10 percent of homeowners least one payment behind or in foreclosure.
One of those “underwater” borrowers is Heather Noble, 36, who lives outside Detroit and can see five foreclosures from her front porch. A single mother, she struggled to make her mortgage payment since being laid off from her job in October 2007.
Late last summer, she started a $17-an-hour job handling billing for a doctor’s office, but making her home loan payment of around $1,000 a month was a stretch because her take-home pay is at most $1,600 a month, depending on the amount of time she works.
Starting last spring, she spent hour after hour on the phone talking to what she describes as “every human being and division possible” at JPMorgan Chase & Co., before obtaining approval for a loan modification.
Noble’s modification had been held up until the fall, and she was actually blocked from making her monthly payment until the Associated Press made an inquiry into her case. “In the large volumes that we’re handling, we occasionally will miss something,” spokesman Tom Kelly said.
