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Posts Tagged ‘Bank of America loan modification Bank of America HAMP program’

Obama’s ‘HOPE’ Failing American Dream: GMAC One of Many Conspirators

Claudia and Mark’s Torres dream went down the drain last week. Unbeknownst to them their house was sold while they were trying to get a loan modification, for the fifth time with GMAC.  They found out their house had been sold from a friend in the real estate market who recognized the name of their street on a listing of houses put up for auction minutes before the property was sold.
GMAC has yet to inform them of the sale.

For the better part of two and half years, the Torreses (not their real name) had tried unsuccessfully to refinance their $410,000 mortgage or get a loan modification. Despite paying $2,500 a month, and most recently, nearly $4,000 a month, they saw their $410,000 mortgage balloon to over $530,000, the result of added fees, interest and penalties they had no way of controlling. Their home was sold off for under $330,000.

Like thousands of other homeowners in their situation, they ran into one wall after another. They were buried in stacks of confusing paperwork, subjected to repeated misdirection, and to quote Mark, “lies and cover ups and generally crappy treatment from anonymous people hidden away in some call center.”

GMAC, yes the same GMAC that received billions in federal bailout money from taxpayers like Claudia and Mark Torres, is shamelessly running amok, without any real oversight because they are not a federally regulated bank, not to say the banks are doing any better. There are thousands of Claudias and Marks out there, it’s time for legislators to step in and protect them from the scoundrels like GMAC

Read more @ http://egpnews.com/?p=20021

Shawn

http://www.diyloanmodkit.com/

Struggling US homeowners to sue lenders

VALLEJO, California – Bobbie Vivar is sick and tired of the way lenders are dealing with struggling homeowners like her. It took her two years to get a loan modification approved by her lender, Bank of America. But before she could begin paying a lower rate, she received a foreclosure notice from another department within the bank.

Vivar decided to sue her lender, who refuses to correct this mistake.

“The thing is lenders do not communicate well. They don’t communicate within their departments. They don’t communicate with us homeowners. I had no choice but to talk to a lawyer because my lenders are not budging. All I want is for my monthly payments to go down,” said Vivar, whose 4-bedroom home dropped in value from $800,000 to $300,000.

Vivar is just one of over 100 struggling homeowners who filed a lawsuit in California against their lenders, in an effort to get them to cooperate. Nora Echaure is a homeowner advocate from the Home Protection Group, which spearheaded a class action suit against lenders in April.

The class action suit is aimed at not just exposing fraudulent transactions within lending institutions; it also stops the foreclosure process.

read more @ http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/global-filipino/08/06/10/struggling-us-homeowners-sue-lenders

Shawn

http://www.diyloanmodkit.com

Deeding title better than short sale

Some of the largest mortgage servicers and lenders in the country are gearing up campaigns to reach out to carefully targeted borrowers with cash incentives that sometimes range into five figures, plus a simple message: Let’s bypass all the time-consuming hassles of short sales and foreclosures. Just deed us the title to your underwater home and we’ll call it a deal. We won’t come after you to collect any deficiency between what you owe us on the mortgage and what we obtain from the home sale. We might even be able to wrap up the whole transaction in as little as 30 to 45 days. How about it?

Mortgage companies say troubled borrowers increasingly are signing up. One of the largest servicers, Bank of America, has mailed out 100,000 deed-in-lieu solicitations to customers in the past 60 days, and its volume of completed transactions is breaking company records, according to officials.

What precisely are deeds-in-lieu? The full name is deeds-in-lieu-of-foreclosure. They are voluntary transfers of property ownership from borrowers to creditors that make court-directed foreclosures unnecessary.

The concept is one of the oldest in real estate, but it got a special boost earlier this year when the Obama administration included it as an option in its Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives program, and mortgage giant Fannie Mae cut the penalty-box time for homeowners who use the technique from four years to two before they can qualify for another home mortgage. To sweeten the pot, Bank of America is offering cash incentives that range anywhere from $3,000 to $15,000 .

Deeds-in-lieu usually don’t work when there are multiple mortgages from different creditors encumbering the property. Also, though deeds-in-lieu do less damage to borrowers’ credit histories than foreclosures or bankruptcies, they definitely leave a mark. Fair Isaac, developer of the widely used FICO credit score, says on its “MyFico” Web site that deeds-in-lieu and short sales are both treated as “not paid as agreed” accounts, and are treated the same by the FICO scoring model.

Read more@http://www.bostonherald.com/business/real_estate/view/20100627deeding_title_better_than_short_sale/

As always,

Shawn

http://www.diyloanmodkit.com/

BofA to Answer Inquiries From Borrowers Within 3 Days

April 6 (Bloomberg) — Bank of America Corp., the largest U.S. bank, is vowing to answer queries about mortgages within three days to help borrowers keep their homes, an executive said today.

The pledge is a response to concerns by borrowers and housing-industry activists that lenders take too long to modify loans and prevent foreclosures, Rebecca Marione, national default servicing executive, said at a housing conference in Charlotte, North Carolina, where Bank of America is based.

Some borrowers wait months for responses because home-loan servicers are overwhelmed by demands for assistance, said Stella Adams, executive director of the North Carolina Fair Housing Center, a Durham-based non-profit group. Bank of America, the biggest U.S. mortgage servicer, is adding 1,000 people this year and investing millions of dollars to improve systems, Marione said.

