What I Know About Loan Modifications – 2014
Regardless of what anyone else wants to say about getting a loan modified, it remains by far a homeowner’s best chance of keeping his or her home if at risk of foreclosure. That’s not an opinion… it’s an indisputable fact. According to the latest report from the Treasury Department…
“As of February (2014), more than 1.3 million homeowners received permanent modifications through HAMP. There have also been 4 million in-house modifications through last November.”
Is either of those numbers sufficient or even acceptable? No. Is the process fair and reasonable? No. Is it consistent? Not even close. Is it better than it’s been in the past? Sometimes yes, oftentimes no. But, none of that changes the facts… as bad as it might be to get your loan modified… nothing else comes close to having saved millions of homes from foreclosure.
And, just so we’re clear, it’s not like I care one way or the other what you decide to do if you’re facing foreclosure. As far as I’m concerned, you’re presumably a grown up and it’s presumably your house we’re talking about, so if you want to burn it to the ground, that’s entirely up to you.
But, before you do anything like that, Arson-Boy, I’d just like to make sure you know that if you burn your house down, you’ll probably end up in jail… and you very well may hurt innocent people. That being said, if you still decide to go ahead with it, let me know and I’ll go pay-per-view.
For those that decide to take the loan modification route, however, I can probably offer some insight and advice that will be helpful. I see loans get modified all the time. And I’ve had a front row seat to this crisis almost every day since it began.
The first things you need to know about getting your loan modified are that it’s not fun, almost never easy, always stressful, and far too often ridiculous to the point of being maddening. And those are the positives about the process.
The simple fact is that loans were never written with the idea that they would be written down when borrowers defaulted on them. That was never even remotely part of anyone’s plan. And the idea that millions of borrowers would all need their loans modified at the same time, well… prior to this crisis, that seemed about as likely as aliens showing up to foreclose on the planet Earth.
The fact is, no one was ready to address today’s situation, and when the Obama Administration took office in late January of 2009, they were no exception. But, there was enormous pressure on the new administration to do something for the millions of people that were facing foreclosure, so they did something in a hurry. And less than 30 days later when President Obama announced his Making Home Affordable Program, the cheers were deafening.
A large part of the problem we’ve had with loan modifications, however, was the result of the president’s speech in the latter part of February of 2009. Not only did he make it sound far easier than it was ever going to be, but he also made it sound as if it were the result of some sort of quid pro quo… taxpayers had bailed out the banks and now the banks were going to be called on to help homeowners save their homes from foreclosure.
It made total sense. After all, wasn’t it the banks that caused this catastrophic, overnight meltdown of the global financial markets that caused the mortgage market to implode and led to the worst economic downturn in 70 years… and from which the foreclosure crisis was born? So, now it would be the bank’s turn to help the American homeowner avoid foreclosure.
But, in truth, there was no quid pro quo. The Home Affordable Modification Program or HAMP was always nothing more than a voluntary concession on the part of mortgage servicers or investors, offered to those who had endured a hardship, as defined by the program’s guidelines. And the problem, right from the beginning, was that qualifying was complicated. It was like telling General Motors to stop the assembly lines, and start making hand made cars.
The mortgage banking industry let the government know that servicers were not in any way prepared to modify loans in the numbers needed, but the response from Treasury was to do it anyway by putting applicants into trial modifications and it would get fixed on the fly.
In retrospect, it’s easy to conclude that it was a terrible idea, but the choices were this fire-ready-aim type of plan… or nothing. There simply wasn’t anything else in place to slow down or stop foreclosures en masse.
It helps to remember that the mortgage servicing “machine” was built to foreclose when a borrower defaulted on his or her loan. For decades, servicers set up systems to send out statements, collect payments… and foreclose as quickly as possible when a borrower went into default in order to minimize the losses to investors. That’s what everyone wanted the machine to do, so that’s what it was built to do.
Very few people ever went into foreclosure… two percent was the highest percentage, and less than one percent was the norm when talking about prime loans. Now, we were talking about foreclosure rates of four percent in 2009 alone, and cumulatively we’ve lost over 10 percent to foreclosure to-date. It’s a crisis that continues to be unprecedented in terms of its scale.
Now we wanted that machine to do something else entirely… to modify loans for borrowers that couldn’t pay them as agreed, but there were no systems in place to handle this new national need, and frankly, the Obama Administration and the Federal Reserve both underestimated most everything about what was to come, chasing the crisis as it worsened with programs that ran from the inadequate to the entirely ineffective.
