About the Author
Moe Bedard is a leading expert and trusted authority in regards to loan workouts and loan modifications. Moe is the founder and President of Loan Safe Solutions, LoanSafe.org and the main contributor to LoanWorkout.org. He has blogged on this subject more than any other person on earth and has personally been involved in over 300 loan workouts and mortgage audits.
Hope Now = Hopeless for Many
I have been saying this from day 1, Hope Now is a joke and if the American people think that these guys “truly” have your best interests at heart, well then, you may be on the street soon with the other 1 million people that have been kicked out of their homes by the very people that sit on the Hope Now committee.
Lynnley Browning from the New York Times had called me a couple weeks ago and asked me what I thought about Hope Now and asked me to forward her some names of homeowners who have contacted the 995 Hope line for Hope Now and what they got, was far from Hope.
One of those homeowners was Kenneth Goodman:
Hope Now is a failure,” said Michael Shea, the executive director of the Acorn Housing Corporation, a large counseling agency that is part of the Hope Now alliance. “It’s industry-dominated.”
Hope Now is run out of the Housing Policy Council, which in turn is part of the Financial Services Roundtable, the influential financial services lobby.
William A. Longbrake, the vice chairman of Washington Mutual, the big savings and loan, is a senior policy adviser to the roundtable. He said he has “indirect, inferential evidence” that Hope Now is helping.
But the group itself employs just three people. Most of its work is done through committees staffed by senior bank and mortgage executives who are part of the Financial Services Roundtable. Hope Now’s executive director, Faith Schwartz, is an executive at the subprime lender Option One Mortgage.
People who dial Hope Now’s toll-free number, 1-888-995-HOPE, typically are routed to call centers in Phoenix and Spokane, Wash. Three out of four eventually are connected to credit counselors for a free, informal consultation.
But only a fraction of all callers - about 4 percent - ends up talking in person with a housing counselor, according to the Homeownership Preservation Foundation, a nonprofit group at the center of Hope Now that also has ties to the mortgage industry.
Ms. Schwartz defended the group’s work. She said Hope Now is “leveraging existing infrastructure” to help homeowners.
Kenneth Goodman, a homeowner in Fontana, Calif,. said he did not have a good experience trying to get help through Hope Now.
Mr. Goodman, 53, said he had called Hope Now three times in recent months because he was struggling to pay the mortgage on his two-story tract home. The first time he was referred to a mortgage escrow company. The second time, “I got someone oblivious to everything,” he said. The third time the counselor told Mr. Goodman that he had a choice: Sell his home for less than the value of his mortgage, or face immediate foreclosure.
”It was all unhelpful,” Mr. Goodman said. He worries that he will lose his home.
There are Hope Now success stories, but the group declined to point to any.
Popularity: 1% [?]
I can relate with this couple. I contacted WaMu in a proactive effort to get assistance during a hardship ... 
Did they change the terms of your loan to an arm? This is too risky
Apr 3rd, 2008 at 5:53 pm
Isnt it interesting how they cant seem to show the data for who they have helped. I called months ago and was told my bank was not participating, wtf!! So they transferred me to CCCS Atlanta to look at our finances and tell us basically that we were in over our head and let us know if there is anything else they can do for us.
What a joke! Bush admin. is oblivious, hey dubya why not go out with a bang and help those that really need it instead of helping your buddies!!
Apr 4th, 2008 at 12:47 am
Yeah,
I got the same thing, they told me not to pay my unsecured debt and send more to the mortgage company. I wish I’d have gotten the mortgage on my credit card, I’d call them and tell them I got scammed into buying one house for the price of two. Not paying my payments on $8000 worth of unsecured debt is going to make up for the $150-200k I’m upside down in this house.
I’m glad that was a toll free call.
Apr 5th, 2008 at 5:29 pm
The HOPE NOW ALLIANCE is the biggest JOKE of this century….
They are just there because they have to be there….. they really don’t do anything. They are least ineterested in what one is going through & have least interest in helping.
Another big joke.. Asking a homeowner in trouble to prove his income….. when that person got a loan with no income document, that was his best time. Now in his worst time, the lenders ask to prove the income.
The bank & lenders will lose 50% of the loan, approx $200,000.00 on an average loan in california, but will not help the homeowner by working with him.
This is all a big conspiracy to get more & more people in foreclosure.
Apr 6th, 2008 at 6:49 pm
Are you suggesting the HOPE NOW Alliance is responsible for your inability to service your mortgage debt? Do you want us to believe you were all victims? What about your responsiblity to identify, evaluate & measure the risks associated with mortgaging your property? How about some accountability from you, and some ownership for the decisions you made and were responsible for?
So it is with great relief that i continue to learn of the limited effectiveness of the Alliance’s ability to prevent foreclosures and house price declines. This is a voluntary private industry led bailout, and loan servicers are under no obligation to participate or perform responsibilities other than those outlined in servicer agreements. And you guys are already being bailed out by ~5% YOY inflation rate, no doubt an attempt by the Fed to blunt the effects of real house price declines. The correction is ongoing, accept it and capitulate.
