Posts tagged as:

mortgage modification

Many Americans in Home Loan Limbo

by Moe Bedard

The number of Americans in mortgage limbo keeps growing.
These are the people who are far behind on their payments but are still waiting for their loan servicer to start the foreclosure process. LPS Applied Analytics, a research firm in Denver, reported that 3.4% of U.S. households with mortgages – or around 1.9 million –  are [...]

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Why Loan Modifications Take So Long and What to Do

by Moe Bedard

Q: I went under contract to buy a house six months ago. This is a short sale, and I understand that multiple lenders are involved. But I have been more than patient. What can I do?
I can’t seem to get anyone to listen to me. Don’t the banks want this to work out?
A: I’m sure [...]

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Few Getting Loan Modifications

by Moe Bedard

Only a tiny percentage of troubled homeowners have received permanent modifications under President Obama’s foreclosure prevention plan, raising concerns about the effectiveness of the $75 billion effort.
Fewer than 5% of the trial modifications on loans owned or guaranteed by Freddie Mac were converted to long-term adjustments as of Sept. 30, according to the mortgage finance [...]

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The Faces of Loan Modification

by Moe Bedard

“This went on for months,” she said. “I would return their calls saying I was undergoing a mod. They would say they didn’t know anything about it and to call their loss mitigation department. I would call loss mitigation and they would say that yes, my records showed I was under the three-month period and [...]

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Trial Modifications Are Criminal

by Moe Bedard

The Obama administration is busy touting the burgeoning success of its mortgage modification program. Unfortunately, it’s a farce: Out of one side of his mouth, the President touts a dedication to the besieged middle class, while from the other, lauds a loan modification program which steals money from struggling homeowners in favor of banks –  [...]

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Morgan Stanley, Citigroup Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. leaders in loan modifications

by Moe Bedard

Nov. 10 (Bloomberg) — Morgan Stanley, Citigroup Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. lead the pack of U.S. banks modifying home loans to troubled borrowers under the Obama administration’s main foreclosure prevention plan, the Treasury Department said.
Citigroup, the third-largest U.S. bank by assets, began 88,968 trial modifications, or 40 percent of its eligible mortgages, under [...]

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The Great U.S. Property Robbery Of The 21st Century

by Moe Bedard

Given losses like these, White said he was “perplexed that lenders and their representatives were resisting reducing principal when they modify loans.”
His data shows how rare it is for lenders to reduce principal.
The foreclosure paradox: Foreclosures breed foreclosures. Cutting you a deal to keep you in your home is a win-win-win, the lender would keep [...]

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Nevada Loan Modification Company Approved List

by Moe Bedard

Here is a list of Nevada firms still eligible to offer loan modifications. This was posted on the Nevada Division of Mortgage Lending’s Web site  site and will continue to be updated. Illegal Loan Mod firms who were announced yesterday here are no longer authorized to conduct foreclosure prevention services and are given 10 days [...]

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30 Nevada Loan Modification Companies Face Closure

by Moe Bedard

Nearly 30 loan modifications companies will be shut down Tuesday for not following a new law.
The Nevada Division of Mortgage Lending is closing the companies because they failed to meet their obligations to get a minimum $75,000 surety bond. The bond is a provision meant to protect consumers who may have been hurt by the [...]

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Homeowners: “Hey Congress, Get Off Your A**” – PLEASE SIGN THE PETITION

by Moe Bedard

If you are a homeowner and want to unite with other homeowners fighting to save their homes, please sign the petition below in order to help us help you.
Divided we fall and united we stand!
By Richard Zombeck, the members of LoanSafe.org & Huffington Post:
So, while the banks, servicers, and lenders are waiting for American tenacity to kick [...]

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FICO Says New Loan Modification Reporting Will Not Affect Credit Scores

by Moe Bedard

Jasmine Bendon of Ventura says her FICO scores dropped from the mid-700s to the low-600s after her lender put her on a trial modification and reported it as a partial payment. On the plus side, the trial modification has cut her monthly payment by $1,300.
New reporting plan
Starting today, lenders have a new, more benign way [...]