It wasn’t just the servicers and private securitizations that were the problem.
The GSEs (“Government Sponsored Enterprises”) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, now in conservatorship, were being run by the relatively new Federal Housing Finance Agency, or FHFA, and the agency was refusing to grant principal reductions under any circumstances.
(FHFA was signed into law in 2008, largely to put Fannie and Freddie into conservatorship, but really came into existence in 2009, the result of the merger of the OFHEO and the FHFB, or Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight and Federal Housing Finance Board, respectively.)
Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson referred to the take over of Fannie and Freddie “one of the most sweeping government interventions in private financial markets in decades.” He also said:
“I attribute the need for today’s action primarily to the inherent conflict and flawed business model embedded in the GSE structure, and to the ongoing housing correction,” and that conservatorship was “the only form in which I would commit taxpayer money to the GSEs.”
So, it should come as little surprise that the GSEs also proved the most difficult when it came to modifying loans period. Had Fannie and Freddie taken a more proactive and agreeable stance when it came to the modification and writing down of loans for homeowners in distress, it’s highly likely that the mortgage servicing industry would have followed suit, but FHFA’s acting director, Edward DeMarco remained Intractable to the point of appearing incomprehensibly thick-headed on the topic at times.
And, no one had the power to force the director to change his mind. Not the Secretary of the Treasury. Not Congress. Not the president. No one.
Hand in hand with the GSEs as an impediment to modifying loans, was the nature of the work involved. No two borrower situations were the same… they were, in fact, like snowflakes, each one an entirely unique set of facts… each one governed by its own Pooling and Servicing Agreement (“PSA”), its own servicing guidelines and state laws related to foreclosure.
To say nothing of the Treasury’s HAMP program, which was soon to unveil itself as a model of prevarication, marked by its excessive and unwarranted complexity and outright convolutedness.
Its results were, shall we say euphemistically, underwhelming right from the start, but on top of that, the process of applying for a loan modification very quickly resembled something on a scale of utter chaos bordering on total anarchy. And borrowers were paying the steepest price… along with the reputations of our largest banks, our faith in government, and the investors in Residential Mortgage-backed Securities (“RMBS”), all of which paid dearly as well.
Obstacles to A Bailout for Homeowners Abound…
Even if the administration or the Congress had been willing to fashion a bailout of homeowners back in 2009, there were some serious, yet rarely discussed, obstacles in place that would have likely prevented it from happening. For one thing, any bailout of homeowners facing foreclosure in 2009 and 2010, would have simultaneously been a bailout of the bottom tranches, for in a securitization, those are the investors that took on the most risk, and received the highest rate of return if enough money comes into the trust to trickle all the way down to the bottom.
And no one wanted to bail out those bottom trance holders, for what should be obvious reasons… chief among them that it would have been rewarding the worst of the lending behavior.
Then there was the inequity that would be inherent to any bailout plan for homeowners… everyone would need to receive a different amount of monetary assistance that would be funded by taxpayer dollars. People furthest in the hole would receive the most money, and most American homeowners, would get nothing. Federal programs just aren’t anything like any of that.
And then there was the sheer scale of the problem. In 2009, there were at least two million, and perhaps as many as four million homeowners seeking assistance with their mortgages in order to avoid foreclosure. Appropriately addressing the individual and unique situations of millions of borrowers is just not something any branch of government was even remotely set up to do.
Finally, there was the political divide between the majority, that largely viewed homeowners losing homes as being undeserving, the result of having been, “irresponsible borrowers,” and the minority, which was predominantly made up of those that appeared as unapologetic bleeding hearts and other champions of underdogs everywhere.
Without the political support of a clear majority of Americans, and with the opposing sides in the battles over health care and financial reforms already exchanging fire, the administration wasn’t about to risk its approval rating or support in Congress, over fewer than five percent of homeowners who couldn’t pay mortgage payments. And so they remained mute on the subject.
It is telling that President Obama’s first speech on the housing markets was in late February of 2009, with his next speech mentioning the situation delivered roughly three years later, and after the passage of both the Affordable Care Act and the Dodd Frank financial reforms.
So, it fell to the servicers, in very much a “ready or not, here I come,” sort of way, to modify loans in order to prevent foreclosure, when they deemed such a thing were possible, of course… and it remains pretty much the exclusive purview of mortgage servicers today.
All Servicers Are NOT Created Equal…
The first thing that is entirely unfair about the situation related to getting your loan modified is that each servicer is different.
