A couple of months ago, a retired woman contacted me about her home loan. It seems she had been hood-winked into getting a refinance to pay some unsecured bills that left her unable to reasonably make her monthly mortgage payments. I told her to get me the documents so I could determine the best course of action to undo the damage and save her home. At the time she wasn’t in foreclosure, but was behind a couple of months.
Since a foreclosure hadn’t started, it seemed the best thing to do was to try and help her get a loan modification. Maybe the lender would see the errors of the broker who put the refinance together and be cooperative.
So, I filed out, with the client’s help stacks of papers and submitted them to the lender. They called about 2 weeks later to ask for some additional information and we immediately provided that. I heard nothing for two weeks.
Then my client received a notice of foreclosure. That gives her, under California law, 90 days to resolve the delinquency or the house gets put on the market for sale. So I called the number the lender had given me when they asked for more papers. Wrong number. I called the lender and asked for their modification department. A couple of hours of phone trees later, I ended up with a clerk who couldn’t locate the file, couldn’t find any paperwork, but who offered to send me another set of papers.
I received the second set of papers and sent them back immediately. I heard nothing. Meanwhile the time was running on the foreclosure. I called several more times and was told that they were working on a modification offer, would get back to me, and to “sit tight” and wait.
About two months into the 90 day pre-sale waiting period, my client received a band new solicitation from the lender to apply for a modification, and yes, it contained the same set of papers!
We filled those out and resubmitted. I’ve heard nothing.
It’s now quickly approaching the 90 day mark, so I will be filing a bankruptcy to stop the foreclosure in the next couple of days. No doubt I’ll hear from the lender wondering why my client simply didn’t do a modification!
We need this new bill: “Helping Families Save Their Homes in Bankruptcy Act of 2009” so that judges can make these decisions and the thousands of homeowners like my client won’t lose their homes!
