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Great SunTrust Mortgage Review

If you’re thinking about mortgage refinancing or purchasing your home with SunTrust Mortgage, there are several things you’ll want to know before signing on the dotted line. Choosing the right mortgage company or person to arrange your next home loan is your most important task when avoiding junk fees and unnecessary mortgage rate markup. Here is my review of SunTrust Mortgage and several tips that can save you as much as $1200 per year on your next home loan.

SunTrust Mortgage

Visit SunTrust Mortgage’s website and you’ll discover they are fully-owned subsidiary of SunTrust Bank. Based out of Atlanta and operating in DC,
Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama and Florida they claim to have $172 billion dollars in assets. As a mortgage lender they have working relationships with mortgage brokers in 49 states and services loans in all 50 states employing 4,137 people.

Searching Google for SunTrust Mortgage reveals their website, contact information, and several customer complaints filed with the Better Business Bureau.

SunTrust Mortgage Contact Information

Website: http://www.suntrustmortgage.com
Customer Service: 1-800-634-7928 Mon-Fri 8am to 8pm Eastern
(Saturday 9am to 3pm Eastern)
Address: SunTrust Mortgage 501 East Pratt Street, Baltimore, MD 21279

SunTrust Mortgage Review

My review of SunTrust Mortgage covers the retail nature of home loans offered by big banks. Bank mortgage lending is not regulated by your State like it is when you take out a home loan from a mortgage broker. Mortgage banking is regulated by the Federal Government and legislation known as the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA). What you might not know about RESPA laws is that the Banking Lobby had these laws changed to exclude banks from having to disclose their markup and profit margin on your home loan.

This means that whatever profit the bank realizes when selling your loan on the secondary market does not have to be disclosed to you. Your bank knows that home loans with higher than market mortgage rates bring in a premium profit known as Service Release Premium for the bank. This also means the bank has an incentive for overcharging you and is not required to disclose what they’re doing thanks to this little known loophole in the RESPA laws.

It is because of this loophole that I recommend people work with a local mortgage broker licensed by their State who is not exempt from RESPA and is required to disclose all of their markup, fees, and profit margin on the home loans they originate.

SunTrust Mortgage Complaints

According to the Better Business Bureau website there have been 199 complaints against SunTrust Mortgage during the past 36 months. The standard reporting period for the BBB is the previous 36 months and during the past year SunTrust Mortgage resolved 95 of these complaints.

If you’ve had dealings with SunTrust Mortgage, positive or negative experiences, please leave a comment below. Should you refinance your home loan with SunTrust Mortgage? I don’t recommend banks as a whole for the reasons I’ve discussed in this article. Banks simply do not offer wholesale mortgage rates to their customers. If you want the lowest possible mortgage rate and payment amount for your next home loan wholesale, also known as par mortgage rates are the way to go.

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Check out my free Underground Mortgage Refinancing Videos and you’ll discover how easy it is to save thousands of dollars getting the best refinance rates without paying unnecessary markup or lender junk fees.

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{ 32 comments… add one }
  • Susan March 26, 2010, 5:05 pm

    I got a home loan through Suntrust Mortgage. And a year later they send me a letter telling me that my mortgage payment is going up $100.oo a month. I have contacted the company over a dozen times, and never get an answer. I only get the run around. I may have to get a lawyer to make them stop playing games. Having a loan with this crooked company is too stressful. If I could go back in time I would not make the same mistake again…

  • Eduardo June 14, 2010, 5:29 am

    I am trying to save my home at this moment with Suntrust Mortgage. I have 2 loans with them. The first one come from Wells fargo managed by Suntrust Mortgage and the second one is directly from Suntrust Mortgage. I provided all info to try to get a loan modification and everytime I am denied…..Please advise what should I do?

  • Darlene Lewis June 22, 2010, 6:20 am

    My house was foreclosed on because Suntrust sent me a letter stating my mortgage was going from $554 to $823 a month due to the increase in my property taxes ( Suntrust stated the taxes were going from $1,800 a yr to $3,200 a yr). I sent them evidence that my taxes weren't $3,200 but less than $1,800 and they still foreclosed on my home, because I wouldn't let them pad my escrow account with the extra$269 a month. The city of Detroit sent them a tax statement showing my taxes were 1,800 not 3,200 a year, and they still foreclosed on my home.

