Saxon- i know some things but need help

[Karen]

I just joined the forum as I just found this site yesterday and I am in a fight with Saxon.

I do have a question. Maybe, someone could answer it for me. We are three months behind at the end of this month. I just finished a financial worksheet and faxed all the info to Saxon as requested on the form.

A little background. The mortgage is a 30 year ARM. We bought our home in October of 2002. WE have a combo loan and are behind with both as of this date. Our payment went from $630.00 to $1017.49 with the last increase on December 1st. This is the Saxon payment the other smaller one is a fixed twenty year at $303.44.
These payments seem small when I hear all the horror stories but we live in PA and we based the mortgage only on my husbands income as mine is unreliable and at times can be non-existant. However, I have the application which stated that the loan was supposed to be prepayment penalty and interest only for two years. It was at closing or maybe a few days before that we learned it was three years prepayment penalty and FIVE years interest only. My memory of this is a bit hazy but we were desperate to find a home, our landlord had already demonstrated that if he needed the apt. he had no qualms about telling us to get out with only 30 days notice. And my husband had lived there for 10 years before we were married.

OK. on October 31st I made a payment on-line, for some reason it did not go through my bank by the usual two days and when I called Saxon I was told to just wait a week. Well two weeks later it was still listed as paid but had not posted to my account. This payment was difficult enough to make we were running out of money I had not had significant income since late August the housing problem was affecting my work, Anyway then in November our furnace broke down and we had to have it repaired and we had to come up with 7oo.oo to get into a budget plan with an oil company to protect ourselves from rising oil prices, Anyway I called Saxon and told them but now they wanted two payments.It was almost the end of November and we still could not do it. Called Saxon and first call we were told we couldn't afford a payment plan. Next call someone said sure we can do a payment plan. 1763 on Dec 17 and the same on Jan17 and then 2000 by the END of Jan. AAAhhhh OK at least that will give us some time for my work to improve OR our application to the HERO loan with PHFA (Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency) to be approved. OK PHFA says we qualify for their new program but they cannot get ANYONE at Saxon to respond. Our application was faxed to phfa on November 17th. They cannot seem to get an answer. On the 19th of Feb we received an ACT 91 letter. For those of you who do not live in PA this is a warning that your mortgage is about to file a foreclosure but it gives you an opportunity to apply for assisstance from Pennsylvania to help you get current. We have done this but this is not the problem the problem is the interest rate started at 6.75 and now is 10%. during the first three years we did not have enough equity in our home to refinance and pay the prepayment penalty and closing costs and then when our house did go up in value we had been through a bad period when my husband had gotten injured at work and a misdiagnosis had ended him on workman's comp for 6 months. And we had to pay health insurance premiums out of 60% of his income. Six weeks OK we could have gotten through that but 6 months. Well, we had almost lost our house then but we entered into a repayment plan. There is a story about that one but now it doesn't matter. You have to document every thing that Saxon says. Always ask who you are talking to and write it down.
Last week I was told that they would not accept anything but the total we were behind. Yesterday when I asked if they would accept one payment (advised by phfa counseling at Money Management to offer to see what they said) they said no but we could send two. Funny, I was routed to customer service , I asked to speak to Loss Mitigation, spoke to them and then was routed back to customer service. I told Angie that a payoff offer was submitted by PHFA and asked her why no one would respond to them. She told me that she saw in the notes that someone spoke to phfa on Feb 15th and the offer was turned down because QUOTE " the investors felt it was not in their best interest to accept the offer as the property was worth more than the payoff." Hold up!! What?? Our principal balance with them is 112000, they have gotten interest only payments for 5 years!!! Up until that moment I did not know the amount that phfa had offered but I asked what do you mean investors? Who are the investors and maybe I am faxing and talking to the wrong people. Of coiuse she told me she did not have that information in front of her. She did not know who the investors were. So, I call phfa to talk to our case worker and she was livid, NO ONE at their office spoke to Saxon. She even checked the phone logs. NOPE!!!! She needs an answer so that she can make a counter offer!!! To qualify for this loan program we cannot owe more than our house is worth but then Saxon says that because we never refinanced to get money we are now being punished because the investors are bleeding internally and want to keep their botom line in the black they want to keep us"" OK Well modify our loan or cut us loose!!!!!
I have also put in a call to that new HOPE line and I am waiting to hear from them today and also I told phfa that maybe the answer from Saxon is in writting because their mail is VERY slow I had to threaten them to get tham to put post marks on their mail. Example: date of letter January 24th > Post mark January 30th> received February 6th or 7th. So I told her if a letter was generated on the 15th of February, she may not receive it until the 29th of February and because that is a Friday maybe not until March 3rd.
Why do we have fax machines?
There are other details I have probably left out but as you can see this is a mess I am sick , depressed and my husband does not handle stress as well as I do.
We have:
1. Applied for a HERO loan with Pennsylvania: Saxon is stone walling them so is Global Loan (our smaller loan)
2. Applied for a HEMAP loan with Pennsylvania to allow us to get current. If approved we get a fresh start but the problem is the increased payment and a credit score that fell through the floor.
3. Sent Saxon's workout dept in Loss Mitigation a financial wotksheet with paystubs w-2 etc etc and hardship letter. I am afraid that too got a little long like this.
4. Talked to a counselor at HOPE Now alliance at 1-888-995-HOPE last night. That conversation left me a little more hopeful. He seemed to be puzzled about Saxon not accepting the offer from phfa. So we shall see.