There should be no question but that Wells Fargo is the most difficult of the major players, anyway. Bank of America, believe it or not, would probably be the best, and the Treasury’s numbers would support that conclusion, but like I’ve said… even the best seen today, is not good enough to stop the tsunami of foreclosures that has gone on for five years, and continues today.
I’d rank Chase number two, and after that, it’s anyone’s guess as to what will happen. It depends on your specific set of facts and figures, the nature of your current loan, who owns that loan, whether one of the GSEs, FHA/VA/USDA, a private securitized trust, or a bank’s own portfolio. And then it depends on all sorts of internal and external factors multiplied by the inconsistency in quality of the person you’re talking to at any given moment.
Even when discussing Wells Fargo, I have to admit that I’ve seen them inexplicably grant significant principal reductions on multiple occasions.
Now, we’ve got a new type of servicer, the non-bank sub-servicer, including Ocwen, Nationstar, SPS, SLS, and several notable others. They don’t have as much reputation to risk, but they are increasingly the focus of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (“CFPB”), so who knows… maybe once they feel the heat, they’ll see the light.
Until then, however, while they do modify loans every day, they do so in lower percentages that any of the four largest servicers, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells and Citi.
All of this is to say that you have to be prepared to encounter difficulties in varying degree depending on with whom you’re forced to deal with in order to get your loan modified. It sucks, I would agree, but it is… what it is. And Fannie and Freddie also remain a significant impediment, with no principal reductions being granted as I write these words, although with Mel Watt, now FHFA’s new director, there is renewed hope that the agency’s stance on the issue will change.
So, You Want to Get Your Loan Modified…
The most important thing about getting your loan modified is to make sure your application is complete, meaning it includes all required documentation, and that it’s correct, in terms of the numbers involved. If you could be certain of both aspects, you’d have come a long way toward ultimately succeeding. Unfortunately, it’s no easy talk, and many harm their chances straight out of the gate as a result, some fatally.
You can find plenty of information about how the government’s program works on the Making Home Affordable Website, and on the page, “Finding the Right Program,” among others. You can also consult with a HUD approved counseling agency, or private consultant. Whatever you do, make sure you double and even triple check everything you’re told… it’s your house you’re trying to save. And there’s a lot of misinformation out there.
One of the tests you’ll have to pass to qualify for a loan modification is HAMP’s Net Present Value Test (“NPV”). It’s impossible to find out precisely whether you pass your servicer’s specific NPV test, but you can get close by entering your information into the Treasury’s online calculator at CheckMyNPV.com. It’s not a 100% solution, but It’s free and only takes a few minutes, so it’s certainly worth doing.
More than a few have told me that they’ve submitted Qualified Written Requests (QWRs) at the same time they’ve applied for a loan modification, and that’s a sure fire recipe for slowing the loan mod process down by several months. (QWRs have been replaced under the new RESPA rules, but the point will be the same.)
Here are 12 guidelines that I’ve developed after seeing that they’ve been helpful to homeowners in the loan modification process. They are listed in no particular order…
1. Don’t expect too much from your customer service representative. With limited expectations, it’ll be easier to remain calm, nice and friendly, regardless of how maddening the situation becomes.
Remember Mandelman’s Rule #1: Yelling at, or threatening the person trying to help you on the phone will not improve his or her ability to do so.
2. Expect to be required to send in copies of existing, and updated documents. Make copies in advance, or keep the means to generate extra copies at your fingertips. That way, when copies are needed, it’s really no big deal.
3. If you can, save your monthly mortgage payment during the process, or at least save as much as you can. There are all sorts of reasons this is a good idea, not the least of which is that you feel a whole lot better when you’re not broke.
It’s Mandelman’s Rule #2: There’s no downside to saving as much as you can… it can only make a positive difference. And even if it doesn’t end up mattering, after you get your loan modified, you’ll need a vacation… so you’ll need the money for that.
4. Follow the published rules and guidelines to the letter… this is no time to improvise. And try not to take things personally. It might seem like the bank is doing things to YOU, but they really aren’t.
5. Be prepared for stress. Not making your mortgage payment is stressful for just about everyone. So, it’s important to do things that make it easier to handle the stress. For example, if you enjoy having a glass of wine or three in the evening, I understand, but remember…
Mandelman’s Rule #3: Don’t Drink. And if you drink, don’t think. There shouldn’t be drinking and thinking. Alcohol, while it can feel good at the moment, can also interrupt your sleep, and make it harder to deal with stress during the day.
