Can Anyone Stop the Predatory Lenders? (yes - you sue them) (read the comments - great info)

Submitted by Quest-News-Serv... on Sun, 03/03/2013 - 13:05.

With nowhere else to turn, homeowners can always sue. Deanna Walters has sued Ocwen, and a judge has allowed her to stay in her home, even as the winner of the foreclosure auction is trying to charge her rent. Many who need legal help are those who can least afford it—like Cothran, who lost her job in May. A self-described "spitfire," she is left to do her own legwork—"every day, all day long"—to save her home. "If you could tell me who I need to speak to," she says, "I would be in a van tonight headed to Washington to figure this out."

NO ONE TOLD Deanna Walters she was about to lose her home. Not when her mortgage servicing company foreclosed on it, nor when it landed on the county auction block and sold to the highest bidder. She realized what was happening only when a man taped a note to the front door of her well-kept house in a leafy corner of Stockton, California, last January. "My son went out and took it down," recalls the 43-year-old single mother of two, "and that's when he told me it was a 'three-day or quit' notice."

Walters' discovery that her home had been sold out from under her marked the low point of a four-year fiasco that began when Ocwen Loan Servicing became her mortgage servicer in late 2004. Through no fault of her own, Ocwen incorrectly processed or lost dozens of Walters' payments and charged her more than $2,000 in late fees and thousands more in additional charges—all without notifying her. The Florida-based company tried to foreclose on her three times. After she paid more than $10,000, Walters figured things were settled. But Ocwen had other ideas.

Sitting in the storefront office where she runs a tax preparation business next door to the local congressman's office, Walters recounts her ordeal. She riffles through stacks of account statements and correspondence with the state and federal regulators she's complained to. She has managed to stay in her home for now, but with little help from those agencies. "No one will deal with these people," she laments. "Why isn't anyone doing anything?"

Mortgage servicers are the housing industry's middlemen, low-profile companies that handle the day-to-day business of collecting payments, managing paperwork, and initiating foreclosures. Some banks, such as Wells Fargo and Bank of America, have their own mortgage-servicing arms; others contract with companies like Ocwen. Either way, borrowers are largely at their mercy: They have no say in who services their mortgages, and they can't fire their servicer for doing a bad job. "They're set up to be dictators," says Irwin Trauss, a housing attorney at Philadelphia Legal Assistance. "They're set up to say, 'It's my way or the highway.'"

The housing bust may have revealed the shady side of the home loan industry, but unscrupulous mortgage servicers still have little incentive to change. Last year, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) received nearly 2,500 complaints about servicers, a 379 percent increase over 2007. In the first 10 months of 2009, consumers filed about 1,000 legal complaints against 10 of the largest servicers for illegal foreclosures and other predatory practices. A Florida widow is suing her servicer for allegedly badgering her husband with as many as nine collection calls a day, causing a fatal heart attack.

A federal class-action suit against Ocwen asserts that it has hiked mortgage payments without fair notice, forced borrowers to buy unnecessary insurance, and intentionally processed payments late. Ocwen's general counsel, Paul Koches, says the lawsuit is baseless. He wouldn't comment on Walters' case, but said the company complies with and "takes all federal, state, and local laws seriously."

The Obama administration's Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) has set aside $75 billion to pay servicers to rewrite mortgages so homeowners can stay in their homes. (See "We're Paying WHOM to Fix Subprime Mortgages?") Beyond that, though, servicers have little incentive to help borrowers, because they can reap lucrative fees from arrears and foreclosures. "Fees have exploded since the meltdown," says Trauss. Testifying before the Senate banking committee last July, Diane Thompson, an attorney with the National Consumer Law Center, explained that servicers have an incentive to "push" homeowners into late payments: "If the loan pays late, the servicer is more likely to profit than if the loan is brought and maintained current." After Ocwen auctioned off Deanna Walters' house, it collected more than $3,500 from 36 different buyers' fees, in a single day.

