Mortgage Forum

Joel Fraser

Please bear with me...I have never posted on any forum before and I am not very computer savvy!! We are a younger couple, (I'm in my 20's and husband in his 30's) with a five year old son. This is our second house that we have purchased, however we made no profit off of our first because we were in and out so quickly. My grandparents actually purchased this house for us so that we could rent from them until we could save for a down payment and buy from them. We finally were able to come up with a down payment 3 years ago, however, could not afford the 30 year fixed payments. We were convinced to do a 3 year ARM. We were told the same thing that it sounds like EVERYONE else on this forum was told..."After 3 years, you'll have no problem refinancing or selling!" (Ha! We all now know that couldn't be further from the truth!!) Fast forward 3 years to the present and our rate is adjusting in 2 weeks!!We will go from $1060 per month to nearly $1500, (after reading many other threads I know this seems like a very small amount comparatively, but it is a lot for us...my husband is a full-time student and we are living off of one income.) Wanting to be proactive about the situation, I started looking into refinancing 3 months ago....(How naive I was! I literally thought we would have NO problem!!) I have good credit, a decent income, not much debt, and have NEVER been even 1 day late on a mortgage payment or car payment.... and of course I was holding on to the promise of our lender that I would easily be able to refinance. I have been shocked and so dissapointed to be denied by FOUR lenders!! (In an all-too-familiiar situation, I've been told my income is too low, the house isn't worth that much, blah, blah, blah.) We even contacted our realtor about the possibility of selling and when she told me how much she thought we should list for, I almost fell off my chair! We would have to PAY to sell our house...no profit whatsoever! After all options had been exhausted, one very nice lender actually suggested the possiblity of loan modification, which had never occured to me. I called HomEq's cusomer service, and of course was met with a very rude lady who actually said, "We don't have any programs available for you." I said "For me specifically?" She said "Yes, nothing for you specifically." (I have to say I was a little insulted!!!) Anyway, I came across the forum by accident, and I am so thankful that I did! Your tips have been so helpful and I am very grateful to all of you who volunteer your time to help people like me! I immediately e-mailed my hardship letter to Keith Becher, (sp?) who replied the next day that a loss mitigation rep would call me shortly. Just as promised I was contacted today by a VERY nice rep who seemed genuinely concerned for our situation. We went over all of the financials, (I had it all written out and made sure that our surplus was $200, which was stretching it a bit....I only alotted $10 per week for groceries! She said, "wow, that seems low!" I said "Well, umm, we grow all our own vegetables and umm, we don't eat much!" I think she understood that I really needed to qualify, and my MIL DOES help us a lot with groceries, so I wasn't being too untruthful!) She told me to fax my W-2's, paystubs, bank statements, etc to her on Monday. I told her how nervous I was that this wouldn't go through and she said that once you get to this stage 90% of their loan modifications go through. (From reading this forum, that seems like quite a high and unrealistic number, though!) I said, "what are the chances that I'll get approved?" and she said, "From looking at these numbers, you'll get an approval to go back down to your old rate fixed for five years." I feel hopeful, but I am VERY skeptical and realistic. I have read that this is one of the hardest companies to deal with so I have prepared myself for the worst. So far, (aside from the customer service rep) everyone has been so nice and understanding. This must be the easy part. I'm sure it gets harder from here! I thank everyone here for listening to my long story! I promise that I will never post anything so long again! I will update as soon as I hear anything. I am expecting the worst but hoping for the best!!