6. Cut back on sugar and increase the amount of exercise you do each day. You don’t have to turn into a total gym rat, but taking a walk for 30-45 minutes after dinner or during the day, combined with reducing your sugar intake, will help ensure that you get a good night’s sleep, and being rested makes stress easier to manage.
7. Don’t give up. Period. No matter what. If you’re denied, reapply. Denied again… reapply again. Demand to know why you were denied. If they don’t tell you, demand again… and again. Click this link and file a complaint with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and also with your state Attorney General. Be specific and relentless.
I have a reader who applied for a loan modification with One West Bank seven times, filed bankruptcies four times, and filed lawsuits three times… before he was granted a loan modification that included a principal reduction of $250,000. (I’m not kidding, if you want to talk with him, let me know and I’ll put you in touch.) Remember…
Mandelman’s Rule #4: Never give up. Never give up. Never, never, never. (Borrowed from Winston Churchill.)
8. Keep a diary. Get a notebook and document what happens throughout the process. Whatever your servicer’s representative tells you… write it down. Keep track of the dates that you receive all notices, and write down the dates that you send in whatever is requested.
Today, there are many new servicer standards and state statutes that have been put in place to protect borrowers, that are either part of the National Mortgage Settlement, found in the new TILA and RESPA rules, or are codified in various state laws, like California’s Homeowner Bill of Rights.
So, in the event that your servicer fails to comply with any number of rules, you may want to be able to show an attorney what’s transpired, and a well-maintained diary will make that infinitely easier. It’s Mandelman’s Rule #5: Remember to document, and document to remember.
9. Don’t panic. Nothing happens quickly in the loan modification process. It’s often much harder to modify a loan than anyone thinks, so a couple of months is to be expected even in the better case scenarios. It’s not always the case, I’ve seen loans get modified in under a month on some occasions, but you shouldn’t be panicked if it takes 60-90 days.
Now, if you’ve filed bankruptcy, litigation, or have a loan owned by FHA, VA, or USDA… and sometimes Fannie or Freddie too… any of those things can cause your loan modification to take much longer than it otherwise would. And depending on the specifics, it may prevent modification until whatever you’re doing is resolved… as in the case of bankruptcy where discharge is sometimes required before a modification can be approved.
It’s kind of like this… there is a train coming… and you are on the tracks… but the train is 100 miles away, it’s only going one mile per hour at most… and it’s all flat between here and there, so the only way it’s going to hit you is if you fall asleep. I’ve talked to countless homeowners who have been fighting foreclosure for over five years, and plenty that haven’t made a mortgage payment since Bush was in the White House.
It’s Mandelman’s Rule #6: The more you feel like panicking, the calmer you need to get.
10. Don’t be afraid to contact your servicer frequently. I know, when I’m behind on my mortgage, the last thing I do is contact my servicer. In fact, I never do it. I just scramble like crazy to bring my loan current before foreclosure ensues. At least that’s what I’ve done so far.
But, it’s stupid and you shouldn’t do what I do in this regard. Contacting your servicer is always better than ignoring the problem that, after all, is not going away. In truth, the longer you wait, the more difficult it becomes to modify a loan, because the amounts in arrears are increasing while the loan is in default.
If you’re talking to your servicer, and you get nervous or otherwise freaked out, just say… “Oh shoot… my phone is dying… I’ll call back,” and hang up. (Yeah, you’re a chicken… but so what? Who’s going to know?)
11. Read, listen and watch voraciously credible sources of information related to the subject of loan modifications and the foreclosure crisis in general. Knowledge is absolutely power, and there’s a lot to know about what’s gone on these last five years.
Look for things published by academics, government sources, nonprofits, and other well-known authorities on the subject, but double and triple check everything that sounds like it might not be telling the whole story, or that’s coming from someone who’s selling something.
Not that selling something is necessarily a bad thing, after all there are many lawyers representing homeowners that charge for their services and also publish credible information, and there are also various other consultants that are providing valuable services and information to homeowners seeking to avoid foreclosure.
Mandelman’s Rule #7: Just don’t take anything at face value. Question anyone who tells you something of which you feel unsure, and if your question makes them uncomfortable, or you don’t get a credible answer… run the other direction. The old adage applies, so if something sounds too good to be true, it’s probably not true.
12. Mandelman’s Rule #8: If you’re reading, listening or watching something… and you don’t understand what’s being said… chances are that it’s not you who doesn’t get it… it’s whoever created whatever it is you’re reading, listening to, or watching that doesn’t know what he or she is talking about.
Lawyers, for example, have to be able to explain things to juries and judges, who are in general no smarter about the subject than you are, so if a lawyer can’t make something clear to you… it’s not a good sign. Either slow them down, or send them packing.