Oversight of this troubled industry is spotty. "This is a very underregulated part of the system," says Jack Guttentag, an industry expert and professor emeritus of finance at the Wharton School. "It shouldn't be, because it's the part where the consumer has no place to protect themselves." Federal law allows servicers to send borrowers only one account statement a year—even if there are scheduled interest rate increases or new fees added during that time. If a borrower has a problem, HUD encourages her to first file a complaint with the servicer, and if there's no resolution after nearly three months, she can then appeal to the agency—assuming she hasn't been evicted in the meantime. While HUD can step in to fix the problem, it lacks the power to impose tough sanctions on servicers.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and Office of Thrift Supervision also have limited oversight over the mortgage industry. An OTS spokesman could name only one formal action the agency has taken against a servicer—Ocwen, in 2004. An OCC spokesman said his agency has never taken action against servicers.

The FTC has settled three major cases since 2003, resulting in settlements totaling almost $70 million. But even that hasn't kept servicers in check. EMC Mortgage, a JP Morgan Chase subsidiary, settled with the FTC in 2008 for misleading and ripping off borrowers. That settlement, however, didn't help consumers like Tammy Cothran, who says EMC foreclosed on her house outside Pensacola, Florida, even though she wasn't in default. She has appealed to state and federal agencies, and even faxed the White House daily for five weeks. Those efforts left her frustrated: HUD told her it couldn't help because her mortgage isn't insured by the Federal Housing Administration, and the FTC said it was "not in a position to intervene."

Mortgage servicers who have signed up for HAMP funds are prohibited from charging modification fees or foreclosing on participants in the program. However, the toughest penalties for noncompliance are withholding incentive payments or ejection from the program. A Treasury spokeswoman says that officials have reviewed thousands of loan files looking for mistakes or fraud. Yet in October the bailout watchdog SIGTARP cited HAMP's poor oversight, and consumer advocates say there is no clear way to report wrongdoing. "I have yet to identify anyone to contact to say, 'This isn't working right. Do something about it,'" says Trauss. (For resources on dealing with servicers, click here.)

With nowhere else to turn, homeowners can always sue. Deanna Walters has sued Ocwen, and a judge has allowed her to stay in her home, even as the winner of the foreclosure auction is trying to charge her rent. Many who need legal help are those who can least afford it—like Cothran, who lost her job in May. A self-described "spitfire," she is left to do her own legwork—"every day, all day long"—to save her home. "If you could tell me who I need to speak to," she says, "I would be in a van tonight headed to Washington to figure this out."

Andy Kroll

Reporter

Andy Kroll is a reporter at Mother Jones. For more of his stories, click here. Email him with tips and insights at akroll (at) motherjones (dot) com. Follow him on Twitter here. RSS |

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Showing 50 comments

  • Banks want foreclosures to sell them again and earn more money with new owners.

  • Loan Servicing
    No. The loan servicing companies love defaults because they have several beneficial effects upon them.
    1. Late fees.
    2. Penalties.
    3. Interest on billions of dollars paid by homeowners but held in "suspense" accounts unapplied to the underlying mortgages.
    They love foreclosures because they give:
    1. Excessive fees charged for managing foreclosures ($2,500 for title insurance for a $125,00 foreclosure?).
    2. Relief from responsibility for a troubled loans. (Pooling and Servicing agreements allow recourse for failure to follow the agreement but not for letting the property go to foreclosure.)
    The banks (investers) then eat the loss on the foreclosed property and taxpayers bail the banks, insurers and securitizers out.
    lather, rinse, repeat.

  • City Life helping homeowners fight eviction after foreclosure
    Bill Moyer's Journal highlighted a community organization in Boston - City Life/Vida Urbana which is helping the homeowners fight evictions after foreclosure and advising them an supporting them into forcing the the banks to negotiate with the homeowner. It's the 2nd half of the show but quite encouraging and empowering. Here's the link:

    http://www.pbs.org/moyers/jour...

    I hope this movement spreads - putting power back into the hands of the people.

  • I think home ownership is overated. The bankers have sold it as the American dream when in fact it's the tie that binds us to corporate machine. The fact that the bankers are getting all the money in the first five years of your mortgage is the bank playing us for suckers.......who would agree to this if there was a choice? In Salt lake city the housing prices are completely out of whack with what people earn......A person making 30-40 k/year has no buisiness buying a 250k house..........unless you want to be a slave to the bank.......I predict that you just begun to see housing prices drop.... look at Detroit

  • Now you see...
    ...it's stories like this that make me glad we have a second amendment.

