Mortgage Company employees who communicate with homeowners are left in the dark about every facet of the loan modification process. The only thing they do is input information into a computer. Homeowners are left in the dark about such things as what the parameters are to be approved, and why some note holders participate and others don’t. Often, when information is given the answers are wrong causing homeowners to be mislead.
The American public is losing countless homes due to non-compliance in procedures and incorrect answers being given to homeowner causing them to either give up or lose their homes.
Perhaps the Treasury Department do something now about the non-compliance of the HAMP Home Affordable Modification Program
If it continues and no one is held accountable, nothing will happen when they do not follow the rules and guidelines of the Program. When mistakes are made it is not about a misapplied payment that you can fix; the mistakes are huge. We are talking about the loss of the American dream for someone and from what I have seen first hand, no one really cares.
I have been working on loan modifications with Bank of America, and they were preliminarily approved. Before it was completed, we were informed that the note holder is no longer participating in HAMP. We have now discovered that the note holder is Wells Fargo!These clients, who otherwise qualify, are now facing foreclosure.
The amount of times documents are claimed to not be in the file ,when in fact there is evidence they have received them, is to numerous to count.Often this causes a denial.
Paperwork is shuffled within the lenders infrastructure, misinformation is given out on a consistent basis, countless mistakes are made, incorrect income is used all the time and borrowers are railroaded into accepting modifications whether they are calculated correctly or not for fear of losing their homes even if they ask to be re-reviewed.
Borrowers are blamed for missing paperwork but the servicers and lenders have no accountability and do not accept any responsibility for their own actions when they make mistakes, and the answer simply is that the entire onus is on the consumer. Go in and read one of those thick lender/servicer testimonies; the blame is on the borrower.
Wouldn’t now be a good time to look into the compliance issues with this Program?
If government officials, bank executives and investors could go into the trenches and really listen to their constituents and customers, it would be clear as day that there is a problem that needs to be addressed, and addressed soon.
Maybe if servicer employees were thoroughly trained on the HAMP guidelines they could give borrowers the correct information. Maybe then, one less American homeowner would lose his home because of being given incorrect information or because of an internal mistake. Once the mistake happens there is nowhere to turn, no one to complain to, and the situation then calls for drastic measures. People must think for themselves and question authority because if they don’t, it they could cost them their homes. It is imperative that people get empowered with all the information necessary.
The American public receives notices such as “denied for NPV” that homeowners have no clue about what that means. If they request the NPV values and property values, they then find out that their servicers’ do not want to disclose the information, refuse to disclose it, or never send it as required by the Treasury’s HAMP guidelines, etc.
People are still being told that they can only get help if they are currently 60 days late and others have lost their home because of the very Program that was supposed to help them. Many homeowners actually qualified for the Program, but mistakes are made. But then again, who really cares? Nothing will happen to them anyway. There is no accountability for non-compliance.
We are talking about people losing their homes, not little mistakes that are not as detrimental to all of us. When you really listen to the stories like I do, you see that the red tape is strangling homeowners. I think the quality of their job performance is suffering, relationships are in jeopardy and their health is affected, all because the stress and worry they suffer eventually gets the best of them.
Again, if lenders and government officials saw what homeowners had to go through to obtain a modification, it would be readily become apparent that applying for a modification and making sure it is being processed correctly is a full time job in itself. You need to make sure that the fax that you have to send 17 times arrived along with all 50 pages with the loan number written on each page, and that you just paid Kinko’s money you don’t have 17 times to fax the same information. On top of this, the homeowner either has to be looking for work or working a full time job for less pay, all the while trying to juggle this paperwork nightmare. Otherwise, they cannot pay the modified payment.
Then sometimes when the homeowner, after 10 attempts to save their home finally does get either a trial modification that goes on for 10 months only to be followed by a denial, or a permanent modification that is suddenly lost, guess what? The lender now does not want to honor it. It is really no wonder that homeowners are so frustrated that they give up or they must start the process all over again. Maybe the Surgeon General should require a warning label.
I just wonder what incentives the servicers and lenders really have behind the scenes, what back room deals are happening that we don’t know about, and why it is that they would much prefer to kick a homeowner out of the house and sell at a loss at a foreclosure sale instead of working out a loan modification for their customer that simply wants an affordable payment – even when it is more profitable to help them.
It is not because homeowners are deadbeats, but because of a broad spectrum of circumstances the current economy has caused. Things that make you go hmmmmm.
In light of the latest news of the mishandling of foreclosures, American homeowners need to take their power back by making sure they regain their confidence, know the Program guidelines themselves, know their numbers inside and out so they can push back when the information and answers given to them are incorrect. Verify everything more than once. You must be your own best advocate, question authority, or it could cost you your home.
So now that we are talking about the mishandling of foreclosures, I think it would also be a great time to “look into these troubling events” too!
Joel Steinberg of Midatlantic loan Solutions of Alexandria Virginia can assist you in determining if you qualify to stop a foreclosure and get a loan modification, and also assist you in developing a legitimate path to qualifying.