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Loan Modification Numbers are Fantasy Land

by Moe Bedard

Mortgage expert and one-time Fannie Mae Chief Credit Officer Edward Pinto says a claim made by Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner that 500,000 homeowners have entered the Obama administration’s Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) is ridiculous.
In fact, he says, the program is rapidly becoming: “I will pretend to modify your loan if you pretend that you [...]

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Hundreds of Florida Homeowners File Complaints Against Their Mortgage Servicers

by Moe Bedard

The Attorney General’s Office has logged 452 complaints about Bank of America, Florida’s largest mortgage lender, concerning mortgages and loan modifications. With its acquisition of Countrywide Financial last year, Bank of America had almost 82,000 mortgage loans outstanding in Florida worth $15.3 billion in 2008, according to National Mortgage News.
Next largest is JP Morgan Chase, [...]

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Video: A Trip in Loan Modification Hell

by Moe Bedard

Sometimes loan modifications can be a real pain, others believe that trying to get a loan modification is a form of hell on earth. This video shows you why they lose faxes constantly and who is really in charge of the banks.
Watch this video and decide for yourself.

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Government Loan Modification Numbers Way Off

by Moe Bedard

Mortgage expert and one-time Fannie Mae Chief Credit Officer Edward Pinto blasts the claim that 500,000 homeowners have entered into HAMP (Home Affordable Modification Program).
Based on comments being made by industry participants and program results to date, HAMP is rapidly becoming: I will pretend to modify your loan if you pretend that you will make [...]

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5 reasons why loan modifications are not happening

by Moe Bedard

1. Why servicers foreclose when they should modify: The National Consumer Law Center takes a look into why loan servicers – the people who actually control most mortgages – aren’t helping home owners when they should. The report goes into a fair bit of depth over 60 pages. The report says that “servicers remain largely [...]

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Cheaper to foreclose than offer loan modifications

by Moe Bedard

New Report Describes How Little Noticed Incentives Prompt Banks to Deny Relief to Homeowners
BOSTON, Oct. 20 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Why have several recent programs designed to encourage loan modifications failed to slow America’s
still-worsening home mortgage foreclosure crisis?  A new report from the
National Consumer Law Center (NCLC) discloses that mortgage servicers -
including many large banks – have [...]

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The media loan-modification program

by Moe Bedard

But I made a call to Select Portfolio Servicing anyway and left a message. A staffer called back, but only to ask what the questions were and to relay them to a higher-up.
Shortly after that, Nido’s attorney sent me an e-mail.
“I don’t know what you did but I’ve got an offer from SPS (Select Portfolio [...]

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Three sides to every loan modification story

by Moe Bedard

The first article in the WSJ states that on October 8th the federal government said that 500,000 financially troubled homeowners had begun trial loan modifications. It cites Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner as saying that the rate of modifications is rising faster than the rate of the people needing them for the first time since the [...]

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Mountain of modifications

by Moe Bedard

Millions of homeowners are struggling to make their monthly mortgage payments and the continued deterioration in the job market guarantees millions more will be at risk in the coming months.
That is putting a huge burden on mortgage-modification programs, both those run by the government and an increasing number operated by private industry, which are in [...]

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A Treasury rule on loan modifications riles the securities market

by Moe Bedard

The $1.7 trillion mortgage securitization market is still a mess, despite (or in part because of) the Federal Reserve’s $700 billion splurge into the market. But another reason may be Treasury’s decision to undermine private mortgage-backed securities (MBS) contracts.
BlackRock Inc. Chairman Laurence Fink went so far recently as to call this “one of the biggest [...]

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Banks and Delinquent Borrowers: The Chickens Are Coming Home to Roost

by Moe Bedard

Never mind that Bank of America seemed to think it was “entitled” to tens of billions of taxpayer dollars. Now the bank suddenly thinks that other people being “entitled” is such a bad thing? Who set the example?
The article also cites a disturbing trend:
On a recent morning, Tiffany Palmer was on the line with a [...]

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It is too soon to know how many trial loan modifications are failing

by Moe Bedard

But economists said the true test will be how many trial modifications become permanent and how many borrowers default on their new loan arrangements.
“What has surprised us is the numbers that have made three, four, or even five payments, but still haven’t gone to close because the final documents aren’t in place,” Bisenius said. It [...]

