Lenders Won't Respond to Attorney re: Surrender

[Frogge]

A letter from my attorney was sent to the 2nd mtg holder on our vacant TN house on June 16th (the day we were officially past due), offering to give them the house in exchange for deficiency write off. They never responded, and they don't have our new info so we just keep getting notices in the mail forwarded from our old address.

At the end of the June, Countrywide (1st mtg) started calling us but we missed the calls for weeks. They then were sent a similar letter from the attorney, and we gave them his info. Calls stopped. They called the attorney.

These lenders have been contacted numerous times via mail and phone by my attorney, we have given the attorney's info, and they are still sending notices to me, not him. The 2nd even sent a certified letter yesterday that this is our "Last Chance" to pay before they foreclose. My attorney has sent them a letter saying that under the FDCPA they are precluded from contacting us directly, and he wished to discuss surrendering the property. -The idea is/was to negotiate debt forgiveness (the house is about $30K+ upside down) AND credit reporting.. which of course now our credit has tanked with them reporting 60 days unpd.

I'm wondering why they are just acting like the attorney is not involved..? I'm seriously starting to wonder how on earth this is going to end any better than just doing nothing and letting them foreclose! I'm feeling anxious, I guess. I just got a bill from the attorney for $78.

Why won't they talk to him, and why do they keep sending us notices?

[PoorGrammyinBK7]

And there are people that think it was irresponsible buyers who created this whole mortgage mess.

Before I ever got delinquent I attempted to save my credit by working a deal with my lenders. Neither would even talk to me. The outright refused to talk to me unless I was late. So I stopped paying. At 30 days, all they wanted was the payments, I tried again to work out some type of arrangement for a forbearance plan or a reduced payment while I tried to sell the house. Neither the first or second would even talk to me about it.

At 60 days they both sent certified letters about being delinquent. But neither would agree to anything less than full payment of the late payments and all the fees and charges.

At 90 days I got certified mail from both accelerating the payoff to full payment only. <eye roll> At this point I pretty much saw my credit go down the drain. So I was like screw you take the house, its half gutted out and worth less than what is owed.

Here we are at 9 months of no payments, the second has stopped trying to collect wrote the debt off as a charge off on my credit. The first loan was sold to Litton Loan Servicing who is now violating the FDCPA while trying to collect over $15K in late payments <eye roll>.

I really don't get it, I think these lenders are the bulk of the problem. I needed a little help and none would help me out at all. So they left me in a position to say screw you, you screwed my 720 credit so why should I even care anymore?

I had two major events happen that I can point too that will lead me to eventually file BK. One was BoA taking two accounts worth over $35K and after an "account review" decided I needed a 29.9% and a 33.2% APR on my cards that were not over limit nor late at all. And the second was once I got tight on cash to be able to complete this remodel the lenders would not even work with me to get it done and sell the house before the market took a total dump.

It just makes no sense these days why lenders won't work with people. Maybe it did back when real estate continued to go up, up, up - but NOW????

I was wondering what your "account review" consisted of? I recently got a letter from the lender of our 2nd mtg saying they were doing an "account review", wanting a complete current financial statement and tax returns, etc. They sent this 10 days after we filed, by the way!

[needingsomehelp]

We are with Countrywide as well. We got behind last July, and immediately made an attempt to work with them, they refused to help us modify the loan at that point. They said the only thing that we could do was pay them back the amount that we were behind over a three month period, which increased out payments by $900/m. We were having trouble making payments as was, due to the ARM increase, and they wanted us to make these payments.
Finally they told us, after we called them every other day, that we qualified for a modification, however, that "fell through" according to them. We heard the same thing, over and over, and over, several times. Finally we filed, and walked away from the house. All we wanted to do was save our home from Foreclosure and the flat out refused, however they continued to tell us that they didn't want our house. We moved out June 1st, and what do you know, two weeks later our lawyer received a call from them stating that the Legal dept had told them they needed to modify. At that point it was to late, and our lawyer was very upset that they seemed to be playing yet another game with us.
Now here we are in August. We haven't made a payment since last Nov. yet they have not even attempted to foreclose on the home. It is ridiculous. Our lawyer figured they would immediately try to lift the stay with the BK. Nope. So now we are just waiting, and hoping that they do this soon.
The mortgage companies are a mess. Many people who are not in the situation really do not understand much about this crisis. They simply believe what they were being told. It is the borrowers fault. When we bought our home, we very much could afford it, we both had great credit scores, etc. It is just very sad.
Anyways- sorry for the long rant. It just makes me so mad to hear of all of us in these situations, yet the mortgage companies cry poor us. Anyways- stepping down now!! LOL

