refinanced her mortgage three times since 2001, promising to help her lower her monthly payments and interest rate, only now her payments have more than doubled.
She is challenging the foreclosure claiming Ameriquest took advantage of her, a sick widow, who didn’t finish high school and was unable to understand the financial contracts she was signing.
RealtyTrac.com, a national foreclosure database, says 817 foreclosures are pending or completed in Jacksonville Beach, 463 in Neptune Beach, 961 in Atlantic Beach and 534 in Ponte Vedra Beach. Those foreclosures resulted from a variety of reasons, including increasing adjustable mortgage rates and home values.
With each refinancing, Pittman found it harder to pay her mortgage. After her mortgage was first refinanced in 2001, her monthly payment rose from $500 to $644. After the second refinance in 2003, it went up to $672. After the third in 2004, it soared to $1,069.
Her lawyer has filed a counter suit against Deutsche Bank National Trust, who became the trustee of Ameriquest Mortgage Securities in 2004. At this time it is unclear who holds her mortgage since Citigroup recently announced purchasing ACC Capital Holdings, Ameriquest’s parent company.