“We aren’t treating the customers as well as we’d like,” Marione said. “We know from a customer service standpoint we haven’t been stellar.”

Bank of America reported a $3.8 billion loss in its home- loan business last year because of higher defaults. Chief Executive Officer Brian Moynihan is promising simpler products and better service as the lender focuses on internal growth rather than acquisitions that made it a market leader in deposits, brokerage and credit cards.

Read more  C:\Users\Shawn\Desktop\BofA to Answer Inquiries From Borrowers Within 3 Days (Update1) – BusinessWeek.mht

Shawn

http://www.diyloanmodkit.com/

Mortgage help: 170,000 get permanent aid

Here are some figures that show what is going on with loan modifications.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — More than 170,000 troubled homeowners are breathing a lasting sigh of relief now that they’ve received permanent modifications under the Obama administration’s foreclosure prevention program.

Some 15.5% of those who entered the program have gotten long-term adjustments through February, up from 11.5% a month earlier, according to a report from Treasury officials issued Friday.

An additional 91,800 permanent modifications have been approved by servicers and are pending borrower acceptance. And more than 88,600 people have been denied lasting help because they did not meet the program’s criteria, while another 1,499 homeowners have had their permanent modification terminated.

More than 835,000 people are currently in trial modifications, a review period during which banks check whether borrowers can make the reduced payments and gather the necessary paperwork to verify income and hardship. The administration’s foreclosure prevention program reduces eligible borrowers’ monthly payments to 31% of pre-tax income. Participants typically have their loans reduced by $519, or 36%.

read more

http://money.cnn.com/2010/03/12/news/economy/obama_mortgage_modifications/index.htm

As always,
Shawn

http://www.diyloanmodkit.com/

Foreclosure-assistance pipeline clogged for Bank of America

Once again there is not positive information to report regarding Bank of America who are still making excuses.
Two years after swallowing the troubled mortgage giant Countrywide Financial, Bank of America trails other major U.S. lenders in resolving troubled home loans through short sales or modified loan terms.

The lender, one of the nation’s biggest banks, holds more than a million mortgages that are months behind on their payments — twice as many defaulting home loans as any other lender in the country. But it has given permanent mortgage modifications to only about 1 percent of those borrowers — one of the lowest rates among lenders nationally, according to a report released last month on the federal government’s Home Affordable Modification Program.

read more@http://www.orlandosentinel.com/business/os-troublesome-banks-20100304,0,3758633.story

Shawn

http://www.diyloanmodkit.com/

Lawsuits filed against Bank of America and Wells Fargo

Two lawsuits filed yesterday in US District Court in Boston claim Wells Fargo and Bank of America have not followed federal rules for mortgage loan modifications, leaving some homeowners stuck in foreclosure “limbo.’’

According to one of the lawsuits, Wells Fargo Bank North America did not honor agreements with Wilfredo and Odalid Bosque of Leominster and Germano DePina of Roxbury that would have made their temporary loan modifications permanent through the US Treasury’s Home Affordable Modification Program.

According to one of the lawsuits, Wells Fargo Bank North America did not honor agreements with Wilfredo and Odalid Bosque of Leominster and Germano DePina of Roxbury that would have made their temporary loan modifications permanent through the US Treasury’s Home Affordable Modification Program.

In a second suit, Patricia Johnson of Salem alleged Bank of America Corp. did not abide by a similar arrangement that was intended to reduce her mortgage payments.

“When a large financial institution promises to modify an eligible loan to prevent foreclosure, homeowners who live up to their end of the bargain expect that promise to be kept,’’ lawyer Gary Klein wrote in the complaints.

read more@ http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2010/02/24/

banks_broke_mortgage_modification_rules_2_lawsuits_say/

As always..

Shawn

http://www.diyloanmodkit.com/

Bank of America finally stepping up to the plate!

Bank of America has now completed 12,700 Permanent HAMP Modifications. Another 13,700are approved and Pending Homeowners’ Signatures.
This means Bank of America has quadrupled completed loan modifications in one month.
More than 12,700 Bank of America customers now have a permanent Home Affordable modification, up from nearly 3,200 a month earlier. Another 13,700 permanent modifications are pending, meaning final modified loan terms have been approved and documents have been sent for the customers’ signatures, which will be their final step to a completed modification.

“In the past month, our concerted customer outreach initiative has driven a substantial increase in the rate of conversions from trial to permanent modifications, as we anticipated in our recent reports of HAMP progress,” said Jack Schakett, credit loss mitigation strategies executive for Bank of America Home Loans. “These results are attributable to the resources — including expansion of our default management staffing to more than 15,000 — and focus we have placed in support of this and other home ownership retention programs.” – (Source – Bank of America.)

Bank of America are quick to congratulate themselves, but it should be remembered that they have been dragging their heels. Bank of America and Countywide Home Loans (which was acquired by BofA) are notoriously difficult to deal with. The fact that they have only now stepped up to the plate is shameful considering thousands of homeowners that have been and are still in extreme financial distress and are still waiting to get their loan modified.

As Always,

Shawn

http://www.diyloanmodkit.com/