[Frogge]

Well my "account review" was with BoA on my credit cards. It meant they pulled my credit and then looked at my use of my credit and then decided I was prime to get a huge interest rate stuffed down my throat. There are a lot of posts on this topic and lots and lots of people that have had their credit cards limits cut, interest rates raises etc and they had no lates and only used a little credit.

Yes, since the late pmts on the mortgages I've had a few credit limits cut to the bare minimum, to the point of going over limit at next statement with the finance charges. The letters in the mail stated "mortgage(s) 30 or more late" as the reason. By constant monitoring I was able to deter these.. otherwise who knows what would have happened.

I was glad to see that the major CC's are not taking the immediate action of raising rates as of now, but this slish-slash limit cut tactic still causes problems and needless to say our 770 scores are in the low 600s. I was hoping to get a small car loan to help my 16 y-o buy a car, but I will now save cash. He just got a job.

I am preparing to battle these CC companies now. "JMO"

[Frogge]

Let's talk about the rest of the story.

These mortgages were acquired by fraudulent applications submitted by a broker. My attorney has all the documentation. Countrywide's app shows we were making way more money than we were, and even shows we were insolvent at the time the loan was closed = $67,000 in CC debt and NO assets (even though we owned a house in KC at the time). It was to be a NINJA deal but apparently that wasn't going to work out. Neither bank questioned these apps or the info given.

Our fault we didn't look over the apps, but they were given to us the day of closing. We were moving our family across the country, things were unclear, but we needed a house asap, etc. Not until just recently did I even read the applications, which was stupid, but it's the facts. We trusted the broker because she'd handled a lot of RE purchases for my SIL.

After the loans closed the broker called me to say congratulations, and explained she was due another 1% fee for getting the deal done (which I paid her directly - she couldn't report it or something) and told me that we "better not go BK or anything" ..hahaha.." I took that as a joke (like don't lose your house, it was hard getting the loans, etc) The mortgages were approved so we were grateful.

I'm wondering how far either lender might go to sue me and/or the broker for the false info they were provided. Or if they fear trouble so they'll leave it alone.

The house may be worth $125K-$130K and I owe Countrywide $124,000 and $45,000 to Regions.

Just looking for thoughts on this.

[AngelinaCatHub]

These mortgages were acquired by fraudulent applications submitted by a broker. My attorney has all the documentation. Countrywide's app shows we were making way more money than we were, and even shows we were insolvent at the time the loan was closed = $67,000 in CC debt and NO assets (even though we owned a house in KC at the time). It was to be a NINJA deal but apparently that wasn't going to work out. Neither bank questioned these apps or the info given.

Our fault we didn't look over the apps, but they were given to us the day of closing. We were moving our family across the country, things were unclear, but we needed a house asap, etc. Not until just recently did I even read the applications, which was stupid, but it's the facts. We trusted the broker because she'd handled a lot of RE purchases for my SIL.

After the loans closed the broker called me to say congratulations, and explained she was due another 1% fee for getting the deal done (which I paid her directly - she couldn't report it or something) and told me that we "better not go BK or anything" ..hahaha.." I took that as a joke (like don't lose your house, it was hard getting the loans, etc) The mortgages were approved so we were grateful.

I'm wondering how far either lender might go to sue me and/or the broker for the false info they were provided. Or if they fear trouble so they'll leave it alone.

The house may be worth $125K-$130K and I owe Countrywide $124,000 and $45,000 to Regions.

Just looking for thoughts on this.