  • Until they take it away from us. Just like they are trying to the 14th amendment.

  • The banks get most of the money you make during your working life and then their buddies in health care get the rest at the end.....3-6k per month to live and be ignored in a human kennel.....All hail the reverse mortgage

  • One word:
    Kickbacks

  • these guys are scum
    I've been dealing with these crooks for three years. My wife and I have been in a battle ... a very public battle with them for nearly a 1 1/2 years. The modification was final after 16 months of fighting, destroying our credit, and still even with a very low interest rate we continue to get screwed.
    They are notorious for charging junk fees and fines and have continued to do this with us. In addition they falsely reported charge offs and home values to the IRS.
    There is no oversight and no one to complain to and they continue to rape with impunity. Former employees openly discuss their fraud and officials do nothing to change it.
    I agree with Trollstein. WE do nothing until they threaten to charge for Facebook. Then we form massive groups on Facebook ironically. But when they threaten to take away our neighbors home we sit and watch

    I've written about these criminals here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

    And http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

    Anyone dealing with Ocwen or that has received a mod, I'd love to hear about it.

  • Someone I know just recently had their home go into foreclosure and they were one month ahead on their house payments. It has messed their perfect credit up. They got an attorney and are going to fight it. What else can they do? This is not the first time I have heard of this. What can we as Americans do?

  • Since Americans have a reputation of owing China the most amount of money already, borrow some more. We can start by naming the U.S., CHINA as a first option then take out all the amendments that protect the people. I see a very bright future for China

  • Hi It is 12/5/2010, Ocwen became our servicer on 9/1/10, we'd been given a modification through (Homeq prior servicer). Ocwen from the first day couldn't find it, talked about everything being okay not to worry... we finally got them to admit they had the mod on 9/22/10 we made 1st pymt on 10/1 which thet put in suspense, we continued to speak with them sometimes several times a day (in India) we were told that the Concerns dept was reviewing the matter. On Nov.1 we made 2nd pymt, that was posted to account, noticed that our statement says we are in foreclosure, they said "don't worry your new information will be updated by December statement". Ocwen was accepting payments and telling us don't worry. Many conversations later with no acknowledgement from them other than verbally that there was no active foreclosure, because the concerns dept was still reviewing on Nov 29, 2010 a Notice of Trustee Sale was posted on our door with a sale date set for Dec 27, 2010. November 30 I called their CEO, William Erbey, finally landed back in the US and spoke to...

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  • I've been in your shoes already. Nobody helped us. Every answer we received lead to a dead end. I wish you the best of luck.

  • Creditors Perspective
    Since I respect the freedom of speech and I like Mother Jones as a whole, I will simply say that a little fact checking on some of the allegations of this article would've went a long way. If you buy something, you should pay for it. If you can't then it isn't the fault of who lent you the money to buy it. You bought it. Collection calls caused a heart attack? Collection calls don't come if you aren't in collections. Perhaps if their economnic status (employment, funds, savings, etc.) had been in order then he wouldn't have been so stressed. This article is like blaming the cop when the guy gets caught drunk driving because the driver was depressed that he lost his job and drank to much.

    The drunk driving was up to the guy, the cop was merely doing his job.

    If ther are some real honest to god facts that belong to the article other than whining, I would be interested.

    You seriously think that people who stay in a home shouldn't pay rent????!!! Please explain how that works inside your head.

    ...

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  • do some research of your own
    Stephanie: You should maybe take your own advice and look into what's happening in this country. You may be one of the sanctimonious people who think you did everything right and made all the right choices. Or ,maybe you didn't get that the house was paid off and Ocwen still foreclosed. Or maybe you don't get that it's illegal even for debt collectors to call more than three times a day. Maybe it also eludes you that people were sold bad debts from professionals they were supposed to trust. You can blame the homeowner for listening to the loan officer as much as you can blame me for listening to my cardiologist when I had heart surgery.
    My home lost 40% of its value over night. That wasn't poor planning or a bad investment on my part. That was artificially inflated values. Am I a victim? I certainly am. As are nearly 12 million others. The speculators walked away long ago. For you to accuse people of being irresponsible is ridiculously ignorant on your part. When mortgage interest increases to 13% on a 300,000 that's now worth $100,000 you still seem to have...

