Wells Fargo / J.P. Morgan / US Bank Loan Modification

[organicfarmer]

Story 1: I owned a property that I used for a clothing consignment shop. It was the perfect property, perfect size, in great shape, pretty cheap (in 2006 when prices were crazy high). We bought the property for $137,000. My business partner had some hard times and we had to close the store. Tried to sell for short sale, Ocwen wouldn't go for it. Finally let it go into foreclosure and was sold at sheriff's sale in September 2008. The kicker... this house is still sitting empty and is for sale for ... $62,000! If we had bought it for that much my partner would have made enough money with our business and we could still be there, rather than just another empty building on main street.

Story 2: Our neighbors bought their home in 2003 for $225,000. It is a huge, 7 bedroom, newer home on three acres just one hour from Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN. We bought our much smaller, 2 bedroom, 100 year old farm house on 18 acres in 2004 for $196,000. Our neighbors got divorced in 2006 and the home was foreclosed on in February 2007. This house is still sitting empty, 2 years after foreclosure, for sale for ... $85,000!

We are in the process of trying to modify our loan with Wells Fargo. The business closure made things hard. We are now making a decent income from farming our land & project a great income in a few years. Our farm can't be worth more than the neighbors $85,000 now. Why on earth do they want to foreclose on these houses rather than working something out? I really just don't get it!

[The Professor]

Thank you for providing these examples. What this tells me is the extent to which this economy is slipping into a depression. I live in Northern California, close to the epicenter of the foreclosure bust. We have the same sort of stories here, but I wouldn't have thought things would be this bad outside of the sunshine states (CA, AZ, FL).

We live in interesting times.

Daniel

[organicfarmer]

I'm in the process of getting a loan modification with Wells Fargo. I just called the executive number I found here and am waiting 48 hours until I hear back. I'll write my story here soon, but want to see if anyone could answer a question for me. Wells Fargo is, I guess, my servicer. I just got a letter from an attorney, informing me that foreclosure proceedings may be commenced soon. It lists our creditor as US Bank National Association, as Trustee for J.P. Morgan Mortgage Acquisition Trust 2006-WF1. Would it be worth it to try contacting JP Morgan or US Bank? Are they at all able to make decisions about a modification on this loan? Thanks for any help! Like I said, I will share my experience soon.

[markmc2000]

Good points. I think we will understand soon that americans need to manufacture, farm, and produce stuff instead of just inflate our economy with leverage and financial engineering. Lets get back to real engineering. Executives took the fruit AND the roots of the tree by outsourcing jobs all over the world without regard to fair trade. We are now living in our bed made by free market capitalism run out of control.

[Moe Bedard]

you would be dealing with Wells Fargo as the servicer of the loan....the investor will refer you back to the servicer.

[organicfarmer]

Thanks ***, I thought I should at least ask. You guys really seem to be the experts! I just started reading this forum & I feel much more confident in dealing with this now. Thanks to evveryone here!

I'll try to keep this short, without leaving out too many details.

We bought this house in 2004 for $197,000 with a $20,000 down payment & fixed interest rate of 6.5%. All was well. Then, in 2006 we refinanced to sell 5 acres of our property to our friends and fellow farmers to build a house on. We took all the money from the sale and paid off all credit cards & car loans & did a little work on the house. We thought this was a good move on our part. We were wrong. We didn't find out until the minute we were signing the papers that our interest rate was going up to 8.5% and our payment was going up from $1,300 to $1,630 (includes taxes & insurance). Still okay though. Then, six months later I lost my part time job. My husband's still working his full time job, but we are now making about $800 month less due to my layoff. We were in the process of starting a small, organic vegetable farm on our land and knew if we could just make it until Feb 2009 (when we start making more farm income) we would be fine. Well, we only made it until Aug 2008. We missed a payment in August, paid as much as we could afford each month for a few months, missed a payment again in Nov 08 and in December they stopped accepting payments from us, unless we paid the full amount due.

I tried to start a repayment plan in August 08, when we missed our first payment. The big payments and balloon payment they wanted weren't possible. Started talking to "customer service" about a loan modification in Nov 08 and sent in hardship letter in Dec 08. They finally denied it the end of Jan 09 because there was still a mortgage from a past-business property on our credit report and so our debt/income was out of whack. Told them this was not accurate, sent them proof. They said I wasn't fast enough and the file had been denied and closed, resend everything for a new review. Re-faxed everything, updated, the next day (still Jan 09). Called & they said they got it and would be assigning it to someone soon.