Apr 8th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
The problem is not that people are bad and got more than they could afford. The problem is taht naive homebuyers went to mortgage brokers who gave them sweet words and said this is waht you can afford. I did not know how to calculate mortgage payments and how to calculate income ratios, I relied on a lender to tell me this is how much home you can buy and I followed his advice. Property values fell and I have a subprime loan and negative equity. Hope now did nothing for me because I was not late and they sent me an application for CCCS in california when I live in Maryland. What a joke that was.
Apr 8th, 2008 at 7:33 pm
Jenny, you bear all responsiblity for the risks you assume when mortgaging your home. That you did not understand those risks and were unable to determine the amount of house you could afford does not absolve you.
Apr 8th, 2008 at 11:34 pm
hey gary the hope LESS, hope was created to give good press and help slow the drop in stocks, no one cares about all the deadbeats losing homes, Paulson donated 16 million to a lobbyist against the foreclosure bill meanwhile they are still tallying his 30 plus million he made on hedgefunds betting against mortgages, how nice, yet an fbi agent can not have a second job but a treasury secretary can manipulate the system nicejob, guess how many maggots will be outta there in NOV this year ba bye
Apr 10th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
My name is Deanglea and i recieved my loan from WaMu and i loss one of my jobs we talk and they said that they would help.They ask me to fax a applca. back after waiting to hear back when i did here i saw told that they did’nt recieve it so i fax another one after that i did’nt here anything else until i recieved the foreclosure letter and did’nt know what to do did’t know how to handle it. I was very ashamud and have not told my childrens that we have to move and we don’t even have a place to go.
Apr 12th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
I just had to reply to this one. I called them in hopes that they might be my last hope to help me negotiate a loan modification with CW. As usual, I received the same ole same ole. . . I’m sorry, but your situation is beyond our scope. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ve heard that before, thank you folks for a big fat nothing. I’ve come to the conclusion after months of attempting to get assistance that all these organizations do, along with the lenders who are making the media and congress beleive that they are bending over backwards to help struggling homeowners is plain old lip service and nothing more. They are cherry picking the easy ones and leaving the more complicated to fend for themselves because they’re too overwhelmed or perhaps, just plain lazy?!
Apr 13th, 2008 at 7:34 pm
You know, Gary,
You sound like a very smart guy. But not everyone has the time, knowledge, or smarts for all things in life’s challenges. That’s why we pay for advice. Yes paid. But you must be knowledgable in all things. You don’t need anyone’s help. You can tear your car’s engine apart and than put it back together again. You understand all tax code. I suppose you can even cure cancer, if God forbid, you got it! You even can cook Thai food!!
I sure hope so because if you can’t, you’re going to be in trouble one day.
We can’t all be experts. We all need good advice from time to time. Even you…:^) Andre
Apr 14th, 2008 at 7:47 pm
I also called Hope Now and it was a total joke. I got transferred and then connected with a girl that sounded like she was on drugs. She said she could help me with a budget. I said I do not need a budget, I need help with my mortgage and mortgage company, Citimortgage that is supposed to have an alliance with you to help people stay in there houses. She said, it sounds like you need a tax attorney and we don’t have any of those. That was her advice. I also called Project Lifeline and that is a joke too.
The government should be ashamed.
Apr 18th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
The blame for this entire \’e2\’80\’9cMortgage Meltdown\’e2\’80\’9d can be laid upon the shoulders of all the greedy mortgage loan industry executives and the investment bankers who designed a scheme calculated to make themselves rich. Under the guise of \’e2\’80\’9chelping people\’e2\’80\’9d to realize the American dream of owning a home, these white collar fraudsters were really only concerned with creating feigned profits by quickly churning mortgage loans into securitized investments which they in turn sold to investors.
Based upon these feigned profits these executives and their cronies were able to extract large bonuses and convert stock options into personal profts. While the investors got stuck holding the proverbial empty bag. Many investors were large national banks. Ironically these same banks would have never loan money to the borrowers who\’e2\’80\’99s notes they were now holding indirectly through their investments in these \’e2\’80\’9cmortgage backed securities\’e2\’80\’9d. It is now estimated that the losses incurred by these banks may well surpass three hundred billion dollars.
There can be no argument these losses were the result of fraud from top to bottom of the mortgage industry. From mortgage lenders suchs as Countrywide, Washington Mutual, Fieldstone and Option One to secondary mortgage market makers, such as Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Bear Stearns, Citicorp, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers etc.
This mortgage fraud created a false demand for housing in the U.S. This false demand caused an increase in home building. Now with the Mortgage Meltdown the U.S. has an over supply of new and existing homes. This over supply of homes has caused serious economic effects through every facet of the U.S. economy. Recovery will take years. The U.S. dollar has also suffered against other currencies. In April of 2003 a Euro could be purchased for $.85. Five years later in April of 2008 it takes $1.60 to purchase a Euro.
Rather than throwing themselves out of their executive office windows when their financial scandal was discovered and the billions in losses started to mount, these white collar crooks simply took early retirmenet or quietly resigned, taking with them the hundreds of millions they had EARNED for their part in the Largest financial scandal in U.S. history.
Americans should be outraged at how this went on unchecked by state or federal authorities.
Jun 13th, 2008 at 5:30 pm
[...] Frank: Rep. (D-Mass.) said the OCC’s findings demonstrated that the Hope Now initiative was not enough to solve the housing [...]