How to negotiate a mortgage loan modification with your lender?

[This is a guest post by Peter Harper, Marketing Head & Editor Chicago, Illinois - 60607, USA
Phone : 916-745-8161
Skype name : peterharper99
mail : peterharper99@gmail.com]

The last thing any homeowner may want is losing his home to a forced foreclosure. It is mostly seen that when a homeowner is struggling with his mortgage payments, he thinks of walking away from his mortgage loan by selling off his home through a short sale process. However, this is not the way to act in the present economic condition. Since there are ways like mortgage modification through which you can easily repay the present mortgage loan, you must take some important steps to initiate the entire process and make sure that you complete the entire process with ease. Have a look at some important steps that you must take in order to start off the home loan modification process and end it according to your needs.

1.Get in touch with a housing counselor: The first step that you need to take is to get in touch with a housing counselor who can help you initiate the process and complete it with peace. The housing counselors are all much experienced than you and therefore you can easily get help from them if you want to make sure that your efforts don’t go in vain. Even if the mortgage lender denies your home loan modification request, if it is made by the housing counselor, it may happen that they won’t deny their request. Therefore, to be sure about a positive answer, seek the help of a counselor.

2.Write a mortgage hardship letter: The next step that you must take is to craft a legally binding loan modification letter where you have to mention the reason that is keeping you from making the monthly mortgage payments on time. When you approach a lender about a home loan modification, there are some people who lie about their hardship and just want to lower their payments due to their ease. Thus, they can easily come to know whether or not you’re actually going through a financial mess.

3.You must plan the entire process: There are many reasons to go for a home loan modification and you must find the exact reason for which you want to modify your home loan. If it is an interest rate drop, you should check whether or not the mortgage lender truly takes into account all the factors that can easily let him lower the interest rate on the mortgage loan. If you have some other intention, you must negotiate in that manner with your mortgage lender.

4.Show them a budget: When you modify your home loan, if you can show them that you have a budget ready following which you can make payments towards the loan, this will be a more authentic approach towards the loan. Craft a frugal budget where you can show them how you’re planning to manage all your unsecured and secured payments just after your home loan is modified. This will build the authenticity between you and your mortgage lender.

5.Have realistic expectations from your lender: You must have some realistic expectations from your lender so that you do not expect something huge and then get disheartened. As they agree to a home loan modification, it is most likely that they will want you to pay the most that you can according to your affordability. The best way is to agree on something from which both you and the lender can benefit.

Therefore, if you’re interested in taking out a mortgage modification, you must make sure that you take the steps mentioned above in order to initiate the process and end it up successfully. Make timely payments after the loan modification so as to save your home from a foreclosure.

Our Military Is Protected from Foreclosure under The Servicemen Act (SCRA)

We have been approached by few military families whose home were foreclosed while the owner were performing military services overseas. This is very painful, but unfortunately, it has been done and the homes were foreclosed in clear violation of the SCRA. In one case, our law office helped getting back garnished wages of a police officer back. Two mortgage servicing companies have agreed to settle federal complaints that they wrongfully foreclosed on the homes of at least 178 military service members and to set aside a minimum of $22 million to compensate those victims. This is a great victory for the Justice Department that various lenders had settled such cases. The lenders include, of course the notorious one i.e Countrywide Home Loan Servicing and Saxon Mortgage Services. These companies knowingly and repeatedly violated the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, a federal law that extends an array of financial and legal protections to military personnel. The former Countrywide unit agreed to pay $20 million to approximately 160 victims of illegal foreclosures from January 2006 to May 2009. It also agreed to reimburse victims of any other illegal military foreclosures found to have occurred from May 2009 to the end of last year.
NY Times has posted one such painful story of Sgt. James B. Hourley who was away on war duties in Iraq. In violation of a law intended to protect active military personnel from creditors, agents of Deutsche Bank foreclosed on his small Michigan house, forcing Sergeant Hurley’s wife, Brandie, and her two young children to move out and find shelter elsewhere.

