Thread: Mortgage Modification? It might cost you your house!

Making $11 p/h seems really rough for a $939 mtg payment to begin with.

it didn't start out that high -- it started out with both of us working for $11 an hour ($22 an hour together) and the payments were $679 a month -- when we bought this house, we could very easily afford everything...

now... notsomuch.

Originally Posted by Bahet

Pardon my being nosy but why in the world did your payments jump almost 50%?

you have a pm

Chase Sued: Allegedly Told Homeowner To Stop Payments, Then Foreclosed
Arthur Delaney – Tue Apr 6, 7:09 pm ET

JPMorgan Chase told a California couple to quit making mortgage payments in order to qualify for a loan modification but then foreclosed on their Sacramento home, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court.

Faiz and Khadija Jahani called Chase in December 2008 because they were having trouble making their mortgage payments. According to the suit, they were told that they wouldn't qualify for a modification without being delinquent and that they should stop making payments for three months.

At the beginning of June, the Jahanis claim that they were told they qualified for a modification that reduced their monthly payments. Three weeks later, they received a letter telling them the bank intended to foreclose. This confusing back-and-forth continued for months, with Chase repeatedly asking them to resend paperwork, according to the complaint filed in U.S. District Court, Eastern District of California/Sacramento Division, which was first reported by Courthouse News.

The couple is demanding damages of $150,000 for breach of contract, fraud, predatory lending and violation of the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

In October, a real-estate investor knocked on the Jahanis' door and asked them about buying the house, telling the couple that it was a bank-owned property. When the Jahanis called Chase to find out what was going on, they claim they were reassured that the bank had not foreclosed on the house.

"They kept getting conflicting information," said lawyer Piotr Reysner. He added that, as far as he can tell from public records, the bank did in fact foreclose on the property. "Unfortunately, they face a situation right now where they could easily get a three-day notice to quit the house."

Chase did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Reysner, a bankruptcy attorney, said he did not know whether the Jahanis had been pursuing their modification via the Obama administration's Home Affordable Modification Program, which started in spring 2009 and gives banks incentives to modify mortgages for hard-luck homeowners. Banks are not allowed to foreclose on borrowers eligible for the program, but they are allowed to move forward with the foreclosure process during a trial modification, a source of much confusion for borrowers everywhere.

"The fact that a servicer is telling a homeowner that they're taking care of the matter and, while they're negotiating, the house moves into foreclosure is a completely common scenario in today's foreclosure world," said Ira Rheingold, director of the National Association of Consumer Advocates.

In March, HuffPost reported on Indiana law student Melissa Stuart, who had been making monthly payments under HAMP, only to be told when the trial period ended that she was delinquent. Stuart ultimately won a permanent modification.

HuffPost readers: Weird bank problem? Tell us about it -- email [email protected].

UPDATE 6:05 PM: Several readers and commenters have written to say they're having the same kind of problem. And Melissa Huelsman, a Seattle attorney whose practice focuses on predatory lending and wrongful foreclosure, wrote HuffPost to say clients of hers went through the same process as the Jahanis and were ultimately evicted. She wrote:

I'm just getting ready to file suit against Chase for this same thing, except my clients were actually making their trial loan mod payments up until the month before Chase foreclosed. They went to make the December payment but got a knock on the door from a realtor before they could do so. They spent a couple of weeks trying to get someone at Chase to fix the problem, except that Chase kept telling them that the property had not been foreclosed. Turns out Chase was wrong and the house was sold to a third party. They were just evicted a couple weeks ago and we're getting ready to file.

Top Senate Democrat Questions Obama Foreclosure Program's Effectiveness
Shahien Nasiripour Thu Apr 29, 5:56 pm ET

The second-ranking Democrat in the Senate expressed concern Thursday over the ultimate effectiveness of the Obama administration's signature foreclosure-prevention effort, becoming the highest-ranking member of the president's party to publicly question the administration's efforts to help struggling families.

The administration announced in March that its initiative, the Home Affordable Modification Program, will begin in several months to help unemployed homeowners and those who owe more on their mortgage than their home is worth. The unemployed are eligible for temporary relief from monthly payments; underwater homeowners are eligible for reductions in mortgage principal.

