Loan Deals: News

In recent years millions of homeowners have faced the prospect of foreclosure.    With foreclosure not only does the homeowner lose their home but the lender loses as well.  One alternative to foreclosure is a loan modification.  With a loan modification, the terms of the loan are changed to make the monthly payments more affordable for the struggling borrower.  Here are five loan modification tips to help you through the process.

Tip #1 Call your lender and ask to speak to the loss mitigation department

If you find yourself falling behind on your mortgage payments you need to act quickly.  Call your lender and ask for the loss mitigation department.  They are the ones who handle loan modifications.  Ask for a loan modification application and get the process started.

Tip #2 Hiring someone to help you with your loan modification request is not necessary

It is not necessary to pay a loan modification company to help you.  You can deal directly with your lender and request a loan modification yourself if you are willing to do the upfront research to understand the process.  You may want to have an attorney look over the loan modification offer before you agree to it.

Tip #3 If you do decide to hire a loan modification company check their credentials.

If you do decide you would like help with your loan modification request be sure to thoroughly research the loan modification company.  Check to make sure that they have the proper license, contact the Better Business Bureau to see if there have been any complaints filed against them, ask for references, and find out what their experience is in handling loan modifications.

Tip #4 Have your house professionally appraised

All around the country home values have dropped.  You should have your house professionally appraised and use that as a point of negotiation with your lender when seeking your loan modification, particularly if the value of your home as dropped.

Tip #5.Start with a low offer

Your initial proposal for a loan modification should be for a low rate of interest or low payment plan.  You should anticipate that your lender will come back with a counter offer so you should start low.  Before you can do this you will need to figure out what you can truly afford to pay each month and what the lender’s criteria are for a loan modification.

Loan Modification Loan Modification, tips

The sub prime mortgage industry has done a lot to contribute to the current economy, from shady un-licensed loan officers who would lie and forge documents, to brokers who were trying to get rich quick and cutting corners. Now lets welcome the Loan Modification companies.

According to MSNBC, NBC, CNN, LA TIMES, and a countless number of other reputable sources, foreclosures were up by as much as 75% in 2007 and it continues to be a problem in late 2008.

News reports are flooded with foreclosures, and pending economic rescission. This has given all of the old sub prime loan officers and brokers a new way to rip consumers off.

MSNBC: FBI: Beware of Loan Modification Scams , Feds probe foreclosure scams and Foreclosure Scam Ring Busted are just a few of the many articles in todays papers regarding this.

Loan Modification is nothing new. Banks have been doing it for some time now, but with foreclosures being the reality that it is these days, lots of people are trying to make money from those facing a legitimate hardship.

What these companies are doing is collecting advanced payment for a service that may or may not be completed. A payment which is non refundable according to the companies (which is illegal), unless of course you have the time and the energy to create a big enough headache to the broker.

SelfLoanMods.com is offering services for thoes looking to complete their own loan modification to resolve their home problems on their own, legally, without spending every last penny in their bank account. They offer a package which includes sample letters, loan forms, a step by step booklet, phone numbers, and a step by step guide designed to walk you through the entire process.

Chris from Selfloanmods.com recently in an interview pointed out that while the other companies charge for general loan modification services, they provide all this for free on their website www.selfloanmods.com. Things like phone numbers to your lenders loss mitigation department, and HUD resources.

In this day and age, its very easy to be fooled by scams that promise to help save your home. Its always better to take a few minutes of your own time and do the work yourself. Especially since most of the companies that promise to help you were the ones that got you into this problem in the first place.

Note: we have added the selfloanmods.com hardship letter section to the external links on this website.

Mortgage foreclosure, Loan Modification, Mortgage, MSNBC, Scams

The battle over the mass modifications of troubled mortgages has begun in earnest. On Dec. 1, William Frey, a private investor in mortgage-backed securities, filed an unprecedented lawsuit in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York alleging that the proposed modification of some 400,000 home loans originally underwritten by the defunct lender Countrywide Financial is illegal.

The lawsuit, which seeks class-action status, was filed against Bank of America (BAC), which bought Countrywide in late 2007. It argues that most of the Countrywide loans are not Countrywide’s or Bank of America’s to modify, but rather are owned by trusts that bought them through securitization—the process of financing home loans through the public markets by parceling them out to investors.

Frey says that BofA’s modifications (BusinessWeek.com, 10/23/07) will short bondholders $8.4 billion by reducing borrower payments. While those loan adjustments may help to keep struggling borrowers in their homes today, Frey says those alterations run the risk of permanently damaging the secondary market for housing finance.

“I am an advocate for investors’ contractual rights,” says Frey, 50, in an interview. He has publicly argued since March that loan modifications (BusinessWeek, 11/26/08) are against contract law, and has threatened to sue banks—despite, he says, receiving pressure to back down from Washington. “Investors’ voices have been muted in this debate because they speak of an inconvenient truth: Current solutions sacrifice the long-term viability of this nation’s housing finance system for short-term political gain. No matter how noble the intent, it is not in the interest of the United States now, or in the future, to tell its citizens and the world at large that U.S. contract rights may be bent with the political winds.”

Bank of America Response
In response, Bank of America spokeswoman Shirley Norton says: “We have not yet received a filing and, therefore, we cannot comment on specific claims. We are, however, disappointed in this attempt to halt a program intended to keep as many as 400,000 at-risk families in their homes and, together with similar programs across the industry, stabilize the nation’s housing market. We are confident that together with the attorneys general we have built a program that benefits both consumers and investors, whose interests we carefully considered in developing our program.”

Read the entire article (2 pages) here: http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/dec2008/db2008121_173068.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index+-+temp_news+%2B+analysis

Loan Modification Help www.selfloanmods.com

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Mortgage Bofa, countrywide, Loan Modification

Mortgage countrywide, Loan Modification

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Mortgage lenders helped save a record 225,000 at-risk mortgage borrowers from losing their homes during October, according to a report issued Tuesday by a coalition of lenders, mortgage servicers, investors and counselors assembled to fight the foreclosure plague.

The coalition, Hope Now, said the number was up from 212,000 in September.

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Mortgage Goverment Help, Help, HOPE, Loan Modification, Mortgage

The demise of the subprime mortgage industry has been hard on predatory brokers, too. They feasted for years on bad loans until reality crashed down and the money ran out, and there they were: sharks without a frenzy.

Now they are circling again. Predators of every sort have regrouped and returned to their old ways, this time as loan-modification companies, inserting themselves between hard-strapped homeowners and banks, offering to work deals — for cash up front.

It’s a high-pressure, high-volume business, advertising in the usual low-rent ways: talk-radio ads, Web come-ons, fliers on car windshields. The ads are full of glossy promises, like this one for a Long Island outfit: “Reduce your mortgage rate to as low as 4%. No refinancing — no closing costs. Reduce your monthly payment. Foreclosures, late pays/bad credit okay.”

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Mortgage Feds, Loan Modification, Scam