As I gather my documents for what will be my sixth home loan modification attempt, thoughts of past attempts' successes and failures have begun to surface. I am going to journal this adventure now before these memories suppress themselves again. My hope and prayer is that through my adventures and misadventures with the mortgage moguls, you future loan mod attemptees will gain a better understanding of what your dancing partners
could be like.
There were and are so many players at this shindig that it would make for a boring and ineffective read to leave out the names. If this were print, I'd think twice about it; however, I will dodge the libelous bullet and state now that truth is my defense.
Let's face it, if you refinanced your mortgage between 2005 - 2007, you are most likely in a train wreck of a loan. Those are not my words. These words were told to me by an agent at
Washington Mutual who took over our loan in 2007. She said that they had this new thing called a "loan modification" and that I needed to do this if my family and I planned on staying in our home for the unforeseeable future.
A Train Wreck Of A Loan
It was sold to me in 2006 by a third-party outfit called
Sunwest Mortgage. They made it easy to get in to, easy to cash out. What I didn't realize is that they put in for a 3.5% margin plus early-termination penalties ($17k). I'm sure it was all in the 200-page contract. Seriously, it was 200 pages. Who wants to read all of that legalese when it's just oh so easy to do? I had no choice, really. To keep the
business in the black, it made sense at the time regardless of the penalties.
Back to 2007 and
WaMu (as they began to be called).... Seriously. what were they thinking? What a silly name for such an intense time. Could it be that this poor branding choice contributed to their demise? Alright, I digressed....
Back to 2007... Linda at WaMu sent me a small contract of around 4 pages. My wife and I signed and notarized and BAM! It was done. Our monthly payment immediately went down by $850. Good news: no penalties, low margin and APR; bad news: it's an ARM. Regardless; God bless you Linda!
About four months later Linda gives me a call saying it looks like interest rates dipped again and they can reduce the payment by an additional estimated $500 per month. The cost to do this was $800. So a no-brainer. She sent a document to sign, we returned it with a check. She got a commission, we got a lower payment an that fee was recouped in less than two months.
She called again a couple of months later. Same pitch, lower rates, lower payment (~$350.) lower cost to initiate: $500. So we did it. She's a costly one to dance with, but well worth it.
That was the last time I ever heard from Linda. WaMu tanked. It was the largest American bank failure in history, no less. So that was their problem; little did I know, mine were just beginning. My new statements came from Chase Home Mortgage, a division of JPMorgan Chase.
Let's get this straight right now: I do not like Chase Home Mortgage. There is no one like Linda there offering me a 4-page deal and calling me "hun" in a southern accent on the phone. I believe to this day that Washington Mutual saw this mortgage mess coming and were doing what they could to fix it on their end- and they knew it was futile. Too little, too late.
Life with Chase Home Mortgage
By early 2008, I could see that Linda's band-aid fix for our loan needed to have a little modification love. Rates were lower, and it became widely known that mortgage banks desired to get the existing ARMs modified to a fixed-rate product. Great. Time to do a mod. Even greater: Chase has a full-on modification department and it's all done on-line. Begin.
Over the next 9 months I old-school faxed some 400 documents to Chase Home Mortgage. Usually, I only found out they needed updated information when I called and asked. They NEVER called or mailed giving me a progress report or requesting an update for my file.
One fateful day I received a letter from Chase Home Mortgage that simply said: "Under President Obama's
Making Homes Affordable plan, you do not qualify." WHAT!? My ARM payment is 48% of my income. How can I not qualify? The form letter went on to say that I was disqualified because I owned a small business. Great. Another example of American Small Business Owners being punished. The letter also invited me to re-apply for a loan modification. Like I want to do that again.
To this day, (Chase and Obama) I believe I had a great case for a modification: an ARM; steady income; a mortgage payment that had grown to 48% of our gross and 4 years of personal and corporate tax statements that proved all of this.
Time To Get Serious
After some time passed I inadvertently got "hooked up" with Glover Law, a firm that specializes in getting loan modifications for borrowers that have been previously been turned down. They sold me on their pitch; which made sense. I researched them, they looked good, so we engaged.
Now this experience started out pleasantly enough. I discussed matters with them on a regular basis. They emailed when updates were needed. They emailed progress reports.There was solid two-way communication between us. But this did not last.
I began to discover that Chase had never received information from Glover Law.
WHAT?! We were well into this for six months and they had no dialogue going, apparently. When I confronted my contact at Glover, he said that Chase Home Mortgage is so big that certain divisions do not know what others are up to. Chase INSISTED that they know what ALL departments are up to and that no-one from Glover Law had EVER contacted them. I confronted Michael Glover, Esq. and got the same answer from them as before: "Chase is big and complicated, the people
you call cannot interact with the people
we call." I asked for the names at Chase they talked to and never received an answer. Some time went by and I quit getting updates from Glover. I asked again for the Chase names and got nary an answer. Okay, good bye Glover Law. I withdrew what was left out of my escrowed payment to them and closed the account.
Maybe this was a scam, maybe it wasn't. I cannot say. They did seem to try really hard for the initial few months. My gut feeling is that they could NEVER make contact with Chase, so they simply gave up. Like Watergate, the problem is the cover-up. Again I can neither prove nor disprove this. The pundits at Chase insists to this day that they've never heard of this law firm.
The Right Relationship Is Everything
Yes Chase, that's a great tag line you had in 1997. It's not hard to figure out why it was dropped. I wish I could say that I have had a "right relationship" with you. Regardless, I'll be asking you to the Annual Loan Mod Dance again soon. Why do I feel I'll be left standing at the punch table again getting, well… punched?
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