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Linda woman fights bank so she can stay in her home

by Moe Bedard

They don’t have to worry about whether they’ll lose their homes, Linda resident Mary Carter said.
Former executives with the Bank of America and Countrywide, once the largest mortgage lender in the nation, who were involved in the financial crisis that first made national headlines last year, are safe from sharing her status.
Their homes aren’t threatened, [...]

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The U.S. has miles to go with its mortgage modification plan

by Moe Bedard

With foreclosure filings occurring every 13 seconds in America, is the Obama Administration really moving fast enough to get help for homeowners in trouble? It took about nine months to get 500,000 of them started on the road to mortgage modification.
A half-million homeowners helped is surely progress, but with 2 million foreclosures this year and [...]

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Panel: Obama Loan-Mod Effort Ill-Suited To Avert Foreclosures

by Moe Bedard

WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- The Obama administration’s loan modification effort is ill-suited to tackle the current causes of the foreclosure crisis, financial rescue watchdogs concluded in a new report.
Meanwhile, the Home Affordable Modification Program, or HAMP, wasn’t designed to address these problems, nor is it geared towards averting a looming wave of foreclosures caused by resetting option adjustable-rate [...]

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After $75 Billion, Homeowners Ask: Where’s the Money?

by Moe Bedard

Complaints about the federal loan modification plans continue to pile up, as do foreclosures.
Darrell Goldberg of Chicago says he has been waiting since April for the packet of paperwork promised to him by CitiMortgage. Lori Gonzalez of Fox River says she has faxed and re-faxed a thick packet of her documents to Bank of America [...]

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Leaving Affordable Mortgage May Become Winning Gambit

by Moe Bedard

“You have to ask yourself: Are you just renting the home from the bank?” said Michael Joe, a foreclosure expert at the Legal Aid Center of Southern Nevada. “Would it be cheaper to walk away and rent across the street?”
Conroy, 32, and his wife purchased their home for $385,000 in March 2006, a month before [...]

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Record Number of Complaints Target Florida Loan Modification Lawyers

by Moe Bedard

As the state’s foreclosure crisis continues, loan modification and foreclosure defense have been become hot specialties for some attorneys. The state attorney general has received a record 756 complaints through August of this year about loan modifications involving attorneys. That compares with 61 similar complaints in all of 2008.
“There has definitely been a trend in [...]

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Shadow Market Part IV: Trying to Get a Loan Modification in Phoenix

by Moe Bedard

Too far underwater to refinance her loan, Ms. Parry says she began seeking a loan modification from Citigroup Inc. in June 2008 and ran into continual delays. So far, she says, she has submitted financial information and documentation for her request at least five times.
Sometimes, Ms. Parry says, she has been told that the bank [...]

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America’s backlash against banks

by Moe Bedard

Consumers: Bailout aided lenders, not us
James Seeley and Hilary Egan live in different towns, but have lots in common: Both face financial woes, both applied for mortgage modifications and both got turned down.
And, like lots of Americans these days, both feel banks that got massive taxpayer bailouts aren’t reciprocating by helping U.S. consumers.
“I don’t know [...]

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Mortgage-modification program questioned, protested

by Moe Bedard

Protesting near the National Constitution Center, where a congressional panel yesterday tried to gauge the progress of homeowner-rescue programs, Aponte said his lender had agreed to modify his mortgage, then had withdrawn the offer.
“They said that without a job, how could I pay even that?” Aponte said. “They’re right, but it isn’t fair.”
That opinion was [...]

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Small details sometimes hinder help on mortgages

by Moe Bedard

The community groups said disparate banking practices and inefficiencies have led to delays in approvals, clogged the pipeline, curtailed the success of loan mod programs.
Eileen Fitzgerald, chief operating officer of NeighborWorks America, said it can take as long as two hours to reach a mortgage servicer. Some homeowners send in documentation, but are asked to [...]

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Hard times bring rising foreclosures to rural Ohio

by Moe Bedard

“The biggest foreclosure growth Ohio has seen in recent years has been in rural areas,” said David Rothstein, a researcher at Policy Matters Ohio. “In some ways rural areas are just beginning to catch up with the cities.”
Unlike urban areas, where numerous agencies exist to help, finding support in more sparsely populated rural spots is [...]