It shouldn’t be insulting in the least to ask someone for multiple references… let’s say, five other homeowners who have been helped by the person’s knowledge or services. If they can’t produce that many, you don’t want to be the next homeowner who they can’t provide as a reference.
Oh, and one more thing… legitimate attorneys never tele-market to get clients… and they absolutely don’t solicit clients in New York from their offices in Texas. Hang up the phone… you can find legitimate assistance in your home state, don’t worry.
Mandelman’s Modification Math…
The other thing you have to consider is whether you have sufficient income to make a modified payment on your mortgage under the Fed’s modification program. There are fairly complicated ways of coming up with the amount of income you’ll need, but if you want a quick way to make sure you don’t have too little income to qualify, simply take the amount of your loan, multiply it by 1.5, and then reduce the answer to four or five digits.
Here’s what some quick Mandelman’s Modification Math looks like…
Amount of loan: $300,000
Multiply by 1.5 = $450,000
Reduce to four digits: $4,500
And $4,500 a month is your minimum target gross monthly household income. You might even get away with going down to $4,000 a month, but anything under that amount, and you won’t have enough income to qualify for a modification. Simple, right?
It’s not meant to tell you what you’re income should be, it’s meant to tell you what it shouldn’t be.
So, start there and if you don’t have enough income, I’d suggest checking with a HUD counselor or someone else with expertise getting loans modified before you apply.
Do you need a lawyer to get your loan modified?
No. Does that cover it?
But, if you want a lawyer, that’s perfectly fine by me. Whether I think you should or not really depends on the facts of your situation, and no two homeowners are alike.
Just make sure you interview at least two or three, check them out online and see if there are any serious complaints, be wary when a lawyer tells you exactly what you hoped to hear, don’t hire anyone not licensed to practice law in your state or that you can’t talk to… or that had a telemarketer call you during dinner… and ask for five references so you can talk to others who have been satisfied with the lawyers services.
Do you need to pay someone thousands of dollars to help you get your loan modified?
Some people do, but today… many don’t.
I see loans get modified every day, and the people I see haven’t paid anyone for anything, or if they did, it was hundreds, not thousands of dollars. At the same time, I’ve seen people who absolutely needed someone to handle the process for them… they never would have made it through alone.
I’ve also helped hundreds of people get loans modified, although these days, I primarily help when the loan is serviced or owned by Bank of America, even though I was recently able to help someone with a loan serviced by Chase, as you can read about HERE. I used to be able to help with Ocwen problems, but last year Ocwen bought I don’t know how many other servicers’ books of business, and I haven’t been able to figure out what they’re doing over there since.
For the most part, I help homeowners by explaining things they have to know and consider, by being entirely honest about their situation, correcting them when their wrong about something, and ultimately by bringing it to the attention of someone in a senior position at their servicer, especially when that servicer is Bank of America.
I do a weird thing as related to helping homeowners… in fact, I don’t think anyone else does the same sort of thing… if there is someone else, they’re as insane as I am for doing it, and I can’t believe they’re not homeless and bankrupt and hungry most of the time, because I don’t get paid a dime for doing it.
What I do is so bizarre that I can’t even tell anyone what I do most of the time, because it would be impossible for almost anyone to believe. I can’t even explain to myself why I’ve continued doing it as long as I have. I can tell you this… had I known where I’d be today back in 2008, when I started writing about this unimaginable mess, there’s no way in the world I’d have written a single article about the subject, and I would have laughed at anyone who would have suggested otherwise.
Part of the reason I dislike what I do can be seen in the comments of those who will interpret what I’ve written as somehow being pro-bank, and therefore conclude that I’m working for “the banks,” and still others think that I’m paid to write stuff by Lord only knows who.
So, while we’re on the subject, I’ve got a proposition for those in this group… Find me someone that will pay me to write what I write and you can have 20 percent of whatever I make… you’ll be like my agent. Feel free to send around whatever samples of my work you think might appeal to whichever bank, offer my services, and we can both start getting paid tomorrow. Deal?
Also, if in your travels, should you run into any openings for a robo-signer, please think of me as well. David Stern paid a robo-signer $850,000 a year, but I’m almost positive that I’d do whatever that guy did for half that amount… $425,000. Don’t look at me like that, I’d sign absolutely anything for $425,000 a year, and if you didn’t know that about me, well… you were wrong and that’s all I can say.