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  • Addressing Stephanie: I have witnessed way too much. I have witnessed federal judges being mysteriously promoted one week before a bench trial involving one of the giant banks. I have witnessed a federal magistrate judge issuing an injunction--prohibiting a civil litigant in a case against a giant bank from filing any paperwork with any court. I am in possession of a letter from the OCC (and I have seen two other identical letters) saying that the regulatory agency will not intervene in any matter which is the subject of any litigation. My own lawyer told me that when he wanted to refinance his home, his long term banker was insisting that he falsify his listed income--when in fact he qualified for the mortgage (with room to spare) based on his real income. I know people who were foreclosed on owing NOTHING to the alleged lender. I know other people who were receiving 15-20 aggressive phone calls EVERY day INCLUDING WEEKENDS from collection agcys LOOKING FOR OTHER PEOPLE who happened to have addresses in the same building. I know examples where the lenders had NO PERSONAL GUARANTEES on corporate debt but engaged...

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  • Wow! You're really narrow sighted and not very open minded either. I guess that you think that it's ok if the banks get a free house...even if they need to commit fraud. Do you work on Wall Street?

  • You seem to have your head in the sand. Not everyone used their home as a ATM, we didn't. Not everyone drives drunk, your metaphor not mine, we don't. You best hold on to that head of yours you may find yourself wondering what happened and maybe whining as you do wonder. If you are a creditor examine your practices, for a collector to call a debtor 9 times in a single day, that is "harrassment" and they are forbidden from doing it. Shake out the sand in your head and let some humanity in. On the fact checking end did you check any facts before you replied to this article?

  • I am the individual Andy Kroll is speaking of in this article.  I would like you to know I am not living mortgage or rent free.  I agreed to pay the 3rd party purchaser $1500 a month in rent until this is resolved.  That is more than my payment was of $1200.  I also agreed to pay taxes and insurance.  This all on top of attorney fees is hardly a free ride.  Perhaps you should do your homework before commenting on something you know nothing about!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Deanna

  • Stephen in Texas 02/09/2010 09:49 PM

    So where are the warm bodies?
    Trollstein said: "So where are the warm bodies?"
    I submit that you answered your own question. It is not that everyone is lazing away watching reruns of Jersey Shore . It is, that we have become to connected, we have lost the sense of community that you referenced. Now the community is worldwide and digital and we can rant from the comfort of our homes. We are placated, not lazy.

  • Jersey Shore
    Is Jersey Shore in reruns already? Damn, I'm so out of touch.

  • My View As An Outsider
    I have read with interest the comments and as a new kid on the block having just registered with motherjones l have been both enraged and compassionate to peoples comments. The two that are different in their outlook are rzombeck and Trollstien.

    Firstly the most important rzombeck l will say that as an outsider in the UK and also not fully conversant with rules and regulations appertaining to the US lending market, but safe to say l am updating very fast as l spent most of my life as a UK broker and lender and l was appalled at the lack of regulation of lenders back in the 1980`s that now have cart`e blanch`e to doing anything and even get government hand-outs.

    The problem is that when we allow any large corporate body to self-regulate and sooner or later it would become uncontrollable and banks like Fannie Mac and Fannie Mae are prime examples. In the UK we had self-certification mortgages enabling people to say l earned X when in fact they earned Y and providing it fitted criteria you got the mortgage and it always did.

    Then in the US...

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  • There are some lenders that really act in a bad way, making things more difficult to people who want assistance in the real estate market

  • As the large banks merged, acquired and consolidated, they each became respectively larger percentages of the total legal revenues in those communities where they had branches. Game over. No longer are they 'litigants', they became power-vested tyrants. And BTW: the OCC is the correct agency from which to seek regulatory relief. But years of politically-fixed leadership has resulted in an OCC who does not do its job and prefers to protect predator banks from the natural consequences of their wildly destructive conduct.

  • david wayne osedach 02/10/2010 12:49 AM

    Mortgage servicers
    Seems like the mortgage servicers can reek a lot of havoc and end up losing your house. And, there is little or nothing you can do about it.

