“Dear Steve,
We were going to do an exchange in 2006, we bought a house but the sale of our rental house didn’t go through. We now have a mortgage of approx $338,000 and the property is worth approx $102,000. I called the lender Bank of America to see about a loan modification and I have an appointment on October 26, but they basically told me if neither of us were dead, disabled or getting a divorce we probably wouldn’t get the loan modification. And if I try once and don’t get it I can’t try again.
So today I called Avid Law Center after receiving something in the mail from them. They took lots of information, said they could go directly to the investor and get my loan reduced and are supposed to call me back. Basically I don’t know who to trust or what to do.
Should we just let our home go into foreclosure? What is the process? Should I try to find a lawyer, and how do you know what is best?
Debbie”
Dear Debbie,
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I guess anything is possible, but not everything is probable.
You are way upside-down on your mortgage and Bank of America is notoriously hard to deal with, as they told you directly.
I’ve written about Avid Law Center before and none of the stuff I’ve seen gives me great hope there is a likelihood you will be successful, no matter how much you pay for help. It all seems to be geared towards closing the deal and making the sale to the consumer.
I’ll tell you what, why don’t you talk to a free HUD Housing Counselor. They can give you a free second opinion if they’ve seen local success with similar situations.
If you are going to consider walking away from the home I would suggest you click here to find a local bankruptcy attorney and meet with them to discuss a plan of attack for dealing with the residual debt from the foreclosure.
Please post your responses and follow-up messages to me on this in the comments section below.
thanks for your input Steve…But now I am again confused. I thought if I let them foreclose on the house that was it, I lose all the money I paid and put into the house. I had a bankruptcy over fifteen years ago after a nasty divorce and they told me I didn’t include the house because it was a foreclosure. So what kind of fees am I looking at?
According to your comment Re: Bank of America being notoriously hard to deal with them is putting it mildly, and the HOPE program is no help either. Even when you hire a law firm to reperesent you, which I did, Bank of America refuses to deal with them, so in essence they have the upper hand, and since they, the banks, are not forced to approve any pending loan modificitation applications even if you qualify all they are required to do is simply go thru the motions of processing your applicaion and that absolve’s them, and so the end result is that you’re being declined.Lets face it we are on our own, so we have take our loses and move on with our life’s and even though the banks created this mess, they’re not taking the blame and keep prospering. GO FIGURE. L. Oscar
The bottom line is that no bank is required to modify any loan for any reason. Any modification is purely voluntary.