In a Senate hearing, Assistant Majority Leader Dick Durbin told Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner that he's "concerned that these changes don't go far enough to help unemployed and underwater homeowners."

"Under the current plan, servicers may still have more incentive to foreclose rather than to modify mortgages, and many borrowers will still find that default may be easier than staying underwater," the Illinois Democrat said. "These changes won't be implemented until the fall, and may be too little, too late."

Research shows that underwater homeowners are much more likely to default on their mortgages than similar borrowers who have positive equity. In fact, the more underwater homeowners are, the more likely they are to fall behind on payments, default, or to walk away from their mortgage debt completely. That's why so many groups -- consumer advocates, homeowners, members of Congress and mortgage bond investors -- have called for a more robust principal reduction effort by Treasury.

"[W]e have heard from servicers that whenever principal reduction is included as a component of the modification, even at the same debt-to-income ratio, the outcome is more sustainable," said Richard H. Neiman, New York state's chief bank regulator and a member of the Congressional Oversight Panel, a federal bailout watchdog. "This highlights the importance of incorporating broad principal forgiveness into foreclosure mitigation programs."

HAMP is part of the administration's $75 billion effort to stem the rising tide of foreclosures.

An April 14 report by COP found that more than three-quarters of homeowners who have had their monthly mortgage payments reduced under HAMP owe more on their mortgage than their house is worth. Citing data through February, over half of the roughly 170,000 distressed borrowers who had gone through the program were seriously underwater, meaning they had negative equity of at least 25 percent, the report notes. In other words, for every $1.00 their home was worth, they owed at least $1.25.

The average homeowner who's received a five-year modified mortgage under the administration's plan had negative equity of about 35 percent prior to the program, according to the report. After modification, that burden actually increased for the average homeowner, who is now underwater by more than 43 percent.

Durbin asked Geithner about that. Geithner dodged the question. The Treasury Secretary did note, though, that the modifications lead to lower interest rates for borrowers, which results in lower payments. Still, that doesn't address negative equity, which is what Durbin asked about.

Yet the watchdog's report actually understates the problem, the report notes. Its figures are for first-lien home mortgages only. Debt owed on junior liens, like second liens and home equity lines, isn't part of that calculation. The Obama administration estimated last April that "up to 50 percent of at-risk mortgages currently have second liens."

"If junior liens were to be included, the percentage would be significantly higher," the report notes. "The continuing deep level of negative equity for many HAMP permanent modification recipients makes the modifications' sustainability questionable; even with more affordable payments, deeply underwater borrowers may remain tempted to strategically default or may be compelled to because core life events, such as death, divorce, disability, marriage, child birth, job loss, or job opportunities necessitate a move."

Geithner pointed to the roughly 230,000 homeowners who now have lower monthly payments as a result of the program, and the 1.4 million homeowners who have been offered the opportunity to have lower monthly payments.

By comparison, last year lenders foreclosed on more than 2.8 million homes, a record, according to real estate research firm RealtyTrac. The firm estimates three million homes will get foreclosure notices this year; more than one million of them will be repossessed by lenders.

Kevin R. Puvalowski, deputy Special Inspector General in the Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, another federal bailout watchdog, said Treasury has fallen short in its promise to help struggling homeowners.

"[U]ntil Treasury fulfills its commitment to provide a thoughtfully designed, consistently administered, and fully transparent program, HAMP risks being remembered not for catalyzing a recovery from our current housing crisis, but rather for bold announcements, modest goals, and meager results," he told Durbin's subcommittee.

Neiman said that "the stories we hear point to a clear need for a Homeowner's Advocate, or ombudsman, within Treasury. Treasury's currently offered email address is not doing the job."

Geithner predicted "a lot of hardship and pain still ahead" for homeowners.

"Foreclosure prevention is not just the right thing [to] do for suffering Americans," Neiman said, "but it is the linchpin around which all other efforts to achieve financial stability revolve. We cannot solve the financial crisis without dealing with the root of the problem: the millions of American families who are at risk of losing their homes to foreclosure."



http://news.yahoo.com/s/huffpost/201...BzZW5hdGVkZW0-

Dropouts rise in gov't loan modification program
By Alan Zibel, Ap Real Estate Writer 31 mins ago

WASHINGTON – The number of homeowners dropping out of the Obama administration's main mortgage assistance plan is growing, and is now almost equal to the number who have received permanent relief.

