Latest effort to save homes having only limited impact, faces challenges
Millions of Americans who are struggling to save their homes from foreclosure are trapped in a labyrinth of disappointment and misinformation created by the very institutions they’ve been told are trying to help them.
Ten months into the government’s third program in two years to stop a record wave of foreclosures, homeowners, housing counselors, consumer advocates and attorneys working with borrowers report that the latest effort is falling far short of its goal. In many cases, lenders are moving to foreclose even after homeowners get approved for loan modification, housing counselors and attorneys say.
The problem, they say, goes beyond the paperwork snafus and staffing shortages at lenders and mortgage servicers that have created massive bottlenecks for the millions at risk of losing their homes. Those have plagued the government’s foreclosure relief efforts since the first government-industry joint program, the Hope Now Alliance, was launched in October 2007.
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5 comments:
just thought i'd share a little bit of our story. we applied for this program through our mortgage company, not an outside company that solicited us but the origional company our home is mortgaged through. we paid our "3" trial payments on time and then still had no answer so we set up a 4th trial payment. we then received our letter of "congratulations" announcing we had qualified to have our home loan modified. The paperwork that came with that packet stated many things had been done in order to make our mortgage more affordable, listing extension of loan term, lower interest rate and on and on. The problem is when you get to the end to the paperwork, the new payment is actually higher than our origional loan payment by about 20 dollars. lol(no, really). I contacted the mortgage company to ask about the information in the packet and was transferred around and around until i reached a "helpful" young man( i use that term so loosely) that posed the quesion "so did you think we were going to cut your payment in half or give you a 0% interest rate?" well of course i didnt expect either of those things to happen, however i was surprised that i would get a higher payment. Now we have been instructed to sign these papers and return them any day now, even though the person we left messages for with our questions has never called us back. also, we were informed that the trial payments that were drafted from our account are not applied to our mortgage in any way, so for intensive purposes and on our credit report, we are now listed as not making any payments in 4 months. Also, we are told that the letter we received is merely a form letter and they do not have to stretch the terms of our mortgage to a longer term or do any of the things that were stated in the letter.(The quoted sentence is "To reduce your mortgage payment, we will extend the term of your mortgage. This means we will spread yor payments over a longer period.)Also, the amount financed will be for a higher principal balance than the amount shown on my tax paperwork I received from the mortgage company. I am told that this is because none of the money I have paid during this trial period has been applied to my loan. I must first sign these papers that i dont understand and return them and then after about 60 days, after the new loan is financed at the higher amount, my account will be brought up to date???? i guess if i was a lawyer or if i had an endless supply of money i could make this program work for me however neither of those things is the case, so i guess we are out of luck and out of options. but we did try to do the right thing.
11:49 praise the Lord, I have found someone who has gone through the exact same thing as I have. Starting in Dec. 2008 I began my modification efforts. 10 days after I had made my 3rd of 4 "trial Payments", I received a letter stating that upon further review by the underwriters I was in fact NOT eligible for a modification and I was one month past due on my mortgage. I inquired as to why, when I had made the three trial payments in plenty of time and they said those funds went to a special account that were then applied back to my mortgage account at the NONMODIFIED amount so I was no past due. I contacted everyone from my local representatives to my congressman to my senators - all to no avail. They never returned my calls. Just sent me "form letter responses" about how hard they are working to try to fix the problem. We are out of luck and out of options, as well so I guess we will be mailing in the key to the house to them and telling them to come get it. Good luck trying to regroup your loss. And all you had to do was modify it to a more realistic amount.
I am sorry to hear what is going on about this situation... I am not a home owner, but was once looking to be... since the decline in the econ, I chose not to buy a home for 1. I can't afford it now and 2. who knows how long my job is still here...
This is the exact reason why I don't listen to the govmt and everything they say... Nothing is EVER what it says it is or is done the way they say it should be... Seeing how you are already late, and talked about turning in the keys, I would just use the money towards a lawyer to see what can be done, they do give free orientations to see what can be done and if they will take the case... It's easy to roll over but we need to stand and fight...
4:17 sadly what you say is true.
So this whole business sounds like it is a fraud. The government and the banks have teamed up to rip off the homeowners?
Unbelievable!
This is criminal.
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