  • Kara Ann H. August 5, 2010, 10:31 am

    I have had a buyer for my house in Venice Gardens FL with CASH IN HAND since January 2010. Suntrust lost my file (mounds of confidential paperwork, of course) then took 5 months before they assigned a negotiator. I am STILL waiting for them to close the deal. My house will foreclose before it get s sold then I am the one with a poor credit rating. They should have the poor credit rating as they are the ones stalling and holding up the entire process! Sun Trust $ucks.

  • Lindsay September 22, 2010, 2:30 am

    I am (soon to be was) a client of (Millersville, MD) Suntrust. They had worked with another family member and I thought I would throw him some business in 2008 financing my first home.

    I contacted them recently to re-finance my home and look to possible finance an additional property. I have NEVER been treated with such disrespect. He promised to call multiple times to answer a few question and he never did. When I asked him if he treated all of his clients like this, he said "I'm just one little inadequate man I guess."

    I told him that I was going to take my business elsewhere and he said fine… just like that.

    I am a very young woman who is rapidly progressing in my gross income. I could have been a very active customer, but his disrespect, arrogance, and lack of customer care is forcing me to end my relationship with Suntrust. I will be sure to inform my colleagues, friends, and family to never give them any business in the future.

    I'm disgusted, but glad to know their true colors.

    ~Lindsay

  • gary March 23, 2011, 7:03 pm

    Hi, You guys should look into the home modification. How the services are taking advantage. Here’s what they did. I applied for a loan modification in May of 08. We were told we qualify. Well Suntrust mortgage never did there job by not doing the paper work on the loan. Well Nationstar now says we are $20,000 behind. We were told to pay a reduced amount, we been paying that reduced amount for 1 and a half years. We now are told we now don’t qualify. You know that if I don’t do my job I get fired. But nothing happens to them. Please tell everyone to watch out.

  • Laura March 24, 2011, 12:34 pm

    I am having the same problem with a brand new mortgage with Suntrust and I spoke with another local man also. Suntrust bumped my mortgage payment over $200/mo saying that my taxes had gone up and that I did not have enough flood insurance. I had my insurance agent verify the flood amount 4 times and they still tacked on another $950/yr policy. I then had to have the policy removed which they did but my mortgage payment is still up $120/mo. I verified the taxes also and they should have gone up about $109 for the year. Thinking about retaining a lawyer.

  • Stuart June 10, 2011, 10:17 am

    If you are considering using Suntrust Mortgage, stop and RUN in the opposite direction. We refinanced with Suntrust and I should have identified that they were lying to me was that their lips were moving. I asked questions point blank and was out and out lied to. We are in worse shape now after refinancing with Suntrust than we were before with a higher interest rate. Things that I was told that were not required or not needed, were used to wipe out some other lines of credit that I had. The attitude at Suntrust is very, very arrogant and they treat their customers very poorly. Customer Service is a joke that is only funny to the Suntrust employees.

  • Mikelle April 6, 2012, 1:07 pm

    My husband and I purchased a home last May on an FHA loan through SunTrust. I understand we did not put 20% down as we would rather have money in savings than to put money on a credit card if something were to happen.
    We just got our taxes done and we are paying $249 per month on PMI. The individual who did our taxes about had a meltdown and then we were unable to write it off as our income is too high. Our credit scores are very high as well (over 800)
    This was never explained to us, it is certainly not in our best interest and I feel we have been “taken to the bank”
    I would strongly suggest you reconsider if you are going to take a loan from SunTrust. Good advice from the post above would be to RUN! Especially if you are dealing with a nut job broker similar to ours.

  • Connie May 18, 2012, 1:09 pm

    Suntrust financed my mortgage last year. The banker had wonderful personality, responsive, until we closed. Now, I have a problem: a gigantic escrow shortage because the banker and/or the title company did not bother to check the real estate taxes on the property. Sloppy work.