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More Loan Mod Problems Reported: Arizona AG Terry Goddard: Complaints ‘Very Troubling’

by Moe Bedard

Valley resident Miguel Lozania said he was approved for a loan modification, so he signed his paperwork and sent the bank the $900 fee.
“It sounded like it was going to work,” he said. “I even got a letter from IndyMac Bank saying they were going to do a modification.”
IndyMac foreclosed on his house anyway, selling [...]

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HUD secretary: Housing crisis improving, not over

by Moe Bedard

But Phyllis Salowe-Kaye, executive director of the watchdog group New Jersey Citizen Action, said most mortgage lenders aren’t as supportive of loan modifications.
“If the industry really believed this we wouldn’t be here,” Salowe-Kaye said.
She said some lenders appear to be padding their numbers by directing refinancing offers to homeowners with solid finances instead of those [...]

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As lenders clamp down, credit scores take a hit

by Moe Bedard

Even though some consumers have seen their credit scores improve as they trim their debt, others have seen their scores drop significantly because of late payments on bills, foreclosures and rising credit card debt.
Meanwhile, lenders’ actions during the recession are delivering another blow to borrowers — even some with pristine credit. Lenders are closing credit [...]

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Chasing assistance

by Moe Bedard

Elliott and her partner, Joanne Hexom, have filed five different applications over the past nine months asking JPMorgan Chase to modify the terms of their mortgage and lower their monthly payments.
The answer has been the same every time: No.
That response has infuriated Elliott and countless other borrowers struggling to hold onto their homes. They wonder [...]

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Low expectations for new loan help program

by Moe Bedard

Dial back the pie-in-the-sky projections.
Last month, the Obama administration launched a program to help homeowners with loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration. About 850,000 FHA borrowers are behind on their payments or in foreclosure, yet the program will assist just 45,000.
The effort targets homeowners who were ineligible for the government’s other loan modification plans. [...]

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Is the FBI getting ready to arrest the remaining loan mod cons?

by Moe Bedard

Living here in Southern California, I get to see all the same perps who sold subprime slime now selling loan modification snake oil. Some are doing it above board, but most of these companies are not and many of them are well known to be operating massive illegal operations across the whole United States.  As [...]

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To get your mortgage modified, hit 3 –and wait

by Moe Bedard

A few months later, at the other end of the pipeline, Chris Angelus, a Lake Oswego advertising agency owner caught in an industry-wide slump, began inquiring about a temporary adjustment in his mortgage payments.
“I was shipped all around Wells Fargo,” says Angelus. “Not only did no one know what the other people were doing, but [...]

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Many mortgage modifications push payments …. higher

by Moe Bedard

Tens of thousands of financially strapped homeowners who have asked lenders to lower their mortgage payments are instead winding up with higher monthly payments and larger debts on their homes.
Homeowners who were hoping for lower payments are discovering to their dismay that lenders roll late fees, back taxes or other costs into the principal, sometimes [...]

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California May Start State Monitored Loan Modification Program

by Moe Bedard

Lieu Announces Introduction of Monitored Mortgage Workout Program
Program Would Help Those Hurt by Wall Street Excesses
(SACRAMENTO) – On the one year anniversary of the Lehman Brothers collapse, Assemblymember Ted Lieu (D-Torrance) today announced the introduction of AB 1588, the Monitored Mortgage Workout Program, which would provide for state-appointed monitors to ensure homeowners have a chance [...]

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Mortgage modifications make things worse for some

by Moe Bedard

Tens of thousands of financially strapped homeowners who have asked lenders to lower their mortgage payments are instead winding up with higher monthly payments and larger debts on their homes.
Homeowners who were hoping for lower payments are discovering to their dismay that lenders roll late fees, back taxes or other costs into the principal, sometimes [...]

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New head of State Bar of California assails mortgage modification scammers

by Moe Bedard

The proliferation of complaints against lawyers who said they could help rescue clients threatened with foreclosure has hurt tens of thousands of people and confronted the bar with a mounting and costly disciplinary burden, said Howard Miller, a partner with the Los Angeles plaintiffs’ firm of Girardi & Keese.
“There are at least hundreds, and perhaps [...]

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