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Hope Now, the mortgage industry’s alliance intended to help struggling homeowners, announced Monday it’s helped almost one-million home-owners get loan modifications this year. But, advocates for homeowners say the group is inflating its success.
Homeowners who’ve tried, say it can be trying – and time consuming – to get a bank to agree to change the terms of a home loan.
Tammy Yanak-Schoonover of Pleasanton knows firsthand. She’s lived in her own home in Pleasanton for 20 years. But a divorce, and putting herself through college and grad school, left her with little equity. Last year, her mortgage jumped from $1,800 to $4,200, something thje school guidance counselor said she just can’t afford.
So, she asked her bank, Downey Savings and Loan, for help in the form of a loan modification. What she got was a nightmare. She said she “made a lot of phone calls, trying to get somewhere, one person passing me to someone else … left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing.”
Yanak-Schoonover is not alone. The F.D.I.C. estimates 4.4 million homeowners could end up defaulting on their mortgages between now and the end of 2009.
“It’s chaos,” said Kevin Stein a director at the California Reinvestment Coalition, a group that helps homeowners in distress. “We have this crazy, byzantine system for dealing with loan modifications.”
Stein said homeowners who do try to get lenders to change the terms of their loans get the run-around: “You call one person, they don’t return your call, you wait on hold for minutes, for hours, for someone to respond, and if you call back that person is no longer there.”
