Beware the banks and loan mod...

[grammie]

I just read a story in our local paper that told of several families around the country who are in the same situation as my husband and I. We called the bank to let them know of a temporary financial hardship...we were hoping we could make partial pymnts for a few months then return to making our full payments. The bank told us they could help us get a modified loan thru the Making Homes Affordable program, but in order to do that, we would need to be behind in payments. They would not accept any partial payments. We followed their advice as have many others. Then we start getting the run around from the bank...can't find the paperwork we sent, they now need additional info that was not asked for originally, etc. The families in the story had experienced the exact same things we're going through. We've hired an attorney(with money that we would've paid the bank) and will hopefully be able to save our home but it will be no thanks to the bank. The bank is not supposed to tell you that the only way they can get you a loan modification is if you are behind in payments. The Making Homes Affordable program does not require that you be behind in payments. The one bank interviewed for this story (Wells Fargo) said they would never tell any of the customers to stop making payments (there were people in the story who said they were told that by Wells). My advice: try to find an attorney with as much experience as possible in this area (do this before you stop making payments on your home), then cross your fingers, pray, and anything else you can think of because the banks are not helping much. It seems to me that they should have someone on the other end of the phone who could work with people like us in arranging for say, 3 months of lowered payments then if the homeowner were unable to pay the full amount at that time, they could start the loan mod steps while still accepting what the homeowner could pay.