12 U.S.C. §§ 2605, 2614
RESPA: suing a mortgage servicer that ignored your letter
A federal claim in United States district courts · Last verified August 26, 2026
Most people meet the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act through a servicing dispute: payments misapplied, an escrow account mishandled, force-placed insurance added, or a transfer that lost track of what you owed. You write to the servicer. Nothing happens.
That letter is the claim. Send the right kind of letter, and the servicer's failure to respond properly is the violation.
One trap defeats more of these cases than anything else: you must prove actual damages. Statutory damages are additional, not alternative. A borrower who shows a clear violation and no concrete harm generally recovers nothing.
What the claim is
A mortgage servicer mishandled your loan and failed to fix it when you wrote.
The recurring patterns:
- No response, or an inadequate one, to a qualified written request or notice of error.
- Escrow mishandling — miscalculated payments, failure to pay taxes or insurance from escrow.
- Force-placed insurance imposed when you already had coverage.
- Misapplied payments, or failure to credit on receipt.
- Failure to notify of a servicing transfer.
Note the boundary. RESPA governs servicing — what happens to the loan after closing. Disputes about what you were told at origination belong to the disclosure statute, not this one.
Where the right comes from
Express. On receiving a qualified written request the servicer must acknowledge within 5 business days and respond within 30 business days, and a separate subsection creates the private right of action for failing to comply. Implementing regulations build out the framework in more detail than the statute does, including a parallel notice-of-error procedure.
What a plaintiff has to prove
- You sent a qualified written request or notice of error — written, identifying you and the account, and stating the reasons you believe there is an error or requesting information relating to servicing.
- The servicer failed to comply — no acknowledgment, no timely response, no investigation, or an inadequate one.
- Actual damages caused by the failure.
Element one has teeth. A letter that does not relate to servicing is not a qualified written request. Neither is one that fails to identify the borrower and account, or that disputes the validity of the debt itself rather than how it is being serviced. Servicers litigate this first, and often win on it.
Element three is the case-killer. More on it under remedies.
How long you have to file
Two different periods, split by which provision was violated:
- Three years for servicing violations — the ones on this page.
- One year for kickback and unearned-fee violations, and for title-company violations.
The period runs from the date of the violation.
Do not conflate them. The three-year servicing period is the one that matters for a qualified written request claim; the one-year period governs a different part of the statute entirely.
What has to happen before you file
Nothing, in the exhaustion sense — but read this carefully, because it is easy to misdescribe.
The qualified written request is not a separate pre-suit gate you clear before bringing a claim that already exists. Sending it, and the servicer's failure to respond properly, is the conduct that creates the claim.
Character: a substantive element of the cause of action, not an exhaustion requirement.
The practical advice is the same either way — send the letter, keep proof of mailing, and keep a copy — but the legal characterisation matters. There is no "curing" a failure to send one, because without it there is no violation to sue over.
Who can be sued — and who cannot
The servicer — the entity that receives your payments and administers the loan.
Not necessarily the note holder. Servicing is frequently transferred, and the party that owns your loan may not be the party that violated the statute. Suing the wrong entity is a common and costly error, particularly after a transfer.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau enforces separately; there is no federal-agency defendant in a private suit.
Common defenses
No actual damages — the most effective defense available, and the reason most of these cases fail.
The letter was not a qualified written request — it did not relate to servicing, or omitted the required content.
The dispute concerns origination or underwriting, which is outside "servicing."
The response was adequate, even if you disagree with its conclusion.
Time bar — three years for servicing claims.
What the claim pays
Three components, and their relationship is the whole trap:
- Actual damages caused by the violation.
- Additional statutory damages up to $2,000, available only where there is a pattern or practice of noncompliance.
- Costs and reasonable attorney's fees.
Class actions are capped at the lesser of $1,000,000 or 1% of the servicer's net worth.
Now the trap. Courts read the statutory damages provision as additional to actual damages, which means a borrower must plead and prove actual damages as a predicate. The Eighth Circuit held that the plain language "requires a borrower to recover actual damages before he can be eligible to recover 'additional' statutory damages," and reversed a statutory award where the borrower suffered no actual damages. Other courts have reached the same conclusion.
So a servicer that ignored your letter, as part of a documented pattern of ignoring everyone's letters, may owe you nothing if you cannot show the failure cost you something.
What counts as actual damages is where these cases are won: out-of-pocket costs, fees incurred, credit harm, and — in some circuits, if adequately pleaded — emotional distress. Postage and photocopying for the letter itself have been accepted by some courts and rejected by others.
Jury trial for legal damages.
What people get wrong
"Any letter to my servicer is a qualified written request." No. It must relate to servicing and meet the content requirements.
"I can get statutory damages for the violation." Not without actual damages first. They are additional, not alternative.
"RESPA covers what the lender told me at closing." It does not. That is the disclosure statute's territory.
"I'll sue whoever owns my loan." Sue the servicer. After a transfer, that may not be the same entity.
"The three-year deadline covers everything in RESPA." Only servicing claims. Kickback claims carry one year.
"They responded, so I have no claim." A response that does not investigate or address the error can still violate the statute.
Where it came from
RESPA was enacted in 1974, aimed at a different problem than the one this page describes: undisclosed kickbacks and referral fees inflating closing costs. Its original core was disclosure at settlement and a prohibition on unearned fees.
The servicing provisions came later, as the mortgage market changed. Loans stopped staying with the bank that made them, servicing rights became a traded asset, and borrowers found themselves dealing with companies that had no relationship with them and little incentive to answer questions. The qualified written request was the response: a formal channel that a servicer must answer on a clock.
The 2010 financial reform legislation moved rulemaking to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which issued substantially expanded servicing rules taking effect in 2014 — adding the notice-of-error procedure, loss-mitigation requirements, and continuity-of-contact obligations that now do much of the practical work.
Common questions
What makes a letter a qualified written request?
It must be written, identify you and your account, and either state the reasons you believe there is an error or request information — and it must relate to the servicing of the loan, not its origination or the validity of the debt.
How long does the servicer have to respond?
Five business days to acknowledge, and 30 business days to respond substantively.
Can I recover statutory damages if I can't prove I lost money?
Generally no. Courts read the $2,000 statutory damages as additional to actual damages, so actual damages are a predicate. Without them, most claims fail even where the violation is clear.
What is the deadline for a RESPA servicing claim?
Three years from the violation. A one-year period applies to kickback and unearned-fee claims, which are a different part of the statute.
Who do I sue — my lender or my servicer?
The servicer. After a servicing transfer the company administering your loan may not be the one that owns it, and suing the wrong entity is a common error.