The flurry of advertisements on the TV promoting people who promise loan modifications suggests that modifications are available if you just know how to do it right.
My experiences suggest that it isn’t so. If there is a theme I hear in talking with clients who’ve sought loan modifications is that they can never get through on the phone and that paperwork submitted to lenders seems to be sucked into a black hole. Again and again, they are told they haven’t provided the requested information or that what they’ve provided isn’t right.
Meanwhile, all kinds of folks offer to help homeowners with the process, for money up front. Given the apparent success rate of getting modifications, they’d better get their money up front, because they are unlikely to produce a result deserving of compensation.
Word from Capitol Hill is that judicially supervised loan modification may reappear in the financial services bill to be introduced this fall. Let’s hope that Congress can learn that voluntarism, in the context of mortgage modification, isn’t doing the job.