“When the sergeant returned in December 2005, he drove past the densely wooded riverfront property outside Hartford, Mich. The peaceful little home was still there — winter birds still darted over the gazebo he had built near the water’s edge — but it almost certainly would never be his again. Less than two months before his return from the war, the bank’s agents sold the property to a buyer in Chicago for $76,000. Since then, Sergeant Hurley has been on an odyssey through the legal system, with little hope of a happy ending — indeed, the foreclosure that cost him his home may also cost him his marriage. ”Brandie took this very badly,” said Sergeant Hurley, 45, a plainspoken man who was disabled in Iraq and is now unemployed. ”We’re trying to piece it together.”

“In March 2009, a federal judge ruled that the bank’s foreclosure in 2004 violated federal law but the battle did not end there for Sergeant Hurley. Typically, banks respond quickly to public reports of errors affecting military families. But today, more than six years after the illegal foreclosure, Deutsche Bank Trust Company and its primary co-defendant, a Morgan Stanley subsidiary called Saxon Mortgage Services, are still in court disputing whether Sergeant Hurley is owed significant damages. Exhibits show that at least 100 other military mortgages are being serviced for Deutsche Bank, but it is not clear whether other service members have been affected by the policy that resulted in the Hurley foreclosure.”

In court papers, lawyers for Saxon and the bank assert the sergeant is entitled to recover no more than the fair market value of his lost home. His lawyers argue that the defendants should pay much more than that — including an award of punitive damages to deter big lenders from future violations of the law. The law is called the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, and it protects service members on active duty from many of the legal consequences of their forced absence.

We suggest as a foreclosure defense attorney, and working in this field for long time, we encourage any military family (living in Nevada) to ask our free legal help in this regard. We would not charge any money upfront from any such familiy AND EVEN ADVANCE COURT COST, if they have meritorious case while their loved one were performing military services overseas. Call us at (702) 270-9100 and even get a free consultation over the phone.

Can the economy revive without help to homeowners?

The homeowners are bleeding for long time and the scant help has given them no respite. The statistics are increasing and still Las Vegas is number one in foreclosure sale. None of the higher constitutional authorities had done any thorough probe in this matter. We hear lots of news but no solution so far. Only half-hearted measures had been taken and none of that has produced any tangible result to correct the rampant situation. Now, we have another fiasco and that is that the Standard and Poor’s has purposely overrated the toxic mortgage rating/securities before this financial fiasco erupted with full force. Yes, the same S&P which has decreased the rating on USA which resulted and still bleeding our markets by a descent of 1500 points so far.

We rather not say much about Congress as much has been said in the media. As usual we have assembly of incompetent, nincompoop, and do nothing people who like to come to the house, fight and then go to long vacation. As we know,tens of millions of Americans are continuously being crushed by this mortgage crisis. See for example, the stock of Bank of American. They had taken a big hit–some 10 billion loss only this years, and there stock price has been reduced to half the size. Yet, when it comes to loan modification, they resisted every request for loan modification. At least the homeowners were reaffirming the original debt. But BAC rather let it go to short sale for one third of the original loan, then give a reduced payments to the genuine, and hardprssed homeowners. We tried, we called several times, sent innumerable paperwork, and yet same annoying people gave us the same annoying news.

Obama administration has no mechanism to enforce, no accountability other than advice to bank to “do their best”. There were two other crook organization who thanks got are bankruptcy now i.e Freedie Mae and Fannie Mae. Banks took advantage of their idiocy and incompetence and made millions dumping bad securities upon them. Of course, there is no let up in sight. We have left with one thing, and that is reducing principle once for all. The reckless borrowers are no more on the horizons. Thus, this is good time to reward genuine homeowners. Also, we suggest to let the bankruptcy courts do the loan modification. Somehow they are already involved via chapter 13 this time.

Homeowners Needs Help–The Economy is Not Reviving

href=”http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/22/opinion/homeowners-need-help.html?_r=1&hp”>

Nevada Mediation Rules Changed

The Supreme Court of Nevada has changed rules effective March 1, 2011.
Here is the set of new and amended rules.

http://www.nevadajudiciary.us/index.php/viewdocumentsandforms/func-startdown/5925/