  • The Ocwen guys are essentially criminals taking advantage of loopholes. They should be shown no mercy.

    The absence of regulation is shocking!

  • Keep all documents and contact your
    state Attorney General's office. That's what they are there for. We had a situation with a bank which also involved flood insurance. I wrote a letter to the bank which I copied to the Insurance Commissioner and the Attorney General. They got involved immediately and the problem was solved.

    Keep track of every phone call and document everything.

  • What state? (because I may move there). When the lender involved is federally chartered, the state's banking commission has no jurisdiction. Anton Scalia stunned the legal system a little less then a year ago when he cast the deciding vote permiting state's laws (therefore also the state's atty general) to even apply state consumer protection laws to federally chartered banks. It only took the New York Atty Gen.'s office 6 years to push that through.

  • Pulease
    I've been at this for 16 months. We called, e-mailed, faxed, called again Martha Coakley, Barney Frank, John Kerry, John Tierney ... not to mention our state Reps and Senators. We got nothing. Uhm, sorry, we got a voice mail in response to 9 pages of what the bank was doing and how were about to lose our home, from Tierney's office saying, "We're not sure you wanted action on this."

    There's my tax dollars in action (actually inaction).

  • Fraudulent Foreclosure Proceedings
    Check the real property law in any state and see if a foreclosure action can be commenced without production of the original note AND mortgage.

    Also see recent federal cases stating that mortgage servicers cannot commence foreclosure proceedings.

  • I have been doing mortgage closings for 20 years and I can tell you from experience that good people do get stuck with bad servicers. The borrower does everything right but the servicer post their payments late or not at all. I have had borrowers refinance to get away from their servicer (OCWEN was definetly one of them). Extreme but necessary. The cost to refinance was cheaper than dealing with the bad servicer. That is not something that would work in todays market because if you are late or miss a payment no bank will touch you. I feel for these people, because you can't choose who services your loan. It doesn't hurt to ask when you are shopping for a mortgage or refinancing to find out who they have service the loans. Your loan can still ultimately be sold but it doesn't hurt to reduce the chances. The mortgage co. that I do my personal business with retains the servicing on most of their loans and that is important to me as a consumer.
    Ocwen is just one of many bad servicers. One...

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  • You can find out who your servicer is at time of sale, but, as in my case, servicers can change two or three times after that. Or there will be no servicer at first, but shortly after you own the home the mortgage is then sold. There's really no way out except to pass legislation allowing consumers to "fire" bad servicers.

  • Incompetent or fraudulent loan processors
    This is shocking! I wasn't aware that, apart from the problems with inevitably underwater houses going into foreclosure because payments are not made (for whatever reason, mostly not for unwillingness surely) there are others where people actually rather OVERpay on their mortgage and still get thrwn out. This should be treated just like other cromes of similar impact like taking hostages at gunpoint, fraud etc.

  • In the 1960's we (the people) had a single dial telephone per household, which BTW was relatively expensive to use. Most homes had no typewriters, let alone laser-jets or even e-mails. No speed-dials and no faxes either. Yet, when a political issue arose of significant moment, my folks (along with others in our apartment complex and our general neighborhood) networked and motivated. Street marches were not uncommon and even issues seemingly obscure for that day, like anti aerosol-spray activism got people on the non air-conditioned bus to Washington DC for street demonstrations.
    The reason I mention this is because the topic being discussed is one where most everyone should be in agreement. Banks should not be allowed to rob people's homes. Today we have amazing networking tools such as internet and so forth. So where are the warm bodies? 1/2 are watching digital TV (250 channels of zombification) and the other half are either afraid of 'big brother' or possibly are so ego driven that they can't involve themselves in any cause to which they are not the founder and chief exec.. We are already paying a horrific price for this...

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  • Your Grandchildren
    Nice to see you're an optimist, but I don't think your grandchildren will live long enough to have any opinion about your actions.

