Mortgage Forum

Joel Fraser

I bought my first house in December of 06. The night before closing I get a phonecall from my mortgage broker saying I will have to pay $205/month PMI to MGIC to get the house. Reluctantly I agree, knowing it would be tight, but thinking that because Utah has the highest appreciation rate in the nation at the time, I should be able to gain 20% equity in 12-18 months. I have a 7% fixed rate Fannie Mae loan through Universal Mortgage which gets transferred to Countrywide. Fast foward 14 months later, I decide to sell my house because my wife is pregnant with twins and is unable to work and I'm having a hard time making the payments. I decide to bite the bullet and put the house on the market for $13,000 more than I paid for it, after getting comps from 3 realtors. In 10 days, I get a written offer on the house for $3,000 over asking price, provided I pay $3,000 of their closing costs. I agreed. When the buyer's appraiser comes, he appraises the house for $10,000 below contract price. Now I am upside down in my house. The buyers agree to a short sale and we start the process and I submit all of the paperwork to Countrywide after I tell them of my hardship and why I need to do this. They approve. 4 weeks go by and I don't hear anything. Now, I have hard dates on my REPC. I get told by Countrywide that they are way too busy with foreclosures and it would be 30-45 days of my file sitting on a desk before someone looks at it. I continued to call every 4-5 days putting the pressure on them. (By the way, at this point, I already moved OUT of the house and into a rental house). I tell them that the buyers are going to walk and I already moved and the house will be foreclosed if they don't step it up because I can't pay for it and may not be able to find another buyer. Almost 2 months after the contract was signed, the buyers gave up and walked. Thanks Countrywide for your speedy service, in the meantime I'm getting 4-5 collection calls a day demanding I pay my mortgage and I tell them I can't afford it and if they would hurry, they can get all of their money at once. After having the house on the market for 2 more weeks and no traffic, I decide to bite the bullet and call Countrywide and beg for forgiveness. I speak to a loan counselor (in India of course!) and explain my situation and beg for a modification. He tells me I am pre-qualified for a lon modification and am ok to move back into the house. So I break my lease and move back into my house. 2 weeks after moving back in, I get called from Countrywide and asked what kind of workout I am trying to do. Only to be told I don't qualify for a modification because I don't have an extenuating circumstance. I guess that my wife being "temporairly disabled" not being able to work due to having a high risk pregnancy with twins and having my income cut in half isn't a good enough excuse. they told me all they could to for me was to loan me the money I am past due (3 months now) and have me pay it back over 5 years at $36 a month. When I explain that I can't afford my current payment and now they want to raise it, the guy tells me sorry that's all I can do. So I call MGIC, my PMI company, and go over my financial info, I only have $189 a month left after all bills, I was at work so I had to rough guess. The PMI guy told me to short sale the house. I explained all I had been through already and he said well if you want to keep your house I guess you'll have to figure out a way. 3 months later after my babies are born, now I can't make my payments again( I have made payments since I moved back). Seeing that no one seems to want to help I don't know what to do. Maybe I should have been dumb and took one of those crazy ARM's out and then maybe someone would help me. (No offense to those who did, I almost did myself). I can pay P & I but tacking on PMI, Taxes, and Insurance, I can't afford it. Any ideas? My thought is to just let it go and file ch 13 BK and surrender it and be done and try again in a few years.