The Treasury Department's report on Monday was the latest evidence of problems in the administration's $75 billion program. While officials insist the program is helping the housing market turn around, critics say it is merely delaying an inevitable surge in foreclosures.

More than 299,000 homeowners had received permanent loan modifications as of last month, Treasury said. That's about 25 percent of the 1.2 million who started the program since its March 2009 launch. They are paying, on average, $516 less each month.

However, the number of people who started the process but failed to get their mortgages permanently modified rose dramatically in April.

To complete the program, borrowers must make at least three payments on time. About 277,000 homeowners, or 23 percent of those enrolled, have dropped out during this trial phase. That's up from about 155,000 a month earlier, or a 79 percent increase.

Many borrowers are still stuck in limbo, unable to complete the process and caught up in an often-bewildering bureaucracy.

"These mortgage companies have to get it together," said Henrietta Thompson, housing coordinator with United Family Services in Charlotte, N.C. "We're not getting anything done."

Treasury officials acknowledge that long delays have been a problem.

"Homeowners are waiting. We want them to get answers as rapidly as possible," said Herbert Allison, an assistant Treasury secretary.

After a one-year struggle with JPMorgan Chase & Co., Giselle Embry, 56, of Escondido, Calif. was finally able to get a loan modification through the program.

"They kept calling me and asking me to send the same things," she said. "I felt like they just wanted to run me around until I got so frustrated that I gave up."

Embry fell behind on her mortgage. An illness forced her to go on disability for six months and her hours as a career adviser were shortened because of state budget cuts. Her new loan payment is $622 a month, more than half of her initial payment.

A Chase spokeswoman declined to comment on Embry's case. She said the bank has hired 9,000 workers to handle foreclosure cases, opened 51 centers around the country where borrowers can meet with bank officials and held foreclosure prevention events around the country.

The program is designed to lower borrowers' monthly payments by reducing mortgage rates to as low as 2 percent for five years and extending loan terms to as long as 40 years. Mortgage companies, also known as loan servicers, get up taxpayer incentives to reduce borrowers' monthly payments.

But there have been problems from the start. One of the big ones: Initially, many of the participating banks allowed borrowers to state their income verbally and provide proof of their income later. That jammed up the system as many borrowers didn't provide a complete set of documents, and some complained that their information was lost.

The mortgage companies that required homeowners to provide proof of their incomes have had a much better track record. HomEq Servicing Inc. and Ocwen Financial Corp. were able to convert more than 80 percent of their participating borrowers to permanent status, according to the Treasury Department.

By contrast, the four largest banks in the program have been far less successful. Bank of America Corp. and Wells Fargo & Co. have successfully processed about 25 percent of their applications. JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup Inc. have been able to convert 22 percent and 21 percent, respectively, of their applicants to permanent status.

Treasury officials have directed lenders to shift to a new system. Starting with loan modifications that go into effect June 1, they are required to collect two recent pay stubs at the start of the process.

Many borrowers who don't get help will end up losing their homes. That can happen through foreclosure. Another option is a short sale, which is when banks agree to let borrowers sell their homes for a reduced price if they owe more than it's worth.

To encourage more of those sales, the Obama administration is giving $3,000 for moving expenses to homeowners who complete such a sale or agree to turn over the deed of the property to the lender.

Mortgage companies will now have to set their minimum bid before the house is listed for sale. If the offer is above that, the lender must accept it. That's a big change from current practice. Lenders generally don't calculate how much money they are willing to accept until they have an offer in hand, causing long delays.

The new program will boost short sales this year, but 80 percent of distressed sales this year are still likely to be foreclosures, estimates Celia Chen, senior director of Moody's Economy.com.

Housing analysts are also closely watching the number of borrowers who drop out after completing the program. So far, 3,744 borrowers, or 1.3 percent, have done so. That's up from about 2,900 a month earlier. Most of those borrowers likely defaulted on their modified loans, but a handful either refinanced or sold their homes.



http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100517/...YtZHJvcG91dHNy

Nearly 50 percent leave Obama mortgage-aid program
Martin Crutsinger, Ap Economics Writer – 1 hr 35 mins ago

WASHINGTON – Nearly half of the 1.3 million homeowners who enrolled in the Obama administration's flagship mortgage-relief program have fallen out.

