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 Editor's note: This is a serious issue and this is just the beginning of stories like this. The program is new and the banks are gaming it. There will be many foreclosures before there's help. And people who can pay for there homes will end up losing everything. If you know anyone going through this send them our way and we'll help get the word out.
Over the past six months we've reached out to our Senator, Representative and AG. We have been run ragged by the banks, a scam that took our money and put us further into debt, and government agencies that seem to be working in the interest of the banks - all in the hopes of saving our home, our dignity, and pride.
We even contacted barney Frank's office hoping that he would want to do something to help a homeowner in his state after his massive failure with the Hope for Homeowners program. The one during the G-dubya years which was supposed to help 600, 000 people and ended up saving, ready for this, one home. That's right one…1...uno...one. It helped save one home. Get it? Frank's office told us they'd keep an eye on our case and now don't even open our e-mails. We've sent three, so don't start thinking we spammed their office.
Obama's Making Home Affordable plan was seemingly put together to help people like us. Middle class, working, and caught in the financial cluster fuck of November. It offered banks an opportunity to get out in front of the mess THEY CREATED and make things right. Our bank (Ocwen) in particular has made considerable noise in the media touting their proactive benevolence and were chosen by Freddie Mac to start this program despite their less than stellar track record.
From all of our research (and it's been exhaustive) our calculations and finding show that we more than qualify for a modification under this plan.The spread sheet can be be found at the FDIC web site. From everything we've been told this is the same formula used by the majority of the programs out there.
According to the calculations our mortgage would be around $1600 with taxes and insurances. Not the $3200 we are currently paying at a 11% interest for just the mortgage. The taxes and insurance are our responsibility. On my salary alone we could afford the lower payments - the way it's supposed to be, yet the letter from our bank's Ombudsman states, and I quote:
"...your request for a loan modification under the Home Modification
Program has been denied as you do not have sufficient disposable income
to make the required loan payments."
How does this not strike anyone as a preposterous statement to make? According to them the predatory interest rate they are currently charging is affordable. Also, I was unaware that "disposable income" was a requisite for qualification. If that were the case would anyone qualify?
And in another preposterous statement they send us a second letter in which they say:
"For example, it will not help investor borrowers, borrowers who have no
income and cannot make any mortgage payment or if a borrower’s
current monthly mortgage ratio is less than 31% of their gross monthly
income."
Which directly contradicts Secretary Geithner's statement in a press release last week:
"And we put in place a program to reduce the monthly mortgage payments
for eligible borrowers. This loan modification program ensures monthly
mortgage payments are at most 31 percent of a person's income for five
years."
There's no cap on the ratio! "AT MOST 31%"
By that logic they could charge us 8.5 - 9.5% and keep us at or near 31% and announce how they've made homes affordable? We're punished for having bought a modest house? How is that logical? Was that the intention of the plan?
It would appear that what the banks are doing, is “volunteering” for these programs and ignoring to the guidelines in hopes that most people won't know the difference. Then turn around and put them into some bullshit loan that sucks everything out of them.
Why do we have no recourse? The Hope Now program is a joke and twice we've been told from an organization that was supposedly formed to help people that WE are the cause of this problem, my wife has been called
stupid, and told that we should sell our cars, get rid of our cell phones, turn down our heat, wear jackets in the house if we're cold, and cancel our cable and Internet.
We got into this because there were no other loans to be had two years ago. Because from all counts this was our last chance to own a home and prices were only going up. Because we were assured that refinancing would never be a problem and that this is just the way it's done. An adjustable rate that goes nowhere but up? On a home that lost 1/3 of it's value in two months. A home with an inflated valued by banks in order to charge for higher loans.
There is no recourse. There's no one who knows the formula who can run the numbers and tell us whether there's a mistake, hope, to give up - nothing.
There's no oversight to any of these plans. No recourse if you're denied help. No agency you can complain to. There's no help except the possibility of civil disobedience and protest. Is this what this country has become? We have to go into foreclosure and fight the eviction and hope that we win and hope that at 45-years-old, having both worked since we were 14 and 15-years-old, payed our taxes, voted, and lived lawfully ... this is how we're supposed to live in this country? At the mercy of greedy banks that in the words of Sen. Dick Durbin "own the place."
Where do we turn?
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