Mortgage Forum

Joel Fraser

Ok. I emailed the hardship letter (to the 3 big wigs listed on this site) to Homeq last night. This afternoon I have a voicemail from someone in their loan modification calling me to talk. I'm almost afraid to call them back- could this be the result of the email? If it was- Wow that's fast.Does anyone have any recommendations? I haven't quite finished the income expense sheet, so I think I will call them when I get that finished- I want to make sure what I tell them is written down (on my end) so I won't tell them something else later. Here is the email I sent to them:_________________________We are Mr and Mrs. ChuckleDoodle and our loan number is 123456. Our loan originated on September 2006 by New Century Mortgage. Under those terms at that time, we had a rate of 7.375% which was fixed for 24 months. We are sure you are being inundated with emails from people in similar situations. We have sat down several times to write this email but always took a step back; sure that we could find a way to make this work. Unfortunately, we can’t figure it out. We were doing fine- we purchased this wonderful home and had a reasonable loan. Unexpectedly in 2006, my elderly mother needed to move in with us. She was unable to live on her own- financially or physically. In order to make our home habitable for her, we decided to finish our basement so she could have her “own place”. We refinanced our home and took some money out so we could have mom here with us safe and sound. Doing the refinance, we used a mortgage broker. He was someone we had found through a friend and we felt comfortable with him. We explained our situation: we needed extra money out, our credit scores weren’t horribly bad but then they weren’t terrific either. We guess all the moving around we did as a military family never helped. Every time we would move from one base to another, one bill or two would end up being late. Even though we had a few “lates” in our credit history, we would always pay our debts. Then we moved to Virginia and Candy retired from the USAF. Boy, were we ready to settle down and never move again. No more uniforms, no more travelling overseas to foreign countries, etc. We found this house, one we are going to stay in for quite a while. Then mom started getting more and more frail, forgetting things, and just needing a little help to get around. She couldn’t afford her rent, so we begged her to move in with us. So, back to the broker. He understood that we wanted a regular 30 year fixed interest rate, regular mortgage. We wanted one with an escrow account because we didn’t want to worry about Taxes and Insurance. He said he understood, but stated we may have to have a little higher interest rate because of our credit. We understood this. Then our car broke down, so it was more imperative to refinance. All the phone calls that went back and forth between us and never had we even heard him mention to us that we were talking about an interest only loan. The day we signed our loan papers was both a happy day and one of the saddest days of our lives. Did we read the agreement? Yes. Were we in shock when we read the paperwork showing we were getting an interest only loan? YES! We talked to the title company representative; she called our broker who then said “I told you…..” No sir, he DID NOT. So here we were sitting in the title company office- our old mortgage was going to be late and we did not have the money to catch up- we had a partial payment but not the whole amount (car repairs went for the other half). Still sitting there in shock, and not getting any help from either the broker or the title company; we thought this would be a big lesson for us to learn- always double check before you sign anything! We made the decision- the only decision we had at the time (or so we thought) to sign the paperwork. We could refinance again in 2 years and get the elusive fixed interest rate that we wanted in the beginning. Mom would be able to have her own space and still feel like she is a productive member of society, and we’d still have our house. The down side to this, we get to pay more money for housing, food, gas, electricity now that mom is dependent on us. Fast forwarding to 2 years later. It almost seems like a dream/nightmare. We aren’t any better off than we were 2 years ago, our car decides it needs to throw a rod and get its engine replaced, and our stove decided to take a dump. To top it off, our credit still isn’t the greatest, and now house prices are diving like crazy. I guess the good news is that Candy hasn’t been reactivated to active duty! Woo hoo. What we are asking for- please, is there any way to modify our loan? One week ago we received our increase rate notification letter stating our payments are going from $2360.00 per month to a whopping $2920.00 per month. We can manage the Principle and Interest payment of $2360.00 per month and may even be able to manage the new payment for about 3 months before Peter and Paul get tired of being robbed and the house of cards come tumbling down. We would dearly love to have this turned into a fixed interest rate mortgage for 360 months and the rate that accompanies this change would also be fixed for that time period. We are willing to submit any and all income paperwork/documentation showing our ability to repay under this request. We wish to have all of our current payments be credited to our current mortgage and be considered for our modification as payments under the new agreement. This is to ensure that our credit rating does not suffer due to non-reporting of good payment history. We apologize for the long letter, and hope that you can find a way to help us with this situation. Please contact us immediately upon receipt of this letter regarding this matter, and please know that we wish to resolve this matter as quickly and efficiently as possible. If there is a direct person for contact in regards to our request, please include that in your response. We thank you for your understanding in this difficult time and trust that we will be able to reach an amicable and prosperous solution for all parties involved. Again thank you and to the recipient of this message, have a wonderful day. Sincerely,the ChuckleDoodles____________________ So- that's what I sent- any suggestions/ideas from anyone on how to proceed? thanks,candy