The program is intended to help those at risk of foreclosure by lowering their monthly mortgage payments. Friday's report from the Treasury Department suggests the $75 billion government effort is failing to slow the tide of foreclosures in the United States, economists say.

More than 2.3 million homes have been repossessed by lenders since the recession began in December 2007, according to foreclosure listing service RealtyTrac Inc. Economists expect the number of foreclosures to grow well into next year. "The government program as currently structured is petering out. It is taking in fewer homeowners, more are dropping out and fewer people are ending up in permanent modifications," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics.

Besides forcing people from their homes, foreclosures and distressed home sales have pushed down on home values and crippled the broader housing industry. They have made it difficult for homebuilders to compete with the depressed prices and discouraged potential sellers from putting their homes on the market.

Approximately 630,000 people who had tried to get their monthly mortgage payments lowered through the government program have been cut loose through July, according to the Treasury report. That's about 48 percent of the those who had enrolled since March 2009. And it is up from more than 40 percent through June.

Another 421,804, or roughly 32 percent of those who started the program, have received permanent loan modifications and are making their payments on time.

RealtyTrac reported that the number of U.S. homes lost to foreclosure surged in July to 92,858 properties, up 9 percent from June. The pace of repossessions has been increasing and the nation is now on track to having more than 1 million homes lost to foreclosure by the end of the year. That would eclipse the more than 900,000 homes repossessed in 2009, the firm says.

Lenders have historically taken over about 100,000 homes a year, according to RealtyTrac.

Zandi said the government effort will likely end up helping only about 500,000 homeowners lower their monthly payments on a permanent basis. That's a small percentage of the number of people who have already lost their homes to foreclosure or distressed sales like short sales — when lenders let homeowners sell for less than they owe on their mortgages.

Zandi predicts another 1.5 million foreclosures or short sales in 2011.

"We still have a lot more foreclosures to come and further home price declines," Zandi said. He said home prices, which have already fallen 30 percent since the peak of the housing boom, would drop by another 5 percent by next spring.

Many borrowers have complained that the government program is a bureaucratic nightmare. They say banks often lose their documents and then claim borrowers did not send back the necessary paperwork.

The banking industry said borrowers weren't sending back their paperwork. They also have accused the Obama administration of initially pressuring them to sign up borrowers without insisting first on proof of their income. When banks later moved to collect the information, many troubled homeowners were disqualified or dropped out.

Obama officials dispute that they pressured banks. They have defended the program, saying lenders are making more significant cuts to borrowers' monthly payments than before the program was launched. And some of the largest mortgage companies in the program have offered alternative programs to those who fell out.

Homeowners who qualify can receive an interest rate as low as 2 percent for five years and a longer repayment period. Those who have successfully navigated the program to reach permanent modifications have seen their monthly payments cut on average by about $500.

Homeowners first receive temporary modifications and those are supposed to become permanent after borrowers make three payments on time and complete all the required paperwork. That includes proof of income and a letter explaining the reason for their troubles. But in practice, the process has taken far longer.

The more than 100 participating mortgage companies get taxpayer incentives to reduce payments. As of mid-June only $490 million had been spent out of a potential $75 billion the government has made available to help stem the wave of foreclosures.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100821/...FybHk1MHBlcmM-

Bank of America former employees: 'We were told to lie'
John W. Schoen, CNBC - 4 hours ago


Former employees of Bank of America say they were told to lie to customers about whether they could modify their loans to more affordable terms. They also paid cash bonuses to bank staffers to pushing homeowners into foreclosure.

Bank of America routinely denied qualified borrowers a chance to modify their loans to more affordable terms and paid cash bonuses to bank staffers for pushing homeowners into foreclosure, according to affidavits filed last week in a Massachusetts lawsuit. "We were told to lie to customers," said Simone Gordon, who worked in the bank's loss mitigation department until February 2012. "Site leaders regularly told us that the more we delayed the HAMP [loan] modification process, the more fees Bank of America would collect."

In sworn testimony, six former employees describe what they saw behind the scenes of an often opaque process that has frustrated homeowners, their attorneys and housing counselors.

