One of the more common ways a mortgage entry stops making sense is that the name on it changes. The loan is the same, the balance is the same, but the company reporting it to the credit bureaus is now listed under a name you have not seen before — or under two names that appear to be different companies.
Nationstar and Mr. Cooper: one company, two names
Nationstar Mortgage, LLC does business as Mr. Cooper. That is the single fact that resolves most of the confusion, and the company says so itself. The footer of the Mr. Cooper website reads “Mr. Cooper is a registered service mark of Nationstar Mortgage LLC”, and its copyright line reads “Nationstar Mortgage LLC d/b/a Mr. Cooper”. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau uses the same form in its public records, titling the company Nationstar Mortgage, LLC d/b/a Mr. Cooper.
So if you are asking whether Mr. Cooper and Nationstar are the same company, the answer is yes. What matters for your credit report is which name the account was reported under, and whether the same debt is being reported once or twice.
A servicer is generally not the owner of the loan; it is the company paid to administer it — taking the payments, running the escrow, and reporting the account each month. Servicing rights are bought and sold without the borrower being asked, and a rebrand is not a transfer. Both are ordinary. The narrower question is whether the account survived the change intact.
Where a name change becomes a credit reporting problem
- The same mortgage reported under both names at once, so one debt appears on the file as two open accounts.
- A closed tradeline under the old name that was never closed, still showing a balance beside the current one.
- Payment history that did not carry across, so years of on-time months disappear and the account looks new.
- Escrow shortfalls treated as delinquency, so a disagreement about taxes or insurance becomes a late payment.
- A balance a loan modification changed, still reported at the pre-modification figure.
- A loan discharged in bankruptcy still reported as owing, or carrying a balance after discharge.
The duplicate-tradeline problem is the one to look for first here, because it is the one a name change creates that an ordinary transfer does not. A mortgage is usually the largest account on a credit file; reported twice, it can look like twice the debt.
Read your report for the name, not just the number
Pull all three reports and check under whose name the mortgage appears at each bureau. An account reported correctly at one bureau and wrongly at the other two is itself evidence about the investigation. Note the account numbers, the open dates, the balances and the payment histories side by side; a duplicate usually gives itself away in the open date.
Who is answerable
Any company that reports information about you to the credit bureaus is a furnisher under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, and those duties are not discretionary.
When you dispute an item with a credit bureau, the bureau must conduct a reasonable reinvestigation, and the furnisher must investigate, review what the bureau sends it, and report back. If the information is inaccurate or incomplete, it has to be corrected with every bureau it was reported to.
Whether that happened is recorded in the companies’ own systems — the dispute file, the automated codes passed between bureau and furnisher, and the record of what a human being reviewed, if anyone did. Those records come out in a case and nowhere else. A dispute is answered by whatever a company chooses to tell you; litigation is answered by what it has to produce.
Dispute with the bureaus, not only the servicer
Telling the servicer it has made a mistake is sensible and worth doing, but the furnisher’s investigation duty is triggered by a dispute filed with a credit bureau. A complaint made only to the company can leave the strongest part of a claim unavailable.
Send the dispute to Equifax, Experian and TransUnion, in writing, with the documents proving the entry is wrong, and keep proof of when you sent it.
What the statute allows
For a negligent violation, a consumer may recover any actual damages sustained as a result of the failure, together with the costs of the action and reasonable attorney’s fees as determined by the court.
For a willful violation, a consumer may recover actual damages or statutory damages of not less than $100 and not more than $1,000, plus such punitive damages as the court may allow, and again costs and reasonable attorney’s fees.
On a mortgage the actual damages are usually concrete: a refinance declined or priced higher, a home equity line refused, an application on a second property denied, and the months spent trying to correct something that would not be corrected.
The deadline
An action must be brought no later than two years after you discover the violation, or five years after the violation occurred, whichever comes first. Write down the date you first saw the error.
What to send us
- Your mortgage statements, and any notice about a servicing transfer or a change of name
- Your credit report from each bureau, showing how the account is reported and under whose name
- Proof of the payments in question — bank records, confirmations, canceled checks
- The modification agreement, discharge order or payoff letter, if one applies
- The dispute you filed, to which bureau, and proof of when
- Every response, including any letter saying the item was verified
What it costs
The fee provision is written into the Act: in a successful action the costs and reasonable attorney’s fees are recoverable from the defendant, as determined by the court. That is why this work is handled on a contingency basis rather than billed by the hour.
You pay nothing unless we win.
Where your situation fits
If your loan moved to a different servicer entirely, see our pages on Shellpoint Mortgage Servicing and Select Portfolio Servicing. If a subservicer is administering the loan for the bank that owns it, see Cenlar. If the bureau is the one refusing to correct the entry, see the credit bureau lawyer page. If you are still at the dispute stage, start with credit report dispute lawyer. Where a dispute has already failed, the FCRA lawsuit page sets out who can be sued. Our directory of mortgage servicers lists contact details for the major companies.
Have your report reviewed
The Kim Law Firm represents consumers in Fair Credit Reporting Act cases against mortgage servicers, the credit bureaus, the specialty reporting agencies, and the companies that furnish information to them. Send us your statements and your reports and we will tell you whether we see a claim.
Contact us to have your credit report reviewed.
Admitted in Pennsylvania and New Jersey; available to appear pro hac vice in other federal courts.
This page is about credit reporting accuracy. The Kim Law Firm is not affiliated with Nationstar Mortgage, LLC or Mr. Cooper, and this page is not a complaint about that company. It describes how mortgage servicing and servicer name changes can produce credit reporting errors and what the Fair Credit Reporting Act requires when they do.