  • Pat May 30, 2012, 2:07 pm

    I won’t go into the horrendous & infuriating details, but it is impossible to resolve anything with them. No one calls you back as promised (even supervisors) and you can’t get a name or direct number to save your life. They won’t even give you a number for an internal dept. to try to resolve the problems THEY cause. We finally refinanced our mortgage to get away from them. I will never deal with Suntrust again in any capacity. I agree, RUN!

  • Christian June 1, 2012, 1:02 pm

    We put an offer on a short sale in July 2011. They kept jerking us around for 11 months (losing paperwork, firing people working on the account without telling anyone, etc). This was done in order to delay the process so the house value increased as more time passed.. Today, June 1st, they decide to sell the mortgage off to another company!!! This puts us RIGHT back to where we were in July 2011.

    This company is a fraud and will not operate in good faith with you. They are a waste of time.

  • Dave June 12, 2012, 6:36 am

    Stay FAR AWAY from Suntrust Mortgage if you are want to refinance your loan. We went to Suntrust Mortage to refinance our loan because we are existing customers figuring that would make the process go quicker/smoother. That was in January! Six months later and we still haven’t closed.

    We were told the loan process is 30-60 days. Unfortunately, we believed that and have home improvements on hold for months waiting for our loan to close. They are extremely short staffed in Underwriting and paperwork that is submitted there go into a black hole. Completely unorganized.

    I am writing this comment because I am extremely frustrated with them and want to warn others to stay far, far away.

    • AC June 13, 2012, 7:03 pm

      Same bad experience with Suntrust. Applied early February. My credit report expired and they needed a second one since it has been taling so long. It is now June and they are waiting for underwriting, even though the final approval has been received.

    • John July 6, 2012, 10:40 am

      I agree with Dave. We started our refi with SunTrust (Nashville, TN) in Feb 2012 in order to move from a FHA to a VA to help reduce our payments. There have been to many problems to list from two mortgage agents leaving to lack of communication. We were expected to close at the end of April – um, it’s now July. First of July we were told the VA was rejecting my Cert of Eligibility (this should have been one of the FIRST things they should have work with us on). I called the VA and found that the person working our loan was sending the wrong ******* document to the VA, which is why it was getting kicked back. I emailed the correct document the to VA about 6pm on a Thursday. Friday morning by 7am I had my CoE. We’ll be moving our bank accounts from SunTrust and after/if we finish the refi, we’ll be looking to move the mortgage to another bank. I’ve been a loyal customer with them for over 15 years and this is how we are treated. Do not use them !

  • Joe June 15, 2012, 9:13 am

    I have had issues with Suntrust as well. I’ve been trying to refinance as my original loan is through Suntrust. When I called, they told me they can no longer handle my loan as it is in one of 3 counties in Illinois that they can no longer work in. That’s fine and they gave me a number to call of a company they work with for people in my situation. I called several times and left messages and never got a response.

    I said ok and contacted someone else. They went through the numbers and were able to save me hundreds a month. Then they found out that Suntrust wouldn’t subordinate the mortgage meaning that they wouldn’t let me refinance with another company.

    So I had to call the company that Suntrust directed me to in the first place. I leave a message every day as noone ever answers the phone. It’s been three weeks and have not received one phone call back. I’ve had it with Suntrust but can’t get out.

  • Jackie July 3, 2012, 1:48 pm

    Suntrust is a horrible company and they do not respond to emails or phone calls. I would not suggest any one use them for financing or servicing a home loan. There was a type-o in the email of the agent and she never fixed it nor responded to my emails when I got the correct address. She never returned my calls. I had initiate every call and hope I got through when she was there. I hope to never have to deal with them again but thus far have been able to get rid of them.

