[AndreaD]

Oh...By the way Thank you all at LOANSAFE.ORG who have shared their stories....
I am posting my hardship letter..don't know if it will help but I was always looking for samples to get ideas for writing mine.

February 9^th, 2009

To whom it may concern,

I am writing this letter to explain our unfortunate set of circumstances that have caused us to become delinquent on our mortgage. We would like you, the investors, to consider working with us to for a loan modification with principle reduction. We really want the opportunity to stay in our home. We are really interested in working with the investors and Countrywide to work out a situation that would be beneficial to everyone.

We had purchased our home in April of 2007; we have worked really hard to achieve this goal. Before this situation arose we have had long excellent credit standing. We have invested a lot of time and money improving the home with necessary fix ups. Maxing out our credit as we were told we qualified for cash out loan. It was our understanding from the loan officer we had already been approved they were just drawing up the conditions, we were intending on paying down debt. The house is in a desirable location in relationship to my work. Which I have been steadily employed with for over 3 years. We had initially invested 25k in this property as down payment, when purchasing it and were told by our loan officer that we qualified for cash out loan. We had about 70k in equity at that time. She said we had to refinance right away to get the cash out, eventually she said we couldn’t get the cash out and would only get a refinance. This put us in a dilemma because as per the loan officers’ advice she put us in a phony loan first because the intention was to refinance. We did think why anyone would choose to refinance within one month of purchasing their new home. At this time we also were victims of identity theft which cost us a loss of 12k dollars which we never recovered. This circumstance with the changed loan agreement by the loan officer put us in a big financial hardship. We however made timely never late payments on our loan. This higher debt and the identity theft led us into Chapter 7 Bankruptcy in which we kept our car and our house.

Since buying the house my wife has taken up childcare to bring in some extra income. However, she fell fracturing on ankle and spraining the other. She couldn’t walk and was in a walking cast for over 3 months. At this time she had no insurance so this was an added unexpected expenditure. She had to let go of 2 of her children, this reduced her income by $1300. Our house value at this time has also dropped substantially, over 150k down in a year and a half. This leaves us without the option of refinancing anytime soon. The hardship of this situation looms over us as our income has gone down as well as the value of the house in our area. We don’t want to foreclose. This October we were informed that our mother in India is very sick, we have to go see her and help with her care, they keeping her alive until we get there. This situation led to us having to divert our mortgage payment. We are now home and have now stabilized our income once again. We do have steady income and can guarantee that we can if you can approve our situation we will make good on our end of the deal. We can afford with taxes and insurance included $1700 with our other expenditures. We have had a good payment history with countrywide up to this point. If you can approve us for the 40 year loan we can make the payments requested of 1518 and 135 starting March 1^st. With our current income and our bills we would have no problem making our payments further.

I think if you can see this situation we can come to a compromise. You want to protect your interest which is your investment and we would like to stay in our home and once again make timely payments to you. We we’re wanting a lower payment with a fixed rate for the term of the loan. As I don’t believe the market will show a significant turn around to affectively be able to refinance to a better loan in the near future. If you would go to foreclosure you would stand to loose not only a significant cost of the loan but the cost of the foreclosure as well. If you would do a short sale you would also be reducing the principle balance owed to the new buyer. My proposal is that you consider us a candidate for the payment stated above of 1513 and 135.

Houses in our area and our comparable ratio are selling between 283k and 320k, as you can see below. We believe that with our current income and stability of job would make us good candidates for a modification. However due to the unfortunate situation we had passed through and the huge downturn in the California market I truly believe this can be a winning situation for our investors of our loan.

317,000 16942 Schoolcraft St, Sold on Oct 16, 2008, 3 bd / 2 ba, 1,282 Sq. Ft.
$283,000 16924 Marlin Pl, Sold on Jul 23, 2008, 2 bd / 1 ba, 1,325 Sq. Ft.
$305,500 6952 Balboa Blvd, Sold on Jun 26, 2008, 3 bd / 2 ba, 1,380 Sq. Ft.

Please let me know what else is needed from me in order to assist you in this process and have it be resolved as soon as possible. We hope you will consider our offer as a viable and honest choice for all parties involved. Thank you

Sincerely,