They describe systematic efforts to undermine the program by routinely denying loan modifications to qualified applicants, withholding reviews of completed applications, steering applicants to costlier "in-house" loans and paying bonuses to employees based on the number of new foreclosures they initiated.

The employees' sworn testimony goes a long way to explain why the government's Home Affordable Modification Program, launched in 2008 during the depths of the housing collapse, has fallen so far short of the original targets to save millions of Americans from being tossed from their homes.

Bank of America denied the allegations in the affidavits, which were filed in a Massachusetts lawsuit on behalf of dozens of Bank of America borrowers in 26 states. "We continue to demonstrate our commitment to assisting customers who are at risk of foreclosure and, at best, these attorneys are painting a false picture of the bank's practices and the dedication of our employees," a spokesman said in a statement. "While we will address the declarations in more depth when we file our opposition to plaintiffs' motion next month, suffice it is to say that each of the declarations is rife with factual inaccuracies."

Since the housing crisis unfolded in 2007, Bank of America and other large mortgage servicers have maintained that the widespread delays in processing loan modifications largely resulted from an overwhelming and unprecedented wave of troubled loans. But regulators have repeatedly cited lenders for mistreating borrowers trying to modify their mortgages. In April 2001, five big banks—including Bank of America—settled a sweeping complaint with 49 states and several federal regulators about their foreclosure and loan modification practices. The banks agreed to provide $26 billion in relief and adhere to a sweeping series of new rules when modifying loans.

Later this week, a monitor assigned to track the bank's practices will issue a report that's expected to cite ongoing violations of those new rules. In their sworn testimony, the former Bank of America employees detail a series of specific company policies designed to provide as little foreclosure relief as possible. "Based on what I observed, Bank of America was trying to prevent as many homeowners as possible from obtaining permanent HAMP loan modifications while leading the public and the government to believe that it was making efforts to comply with HAMP," said Theresa Terrelonge, a Bank of America collector until June 2010. "It was well known among managers and many employees that the overriding goal was to extend as few HAMP loan modifications to homeowners as possible."

The reason was fairly simple, according to William Wilson Jr., who worked as a manager in the company's Charlotte, N.C., headquarters, where he supervised 13 mortgage representatives working on with customers seeking HAMP loan modifications.

After stonewalling qualified borrowers seeking an affordable HAMP loan, Bank of America representatives could upsell them to a more costly "in-house" loan modification, with rates 3 points higher than the 2 percent rate available under HAMP guidelines, Wilson testified. "The unfortunate truth is that many and possibly most of these people were entitled to a HAMP loan modification, but had little choice but to accept a more expensive and less favorable in-house modification," he said.

Courtney Scott was among the Bank of America customers who experienced repeated delays and denials for a government-sponsored modification of the mortgage on her suburban Atlanta home. The retired nurse and grandmother grew increasingly frustrated after bank representatives repeatedly requested she fill out paperwork covering the same information.

So she was surprised when the bank approved her six months later for an "in-house" modification. "I got the [HAMP] denial in January, 2010 and then in June they came back with an in-house offer saying 'Congratulations, you've been approved for a modification,'" said Scott. "But it only lowered my payments by about $7 and some cents."

Scott turned down the offer and the bank moved to foreclose,an action she is contesting with the help of an attorney.

Scott's frustration in complying with the banks request was designed to motivate her to agree to the in-house modification according to the former Bank of America workers.

In his affidavit, Wilson said most of the information the bank repeatedly requested from homeowners was already available in multiple document review systems. Some completed applications were denied one at a time, while other borrowers were rejected en masse in a process known as "the blitz," Wilson said.

"Approximately twice a month, Bank of America would order that case managers and underwriters 'clean out' the backlog of HAMP applications by denying any file in which the financial documents were more than 60 days old," he said. "These included files in which the homeowner had provided all required financial documents."

The procedures described in the affidavits will come as no surprise to attorneys working with borrowers trying to save their homes from foreclosures, according to Max Gardner, a North Carolina bankrupctcy attorney who trains other lawyers on legal strategies to thwart foreclosure. "This policy—of dragging it out as long as we possibly can and tell [the homeowner] you didn't qualify or the mod failed or we didn't get this document or you didn't sign it in the right place or we lost this form—is consistent with what we've seen," he said.

http://www.nbcnews.com/business/bank...lie-6C10351458