I APPRECIATE IT SO MUCH WHEN HOMEOWNERS WRITE IN. IT IS DIFFICULT TO SHARE DEEP PERSONAL PAIN. HOWEVER, IT CAN BE HEALING TO KNOW YOU ARE HELPING OTHER HOMEOWNERS.
I ENCOURAGE YOU TO SHARE THE NAMES OF THE ENTITIES AND PEOPLE WHO ACTUALLY HURT YOU. THEY CAN'T SUE YOU FOR DOING SO, BECAUSE IF YOU ARE TELLING THE TRUTH ABOUT WHAT THEY DID TO YOU, TRUTH IS THE PERFECT DEFENSE. THE U.S. CONSTITUTION ALLOWS EVERY INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND I ENCOURAGE YOU TO USE YOURS TO HELP OTHERS.
PLEASE HELP OTHER HOMEOWNERS AVOID THE TRAPS CRIMINALS HAVE SET FOR THEM.
Hello Kelly,
I found your name when I was searching about loan mods and foreclosures, etc. Anyway, you had requested that people email their stories.... so here's ours:
We moved here from England May 2006. (For me, I was coming back to my home country after 18 years away.) After searching everyday, we finally found what was potentially our dream home. Then the nightmare began. The real estate agent threatened a law suit and coerced us to close contingencies before we were ready, she also lied to us about the C C &R's. But we were told to sign paperwork for "Dual Agency" and it wasn't until we both took a real estate course that we finally understood what this means, which is: dual agency means that the agency is purely in the camp of the seller! The seller is who pays them. Next, before we realized that our real estate agents were crooked, we asked them to recommend a great contractor, as we needed extensive work done on the property as it was a fixer.
They HIGHLY recommended not only a very bad contractor, but this person and his associates and partners were also guilty of the following:
Contractor fraud, real estate fraud, credit card fraud, drug runs of huge amounts of cocaine from Mexico, securities fraud, illegal dumping of toxic waste on private property, multiple identities (and social security numbers), mortgage fraud, impersonating a dead person, and last but not least, child adbuction!!!
To say that these people are bad people and serious criminals is an understatement. We gave them $200,000 before we finally realized the work was not going to get fixed or get any better and so fired them. We have since sued them and have a judgement for $128,000 (we paid out $30,000+ to the lawyer for the privilege .... and the amount is still rising because we haven't paid it off yet.) That said, the piece of paper that says we won said judgement is useless because there is no way to collect with criminals like these because they know how to hide their money. (In other identities and other countries most likely.)
The worse thing is that I found out that the agent KNEW one of the guys was guilty of a felony, yet they still recommended because "they bring us a lot a business." SCUM.
We thought that fixing the house would cost us $270,000. But because we have to pretty much rip out most of the 4-5 months work those contractors did, it ended up costing us $500,000 altogether. That was all the money we had.
To add to that, when we bought the home, we put $431,000 cash down. So now.... we were nearly 1 million down for money we put into the house. This is ALL of our life savings and everything we own.
Our loan amount is $690,000, interest only at 6.125%. and we also have a second, which of course we used when we fell on tough times. Our work suffered, our lives suffered. I have been suicidal and my husband has permanent injuries (like a triple herniated disk) from trying to do some of the work ourselves. The stress has been unbelievable. And the house prices have dropped out so all the money we put in doesn't show up any more and the bank - who should only own 50% of the house, now owns 100%.
We started applying to get a loan mod 2 1/2 years ago with WAMU (FA) who of course, is no more. We have just finished being denied now for the 6th time trying for a loan mod. The amount of paperwork they required for us (we are self employed and have about six different businesses/ways of making money) to do has been a full time job in itself. They have given us the runaround at Chase like you wouldn't believe. they've lost paperwork, hung up on us, told us conflicting things, calling us (from the collections) multiple times a day, and denied us for reasons like we make too little money, or we made too much money, or stall and stall because "after 60 days your application is null and void because it's now out of date. " Yet it took more that 60 days to get assigned a "relationship manager" ......
We had to give them more information than even the IRS requires!
So... here we are now.... our main mortgage payment just went up from $3521.88 per month to $4815 a month, because they've now impounded our property tax and insurance. And we are 60 days delinquent. The Making Homes affordable program is a joke for my husband and I for multiple reasons:
1. we are self employed and they won't look at our gross income only our net.
2. 31% of our income (and no more) has to be allocated to not only mortgage payment, but also to property tax and to insurance and hoa fees. This is too low. According to this, we would have to make $11,500 per month just to qualify! And it is just my husband and me. This percentage should be 40% or 50% not 31%!! Plus if we were making $11,500 per month to pay $3521.88 mortgage, we would be living a luxurious life. Instead, more than 100% of our income goes to our mortgage payemnt now, and our credit card debt is massive. Not to mention debts to friends and family.
If we were to walk away we would lose everything we own. Everything we worked for all our lives (I'm late 40's, he, mid-50's). And our credit is now bad so the chances of us finding a rental that would take us is slim. We can't rent the house out because the rentals in our area won't cover our costs. And Chase won't bend. Not even a little. We are trapped. Lose everything.... or, I don't know, sell a kidney?
We have been approached by many legal firms and mortgage restructuring companies (Amerifi is one we are considering).... and we'd like to know if anyone else has any info about ANY company including Amerifi that has truly gotten the bank to give them a loan mod. After all the experiences we've had, we don't trust anyone! We can't get out from under Chase, because we played the delinquency game so that Chase would consider us for a loan mod. (Someone at Chase TOLD us to go deliquent!) Now we can't go anywhere else because we have to be current for 12 months.
Anyway, I wanted to share my story for you to put on your blog, so that we can exchange stories and maybe even join forces with others in California or around the country to figure out a way to hang on to our house.
Of course our loan has been sold many times over, and at the moment one person at Chase tells us our note is now owned by USBank. But they won't confirm that in writing. Bastards.
That's us. That is our nightmare.
Hope this makes some people feel better about their own nightmare.... because I expect our story is pretty damn bad.
All the best,
j and j
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