  • Abraham Ben Judea 02/12/2010 05:15 AM

    When the mortgage co's sold those bundled products, they split the original note. You must understand that the mortagage is not the same as the note. Mortgage is the service to the NOTE. Many banks such as Chase Citi, Fargo sold and LOST the notes to many buyers as Trust series securities. WHOEVER has the notes has the claim to your House. Your job and the lawyer's job is to ask for the original note. Force the bank to produce said note. It is suggested that in all answers to the summons the following terminology should be included.
    " Motion to dismiss summons.
    The defendant asserts that the institution no longer has possession of the original note. and therefore has no valid claim. We ask the court to set a trial date, where the original note is demanded as proof. Should the original note fail to appear after 90 days, we ask the court to declare a forfeit of claim."

  • a lot of your words resemble the minds at:
    http://livinglies.wordpress.co...

  • Abraham Ben Judea/ Elizabeth Warrens assistant...
    Were that it really was this simple.

  • Hey Stephanie
    I know it must be comforting to just lump everyone who has problems with servicers into the "deadbeats who don't pay their bills and have no right to complain" category, so you can continue to sneer at those who are losing their homes.

    You can't lump my husband and I in that bogus category.

    My husband and I bought our home in August 2006. In hindsight it was a horrible time to buy, but we did. We have an Option ARM.

    Our mortgage servicing rights were sold four times in the first year, and they ended up with another predatory servicer, Litton Loans (now owned by Goldman Sachs, by the way).

    We have never made a late payment, and never paid anything less than the interest only option -- so we're not adding principal to our mortgage. Money's tight, so any extra we have is going toward paying off other bills.

    We have also NEVER been late on any other payments to ANYONE.

    For the first 11 months Litton serviced our mortgage, they processed our payment incorrectly TEN times. They put it in a suspense account, then increased our principal balance...

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  • BTW: The FDIC has different criteria for rating loans to public companies then to private ones (and individuals). Since the banks pay their FDIC insurance rates based on the overall 'book-health' of their loans, the deck is stacked against the independent. To add gross insult to profound injury, a public company can loose millions whilst paying their CEO millions more and no personal guarantees exist to support the loan(s). So the banks then refrain from defaulting public companies and they even refrain from breaking Wall Street balls. With a private company, the bank can easily reach a stage where they wish to INDUCE a default---because they see the repay faster and easier from the guarantor then to wait around and risk any depletion of assets. So, you're entirely right--borrowing is a business. The lender is the supplier of credit and is morally no superior to the cable TV company. It is no 'holy sacrament'. The real difference is that the banks use PUBLIC money, both from depositors and from the FED, to heavily amplify their leverage and power. That is the true moral crime.

  • Can anyone stop predatory government?

  • Illegal foreclosures and evictions
    It is amazing how many poor souls who have been screwed by
    these filthy predators try to fight their desperate battles alone.

    If homeowners would just contact their elected representatives,
    they could cut through the red tape a lot faster.

    We pay our US Senators and Representatives, so why not use them when we need help? Their offices all employ constituent
    staff to deal with problems. They LOVE helping constituents,
    because it translates into votes.

    I notice that "Puleeze" went that way, but had a bad experience with John Tierney's office, and -- from what P. says -- not much
    action from the other officials.

    I'd like to hope that this was not the usual experience. In any
    case, it doesn't hurt to lean on your paid reps, and could help.

    And please don't say that you don't know who your elected reps are. Their name, phone, fax and email should be next to your computer. If you don't know, FIND OUT.

    My heartfelt good wishes to the innocents who are being screwed by the system. Let Obama -- the so-called "leader" know that you...

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  • THE FIX
    All that is necessary to take care of this situation is for a few judges to rule that the occupier is in possession and without obligation to pay . Problem solved ! The end of Predatory lending . That may even be the end of lending .

  • anti_fascist_freedom_fighter 02/17/2010 06:30 AM

    Why you will never get a loan mod.
    Wake up. If it paid to modify your loan, the banks, the servicers, the investors would do it. The truth is almost nobody ever gets a loan mod. Everybody gets foreclosed upon.