Important Tools Now Available to Homeowners…
In 2008 and 2009, as far as loan modifications were concerned, we were the equivalent of a nation made up of hapless pioneers, driving our covered wagons West, lucky to complete the journey alive. Today, we’ve gotten quite a bit better at succeeding when trying to get our loans modified, depending on the servicer, as I explained earlier.
Like I said, and I don’t like to ever bring it up, but I see and hear about people getting loans modified all the time… as in, at least one or two every week, and I only escalate or assist five or 10 each week, at most. But, that’s Bank of America, mind you, and statistically they modify roughly 45 percent of their applications for a modification, much higher where I’m concerned.
On the other end of the modification spectrum is Wells Fargo, and I don’t know what to say about them. It’s not that it’s impossible… it’s more like the weather in New England… not even remotely predictable. My own servicer, US Bank, is another one that I’m told rarely modifies. And last time I checked, Ocwen was modifying fewer than 20 percent, which is disgraceful when you stop to consider that Ocwen was up over 40 percent a few years back.
They pioneered the shared appreciation modification, or SAM, where an investor would receive 25 percent of any upside when the home sold, in exchange for writing down the principal as part of the borrower’s modification. It was actually innovative and dramatically under-utilized by the industry.
Today, Ocwen’s corporate motto should perhaps be: “Call someone in Mumbai who cares.”
So, back to the tools, of which there are several that can significantly improve the process… tools that I wish I could have had in 2009, 2010, 2011, or 2012.
One is the RMBS TRUST LOAN MODIFICATION REPORT. It allows the borrower to know with certainty how every modified loan in the trust that owns their loan, has been modified… since the trust was first established and up until the 30th of the prior month. How many received principal reductions… how many interest rate reductions… term extensions.
How much of an interest rate reduction did loans in the same amount as yours receive? What was the average, what was the lowest rate granted? It shows a homeowner very specifically, what is possible for loans modified in the very trust that holds their loan.
Have you ever heard a servicer deny a borrower saying, “We were unable to create an affordable payment within investor guidelines,” or something very close? Well, maybe that’s true and maybe it’s not. But the only way to know is to pull the trust data for the trust that owns your loan and compile it, as related to loan modifications to-date.
And if you find out that the trust that owns your loan isn’t modifying loans, wouldn’t you rather know that now, as opposed to banging your head against the wall trying the impossible? I would for sure.
The other is the RMBS LOSS SEVERITY REPORT, which is a report that I think is destined to be a game changer for the overall foreclosure crisis, because it shows you how much the trust that owns your loan has lost on similarly priced homes by loan amount, and how much they are expecting to lose on your home and loan should they foreclose and re-sell your home as an REO.
And the amounts of the losses will likely shock you. I’ve seen too many with losses in percentage terms of 97 percent or even more. I mean, how can you justify foreclosing if you’re taking a 97 percent loss doing so… according to your own numbers filed with the SEC?
Both reports are above reproach in terms of their source and credibility, an expert witness would be expected to have little trouble if any getting the data admitted as evidence in a court of law… it certainly wouldn’t be the first time it’s been successfully admitted. In point of fact, the data is exactly the same as the data filing investor reports on RMBS trusts for investors in 17 countries every day.
So, now homeowners can access that same information, using it to know more about what’s possible, or isn’t, as related to his or her loan being modified. Or, to refute a servicer’s claim that something isn’t possible when it very clearly is. Why everyone that knew of the availability of these sorts of tools wouldn’t rush to use them, I can’t begin to fathom. It can’t be the cost, because they would not be considered expensive in any reasonable sense of the word.
Loan Mod Application Quality Check
Another thing I can offer a homeowner is to review the numbers on their application for a loan modification, because although getting the numbers right doesn’t guarantee that you’ll get approved… getting them wrong will get you denied every time.
There are plenty of other things you can do, use and know, and it all helps increase your chances of getting your loan modified. And I’m not just saying that… it’s what I hear from homeowners I help every day. And I have more references than you could likely call in a month.
So, that’s it for now… I’m sure it was long enough, right? I’ll have to cover whatever else I think of next time.
So, if you’re having trouble with a Bank of America mortgage,
you can contact me and if I can help, I certainly will.
Email: NEED HELP WITH BOA to Mandelman@mac.com
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And if you want to know more about the RMBS Trust reports…
Email: INTERESTED IN RMBS TRUST REPORTS to mandelman@mac.com
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And for more information about the Loan Mod App Quality Check…
Email: LOAN MOD QUALITY CHECK to Mandelman@mac.com
Mandelman out.
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