  • Fed Up! July 30, 2012, 6:35 pm

    Oh boy are you telling our life story since December! We thought that refinancing through Suntrust would be easy since we have our current mortgage through them. We were told this would be an easy process as we have been faithful in our payments and paid over our mortgage amount every month. We have a high combined income, relatively decent credit rating (hubby’s is high over 800, mine so-so 755 due to credit cards I have that I am slowly paying down). He is self employed, and his income declined in the past year but still is over 150K. Plus I work full time for a university so we are in decent shape. We started our refi in January, paid for appraisal, credit report and other fees they required, almost $1000 in fees, all nonrefundable. They sent us the loan origination docs to sign via email. We signed and sent them back. A month later they sent us a package of loan origination docs to sign. Again. They said the ones we had signed were not the right ones. After that came the long wait. Whenever they requested anything, it said that if we didn’t respond within 10 days the deal was off. We always responded right away. They changed people on us, and delayed processing until we needed a new credit report because the old one had expired. More waiting. Hubby sent an angry email and today we got a letter dated same date of the email saying refi denied because too many credit report inquiries (from THEM no less) and hubby’s income had declined which made it unstable. Forget that this is a moderate house, never any late payments, long time customer etc. They just didn’t want to give us a lower rate since it doesn’t benefit them. They are bullies and they bilked us for about an extra $1000 in non refundable fees.

  • Fed Up! August 9, 2012, 12:46 pm

    Update: Now we are getting calls daily from Suntrust saying we are late on our mortgage payment. Interestingly enough, these calls commenced just after they denied our refinance. We always pay by the grace period, although usually a week or so after the due date. I’m trying to convince hubby that if the payment is due on the 1st and we can pay it then, we should. He looks at it as it’s not late til the 15th. He schedules the payments on their website so they know the payment has been scheduled. It actually will be paid today. He says they never have charged us a late fee in 4 years of paying this way, and we’ve never been called like this. I showed him on their website where it says that they may report to the credit company any payments made during the grace period. He says that they have never done that before, but I am worried that they will be treating us differently since we had such an unpleasant exchange with them over the refi denial. Really hoping that we can refi with someone else and get away from Suntrust.

  • Askin September 26, 2012, 5:09 pm

    My issue with sun trust is their unreliability and big disconnect between departments and loan officers and underwriters. I was promised closing in an email and arranged movers to move my stuff from state to state. I already paid for furniture,painting,house insurance. Owner of the house already moved out in a rush. My house was on sale so I had to put my family at residence inn until this proposed closing which hasn’t happened. No one seems to try to take responsibility except one of the loan officer who was very nice and helpful. I suffered significant financial loss during this ordeal and had to miss work several times due to planned closings which never happened and traveled several times out of state from Louisiana to Tampa for so called closings.

    I paid earnest down-payment and painters and paid for new furniture. I also paid significant amount of money for hotel costs due to repeated delaying closing of house and already sold my house in Louisiana.

    Another issue I have is when another loan officer went on vacation no one seemed to know what was going on and the lady so called assistant who is supposed to cover never returned any of the calls. I was told by loan officers underwriters are ‘GODS’ and were at their mercy despite my well paying salary,high credit score and recent sale of house. I contacted the company in NC several times and asked them politely rectify this situation and this led to request for requests for more documents

  • Paige November 8, 2012, 9:30 pm

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  • ariful December 26, 2012, 1:35 pm

    I read this site carefully & attentively, This site is very informative and helpful for all of the people. And whose people are wants to get more information .I recommended this site.

  • erin January 7, 2013, 10:41 am

    There are too many details surrounding my situation, however the fact is SunTrust Mortgage is a scam in itself! …trying to communicate with them is a JOKE! It doesnt matter how many times you call, fax, fed-ex etc. no one there EVER has a record of anything! No record of prior communication, and the time spent trying to talk to the “correct” person is endless! I have spent hours being transferred; literally in circles. I have been given fax #’s that seem to exist only in space as my faxes are never received. Due to their ERROR my home is facing forclosure…payment s have come out of my bank account that they haven’t applied to our loan! …..save yourself and your future home by steering clear of this company!

  • STEPHEN February 16, 2013, 4:35 pm

    I have had more problems than many others! Here is the good news there is a non-profit called NACA that can stop all the abuses mentioned here. This company plays hardball with Mortgage companies. They go to the CEO’S houses and picket these people were they live. Even better news if these companies continue to stall you, lose your paperwork etc a new law allows you to complain to the dept of justice to intervene against the mortgage companies and fine them up to $125,000.00!!!!! CALL NACA

  • Chris Nassief February 25, 2013, 9:53 pm

    Great article! In my opinion, the main key to getting the best deal on your refi for you is to shop around and find the mortgage broker you feel most comfortable with! That way, you can refinance without having to worry about all the other fees and stuff that comes along with it.

