Legal Question in Real Estate Law in Illinois
I had a broker who was working on a mortgage for my new house. This broker mis-managed our loan and as the weeks turned into months, I insisted that the loan be closed ASAP before the sellers backed out. At one point the broker didn't like my tone of voice and said he no longer wanted to work with us. I said fine, close the file. We had already ordered two appraisals through him which were to be paid either by closing costs or by a credit card which we gave him information for. After left him, we got a new broker who got two new appraisals and will close on our house in a week.
The initial broker wants to charge us for the appraisals that he ordered for a loan that never went through due to his incompetence and refusal to work with us. He had the credit card information on file and could have charged us. He thought he did charge us and shredded the document with all of the information regarding the payment for the appraisals. Now through his corporate office he has finally realized he never charged us. He has nothing in writing stating that we agreed to pay, he dropped our mortgage file, he shredded our credit card info. On top of that, he used a more expensive than necessary appraiser and misled us as to the reason why (he said the law required it, then later claimed it was just the lenders policy). So through his own doing, he no longer has our credit card information or any proof that we agreed to pay for the appraisals. On top of that, we gained absolutely nothing out of the matter because we still had to have our new lender order new appraisals.
Do we owe him anything for the appraisals?
1 Answer from Attorneys
How have you been damaged by his incompetence? If you can show damage, you should write to the corporate office and explain that his incompetence cost you . . . and that the appraisals were of no use to you and they should write off the costs.