Starting a short sale with CW. Any advice appreciated!!

[icurn]

Hello!
We recently put our home onthe market (5/21/08) because we can't afford our mortgage, and are close to not making payments. We have tried multiple times with multiple companies to refinance but have been denied due to our debt to income ratio being too high. When we purchased the home we were told we would be able to refinance once we had employment. Well, we got jobs and shortly thereafter applied with CW and were denied. We cashed out my husbands 401K to pay off his debt (i am currently in a DMP so the house is in his name) and try to apply for refinaning again. We got denied. Then we found out the seller of the home misrepresented the taxes in closing and our mortgage payment went up $400. Our monthly mortgage is $2700, and we can't do it anymore. I have taken a new position at work that is more $ and requires less daycare (we have 15 month old twins), we've refinanced our car, we've changed phone carriers. And we still are barely making payments. We have ahd to take advances from credit cards to pay bills. We took out a small loan to pay for taxes this year since we cashed out the 401K. We've borrowed $ from family. We cant keep this up. So we listed the house aggressively (as per the attorney we're working with) and received an offer this weekend. We owe $240K and the offer is for $200K. The comps in the area are quite low. I've written a letter, have all the documents ready to go, and I am just wondering if there's even a chance CW will accept this? I ahve read so much on here and it seems like this is close to impossible. The buyer understands it will take 2-4 months and they are ok with that (so they say now). We arent behind on our payments yet. Any advice you can give would be great! Thanks!!!!

[Cat Damiano]

icurn,

Welcome to the forum and thank you for joining.............

Did you check with CW first before having the attorney price the home? They will tell you what the investor on your loan needs for a net............and that would be their bottom line figure......

With a short sale package CW will do their own BPO to get the pricing in your neighborhood.......

[bachbaron]

Fax the offer to the Hope Department at 800-658-0395.

They are going to order an appraisal. I would suggest using the email addresses Moe and Cat have provided. If you send it in and then email then showing the sense of urgency, they will get you a response sooner although it hinges on the Countrywide appraiser performing their part.

I did the email blast like they said on this website and I got assigned to a negotiator and a decision in less time than just going through the regular steps. I am still going through the short sale process but getting the approval letters is a big piece of the puzzle!

Good luck!

[icurn]

Cat-
No, all CW said was to price it at market value. they did not give me any figure. The attorney said it needs to be 80-90% of market value, and the offer has to be at least 70% of the loan.

[bachbaron]

From my dealings with Countrywide, they want the sales price to be within 15% of the appraisal.

[icurn]

bachbaron, did you find the appraisal was a fair amount?

[bachbaron]

Fair?!? Well, not by my accounts but compared to current market conditions, yes. I bought my property for $175,000 in January 2006 and it appraised in March 2008 for around $135,000. There is nothing you can do but hope that the appraisal comes in low as if it comes in too high, Countrywide will say that you are not getting enough money and deny the short sale. So I guess the appraisal was fair enough that it got me an approval however I think the home was worth alot more just based on all the memories I had there. Hard to put a price figure on that though...

[icurn]

I'm sorry bach baron. I meant fair in the sense that countrywide didnt come in too high. I know that in the market value sense everything is unfair with the way things are now. We bought our house for 253.5K and I dont think it will appriase close to that. Houses on our street that are bigger than ours are selling for much less. I'm not sure if that is figured into the appraisal. I'm hoping for 230K or less, that way it'll be w/in 15%, How long did the process take you?

[bachbaron]

They should be fair in the appraisal. They know if they appraise it too high, the hopes of getting a deal done will decrease substantially. I did find that you need to make sure they are comparing your house to other ones with same characteristics (# of bedrooms, baths, square footage). Don't let them tell you that the sales price is too low if the comps they are coming back with are for homes larger than yours. I caught both my lenders trying to do that and with the help of the buyers agent, we brought them comps of homes with similar characteristics and they subsequently agreed.

The process - I submitted an original offer on 4/5/08 that need to close on 4/17. They didnt get back to me in time and we lost the buyer. I got another offer on 5/12 and this time escalated it with the emails that Cat and Moe provided. I got an approval the first week of June.

[Cat Damiano]

Here is the email contacts to send the information about the short sale to........


advocacy@countrywide.com
customer_service@countrywide.com
pressroom@countrywide.com
david_bigelow@countrywide.com
angelo_mozilo@countrywide.com
lisa_riordan@countrywide.com
kay_jemison@countrywide.com
elizabeth_moyer@countrywide.com
sarah_perek@countrywide.com
chris_oltmann@countrywide.com
gabrielle_williams@countrywide.com
maheshika_ruwanpathirana@countrywide.com
adrienne_ely@countrywide.com
raquel_robinson@countrywide.com
linda_turner@countrywide.com
daniel_whitehead@countrywide.com
melissa_guerra@countrywide.com
mary_archer@countrywide.com
laura_melara@countrywide.com
kacie_miller@countrywide.com
patricia_mckenzie@countrywide.com

[icurn]

Cat-

The attorney we are working with recevied our information and informed me they were sending it to Countrywide yesterday. My question is, when should I email the people on the list? Should I wait until next week or send one to them today? Thanks again for your help in this matter. After reading all of the posts on this website, I have a little hope this situation may work out!!!

[Cat Damiano]

Just wait and see how far the attorney gets...........but keep in mind that a short sale takes a while........if the attorney hits a stall..........then do the emails........

Good Luck with the short sale.....

[icurn]

So instead of waiting until the attorneys hit a stall, I went ahead and emailed the list that Cat recommended. (After reading some of the posts, I figured it might speed the process up a bit)

I sent our hardship letter in the body of the email on Friday afternoon, and didn't expect any response until today at the earliest. To my surprise, I received repsonses from Angelo Mozilo and Lisa Riordan over the weekend! I am hopeful I will speak to someone soon!! Thanks for the great info, and I'll keep you posted on the progress!!!

[icurn]

Ok. Here's the latest. We were assigned to Kacie Miller in the Office of the President. She said we needed to fax over all the documents to her, which we did. We left messages with her to verify she received it and after emailing her and cc-ing lisa riordan, she called to let us know she did receive it. She also said we would have a negotiator assigned by the end of this week. Being proactive, I decided to call and email on Wednesday. I emailed those addresses (and did not get an email saying they weren't received) but I'm not sure if they got them. I left messages, and yesterday AM i called and bypassed the voicemail by hitting 0 and was transferred to a few people when I got someone named Jeanette on the phone and per a discussion with Kacie, we were reassigned to someone named Kristine Cardenas. I was given her extension and 888 number, but when I called it was a generic voicemail message without a name. SO I called the 888 number again and used the directory and got the name Christian Cardenas at a different extension, but with the same generic vm. So then I called the 888 number back again, got an operator and said I was supposed to talk to Kristine Cardenas. She transferred me to a different vm, this time with an actual message from a Kristine Cardenas and she was in the Office of the President. I left a message on her vm, and then proceeded to leave another message on Kacie Miller's vm asking if I had the correct info. Has anyone else had this happen? Or worked with Kristine Cardenas? Any advice on what I shoud do next?

[Cat Damiano]

icurn,


Once you have a contact they will work with you.............they are very good working with the members on this forum...........and they are also very good with contacting you.........but if you feel more comfortable you can call for updates too........