  • kevin February 28, 2013, 3:24 pm

    I’m sorry to see I’m not alone. We were told our modification was approved, DONE. Advised to send reduced payments to a third party and did so faithfully. we started getting letters from SunTrust saying we were in arrears. When I called them they assured me these were computer generated form letters and to disregard. We paid 20, 000 to a third party and started getting calls from SunTrust who now said that we were actually in a trial periodand that we no longer qualified because our paperwork was incomplete. This was a lie. I was then told to stop paying my mortgage completely because it would be easier to get a new modification if my mortgage was in default. This was from a SunTrust rep. Not trusting this info I sent my next payment on time and in the original amount of my initial mortgage loan. They sent the check back with a letter stating I was 35, 000 in arrears and must pay in full. The third party to whom I sent the mod amount had gone out of business. Nightmare.

  • Tina Lawson March 14, 2013, 8:39 am

    File a complaint via the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. They report directly to Congress and the Federal Government and provide a real tracking system that requires the mortgage company to be accountable in a legal manner.

  • Patricia Anderson August 28, 2013, 7:37 am

    Sorry to see so many people harmed by this corrupt company- I have retained a lawyer and filed with Better business – advise all do the same- perhaps a class action suit will get their attention? My story: Overpaid loan for 8 months- struggled to get the 25000 they owed me and THEN was sent a foreclosure notice 15 days after my on time payment and while they still owe ME money- while on the phone I have been transferred, disrespected and hung up on. One guy told my husband- who is ver highly educated – that he did not think he could comprehend what he was being told- comprehend THIS Suntrust- from now on you are talking to my lawyer.

  • Ken C September 8, 2015, 5:53 am

    Same story as everyone else. Suntrust wants an additional $250/mo. for hazard insurance, and because my escrow account is low due to their bogus claim that my property taxes are increasing. I checked. They’re not.

  • Teresa Pegram November 11, 2015, 8:58 am

    Suntrust denied subordination with Wells Fargo my first mortgage now they want to foreclose on my home because SunTrust will not agree to this subordination what do I do

  • char ray July 29, 2017, 9:12 pm

    SunTrust mortgage made us waste our time and money big time. On June 19, we applied for a Suntrust mortgage loan and was told we qualify. June 21 summited all required paperwork including Paystubs. Doing this process we spent- Suntrust fees $200, appraisals $450, and home inspection $425. Our closing date was July 31. On July 25 we received a congratulations letter, which made us think everything was cleared for us to close on July 31. On July 27, we received an email from someone saying -“I don’t have good news. We are unable to use paystubs as income due to it being variable pay without sufficient history.” Mind you , The paystubs was given to them June 21. It took them a month to tell us that we didn’t qualify after we spent money and energy trying to get this loan. DONT WASTE YOUR TIME. We spoke to a manager – Richard Loftis who could not give us an explanation, and told us he would call us back after speaking with the underwriter. He never called back. We emailed the underwriter to issue us an official decline letter, so we can get our earnest deposit back. N we have not received nothing. Under writer was Erica Valenti.

  • Wesley Kitchens March 13, 2020, 5:18 pm

    I’m in the process of getting a loan from Suntrust, and this is the worse experience I’ve ever had with getting a loan, and I’m 63. Been banking with them for 27 years, married to same woman for 35 years, been in my PAID FOR, $189,000 house for 29 years, My job for 24 years, my wife’s job for 17 years, PERFECT credit, and more 4 times more money in 401K and IRA’s then we’ve applied for. Every day, they have us jump through another hoop. Things like…..signed statement that our house is not in a Home Owner’s Association. Why I made my company an LLC? One month in the approval process, they now want 3 years of tax returns, instead of the past 2 they asked for at first. Eveyday it’s something different they need. We’ve amended the closing date once, and now it looks like it’s going to have to be amended again!!!

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