Now, I had been calling every wells fargo number I could find, every 3 days, from Nov 08 to Jan 09. I called, seriously, like 7 different numbers. All were customer service/collections. All said different things, sent me to different departments (which were all called different things, but actually just collections). At one point, someone told me I had requested a pre-foreclosure sale. I never did this. They took my file out of line for a loan mod review, put in in line for a pre-foreclosure sale, then when I complained, they sent me a letter telling me my request had been cancelled and they have closed my file. Why didn't they ever send me a letter telling me it had been put in for this. I resubmitted my information and called, called, called. Now, I am trying to talk to someone in loss mitigation and they will not let me. It hasn't been assigned to someone yet. After weeks of this, I asked to speak to a manager. I asked the manager if they could please let me talk to someone in loss mitigation about my options. She told me she would transfer me, "but you'll be on hold forever, do you really want to wait?" I said "YES!" I talked to the "loss mitigation" guy about my options for quite awhile, until I realized he was talking about repayment plans. I asked why he was wasting my time with this. He said "We can do the same thing in collections as they can in loss mit". The manager told me she was transfering me to loss mit. I was furious.

Finally, I found this site. I can't believe I went through all this & how many others are going through it. If everyone dealing with this knew about this site, boy would the mortgage companies would have their hands full! Thanks to everyone for all their great advice. This isn't a topic you can really discuss with anyone without being ackward, so this is just great. Full of wonderful information too.

Now, Thursday I called the Wells Fargo executive # *** posted. The nice lady there told me she would have someone contact me within 48 hours. Well, it wasn't 48 hours, but they called Sunday morning! This new woman told me to fax everything directly to her desk and she would have someone else look it over & get back to me within 2 weeks. I faxed it all yesterday (monday), so now all I can do is wait and hope. At least after reading all of these posts I feel I actually have something to hope for. We really just hit a rough patch and are back on track. Our debt/income is good now & I personally think we're great candidates for a loan mod. Even if we just got the past-due amount tacked onto the end of the loan, without any reduction in monthly payment I would be happy. We are projecting a very good to make nearly my old $800 per month in 2009 off of the veggies we sell. I am confident I can make a good full time income off of our farm in the next few years. If only I can get Wells to let us keep it! I'll get back with the outcome soon.

Thanks again to everyone!

[Moe Bedard]

I am so happy that the contact number I posted on the forum was able to help get you going..........


Good Luck with the mod!!



Keep us posted on your progress.........I am glad you found us......

[organicfarmer]

Originally Posted by markmc2000

Good points. I think we will understand soon that americans need to manufacture, farm, and produce stuff instead of just inflate our economy with leverage and financial engineering. Lets get back to real engineering. Executives took the fruit AND the roots of the tree by outsourcing jobs all over the world without regard to fair trade. We are now living in our bed made by free market capitalism run out of control.

I couldn't agree more! Well said!

[organicfarmer]

Yeah!!! Yesterday I heard the phone ringing while I was outside. I am so happy I ran in to get it, because it was my loan mod! She went over all my information with me again, typed it into "the program" and within three minutes she had an answer from her computer. YES!

New interest rate of 6% (old was 8.5%)
New payment is about $300 less per month
All the past due, fees, etc. are being tacked onto the end of the loan
We have to pay a fee of only $142 by April 3rd & then our first new payment is due June 1st.

She's sending the paperwork via UPS. I will of course look it over a million times before signing, but feel better than I have in months!

I was shaking for like an hour after I got off the phone & still have butterflies in my stomach when I think about it.

What I don't get is why it took months to do this when it seems like she really just got the answer in a few minutes with "the program" (she called it that) on her computer. I guess I'll never know just how it all works. All I know is that if it wasn't for this forum I am pretty sure I would be in foreclosure right now & feeling hopeless! Everyone needs to just keep trying & trying! Don't let them discourage you. If you know that a loan mod is best for your situation than fight hard!

[Moe Bedard]

Congratulations!!!!


The reason that they are able to give an answer quicker is because the guidelines to the new program were most likely put in place at this time.


Please let us know when you receive your docs.