    It doesn't pay the investor to modify. I'll bet you dollars to donuts, if you can't get a mod (and virtually NOBODY gets one), your loan is backed by mortgage insurance. Either you paid for it, or the lender bought a separate policy behind your back. The lender bundled your loan, good or bad, into a "collateralized debt obligation" as the ink was drying on your note and mortgage. They got Moodys, Standard and Poors, and/or Fitch to rate this worthless paper as AAA. AIG, or some other scumbag insurer, wrote an insurance policy or a risk-management trade on your paper, shifting the risk of loss to someone else (who has now been bailed out by TARP, to pay the obligation on it). YOU don't see a dime. Anyway, your "lender" got repaid years ago when they sold the CDO to the investor. Now...

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  • Legal system, and the justice we think we will get.
    Why is it, the attorneys, judges etc. have no way of being prosecuted for wrong doing?
    One attorney in my county, made two trips to a Transition center, to write a new will . The attorney, was supossedly a friend for 20 yrs.
    The gentleman in question, had been diagnoised with Alzyeimers by the doctor. The medicine he was given was all wrong. He was later found to have Parkinsons disease, and Lewy Body disease. The wrong meds. made him totally out of his mind. He is 86 yrs. old..
    Come to find out, later in 2 court hearings, A neighbor had been put in as guardian, and was given total control by the judge. This happened, even though the daughter ask to be his guardian..
    The Area on Aging had been called many times, to help me with this. They went along with the attorney and judge.
    The gentleman was later declared incompetant, and is now in a nursing home, where the guardian went to his room, and said:" this room is where you will be the rest of your...

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  • Samlooksforward 10/15/2010 09:22 PM

    After four years of getting NO calls through to Ocwen, having mortgage interest raised five times then lowered three and then raised again and then paying close to $80,000. to them to negociate a better more affordable monthly payment I am in foreclosure. I am a single mother of three children and when I was being thrown around no one knew what a subprime mortgage was. Now that its come to light and everyone is on board NOTHING is being done to help. I am far behind and hoped that since Ocwen is taking every penny of bail out money they can get their paws on they might negotiate the mortgage down to a reasonable payment...anything. No, I met them face to face in Boston last month only to be met with a curt "no" we won't even talk about helping you. They won't get anywhere near a good amount for the house if they foreclose and I asked why they wouldn't negotiate with me and he had no answer. They'd rather take the Obama money, throw me out and take less money for the house than negotiate something with the person they...

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  • And government was created - WHY?

    We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union,
    establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common
    defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to
    ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the
    United States of America.

  • Richard T Carr 10/21/2010 05:07 AM

    Has anyone gotten a loan from Aapex Mortgage from Cosa Mesa, California from a man named Jason Piazza. I was quoted an amount for a mortgage to be $2,000.00 per month and at closing it was changed to an ARM with the note being $3700.00 per month. I was going to lose my $5,000.00 retainer if I did not go thru with it and then told by Piazza that I could refinance after 6 months and get a better loan. When I went to get the better loan, they said my house was not worth what I paid for it and declined me. My house went into foreclosure with David Sterns office taking hold of it and refused to even talk with me even when I had a buyer for my home. I ended up going thru bankruptcy in Feb. 2010. I don't have any money for a lawyer, but would sure like to find a class action suit against these people. I called David Sterns office one time and ask to speak to Mr. Stern and the lady laughed at me and slammed the phone down. If anyone reading this and can help, please email me at ...

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  • @ Anonymous - (posted on 2-13-10)

    "I'd like to hope that this was not the usual experience. In any
    case, it doesn't hurt to lean on your paid reps, and could help."

    In response to your statement: I DID in fact contact my paid reps. Local government officials (some not in my district), Florida Senate and House Reps, Governor Charlie Crist, Florida CFO Alex Sink, Office of Banking Regulations, Florida DBPR, BBB in Florida and Texas, Texas officials, Tim Geithner's office, HUD, FTC, the servicer, and yes the White House (they probably have a large file of my faxes, emails, and phone transactions). I called, emailed, and faxed any and all offices I could think of.

    I was relentless. My experience was overwhelming and consumed my every breath - all day every day. I blogged my situation on several sites in hopes of alerting others of what was happening, and in hopes of connecting with others that were experiencing the same thing. Little did I know that my situation was NOT the first and was NOT an isolated incident.

    I then went to the State Capitol in Tallahassee and physically spoke with...

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Can Anyone Stop the Predatory Lenders?

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2010/01/mortgage-sharks-foreclosing
 
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