My one question. How do you find out who the investors are who hold your mortgage?? Yesterday was the first time I even heard that phrase.

Sorry about the length of this post, but believe me it copuld have been longer. God Bless all of you who are stuck in similar situations. Prayer can help. So can the right questions to the right people. Thank you in advance. This site has already helped me. Karen

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

First off the refinance offer is to take out the amount owed to the lender, Saxon and the investors, at this point let's lump them together for the sake of consistency. Somewhere along the line the information that someone provided is either inconsistent or entirely wrong. The full principle balance must be paid off with any interest arrearage, fees, charges, etc..that is the normal usual, customary method of payoff with any loan whether delinquent or current. If you were 4 months behind, there would be four months interest in addition to the principle owing, and late charges.....etc...is there a prepayment penalty, if so these are hard prepayment penalties and as such they are required in the payoff as well. NO WHERE are they allowed to just add $$$ to the balance in order to staunch the hemorrhaging of their bottom line and profits, however. However, Saxon is not the brightest kid on the block and someone may have explained this poorly to you and at this point I will give them the benefit of doubt.

What ever the situation is, you need a clean clear concise payoff letter form Saxon to determine just what they say you owe and how that breaks out. The party refinancing your loan should ask for that letter and should within 24 hours have it. It is a common and easy thing to obtain. It appears that the refinance loan is less than the balance owed and there is a reluctance on the part of Saxon/Investor to take a hair cut, i.e. less than what they assume they are owed. Now to the part where they do not want to allow payoff of the actual balance owed, well, if that is the CASE, RESPA violations abound.....BIG ONES.....

You need to immediately do not pass go contact FTC, they are on the Web and have a very cozy discussion with them if that is the case. This is huge servicing abuse. HUGE. Now having said that the CSR that you spoke to is most likely an idiot and was so misinformed that the servicing gods are going to rain down on his/her head. If a borrower is ready, willing and able to pay the amount owed in full they can not refuse the payoff......!!!!!!

So here is the issue, if the amount that you have to payoff the debt with Saxon is less than what is owed, balance, fees (late), legal and interest, YES they have the right to refuse it, and most assuredly will. They are not taking principle reductions at this point in this mess. If the amount that you have available is enough to payoff the full balance owing they can not refuse.

You can not bring action against them for refusing less unless you have egregious violations of RESPA, TIL, Reg Z and even then often the best you can hope for is work out and modification since you have some teeth. They are NOT, taking less these days, not yet. They can refuse a short payoff offer and frankly will every time.

No you can not get anywhere directly with the investors, they have billions of loan dollars lumped together and could not sort you out from the next guy, their decisions are predicated on the information and recommendation of the Servicer and those are really the only people you can communicate with. As for the investor, it may be more than one....these were sliced and diced and sold out in CDO's and trusts...who knows how many ways the pie was sliced.

You are working with good people, however, they should know that is the case that the Servicers/Investors are not taking short payoffs and have not to date and if so, I want to know who is so that I can assist folks with that servicer. Finally if the amount that is being offered to them is the full amount owed, and they are refusing, then you need to immediately go to FTC..., however if it is not the full amount owing then the Servicer/Investor has the right to refuse the offer.

Continue with the Modification Process and have the PA financing folks get to the bottom of this, you have taken very proactive measures to protect yourselves, however the posting needs to define the terms that the PA financing is offering so that I can ascertain if the payoff is complete, ie all monies owed to date.

If you are questioning the amount owed, please do not hesitate to execute a QWR so that you can determine if there are violations in the fees and charges that are being added to your loan as well. That has and can be the case.

QWR -- there are examples of the letter in the Tool Box. In that letter demand your Life of Loan History, copy of Note, Deed of Trust, Riders, all Assignments of the Deed of Trust, TIL, Right of Rescission (if refi), Lender Final HUD-1, copy of initial loan application and final lender loan application, all disclosures and all loan documents in your file, copy of appraisal. Send this three times certified return receipt required and also send it to the Broker, Title Company and all others in the Chain of the Transaction.

This thread has a really good example:

My Countrywide escapade and Hi!

[Karen]

I have to appologize, I have been absent from the forum and busy. We are in the final steps of a loan Mod with Saxon so you will understand what I mean by busy. But, I have a question. Our mortgage payment includes our escrow payment, if we are behind, how are the escrow payments handled. Is the total payment just lumped into the mix or should these be separated. We are waiting for the package to come by FedEx. This has been such a trying time I am almost afraid to ask this question of Saxon. I really don't want to rock this boat. Should I just wait until the package comes? The negotiator was very nice and patient with our questions but this one didn't occur to me until the middle of the night. We got back to our original interest rate of 6.75% fixed for 5 years. Our interst and principal payment is $173 more than it was in 2002 but it was not based on 30 years but 25 years. It all seems great but I still have this little nagging feeling that escrow payments should not be rolled into our principle. If I am posting on the wrong forum or have missed something in previos posts, I apologize, I have alot of work to do and must finish it in time to get paid to make the deadline of our down payment.

Thanks, Karen

Without seeing the Modification I am can not say specifically where they are, rolled into the payment or part of the down payment that you are required to provide or a combination...i.e. some on the principle capitalized, some rolled into payment and some in the down payment.....

Dependant on the amount of shortage this will determine how they treat it, over all I have seen single solutions to multiple solutions to the shortage again dependent on how large the shortage actually is.

Saxon is fairly simplistic so I would imagine that they are in the payment, the down payment and will fall off after a period of time as the shortage is repaid...however, if was really large like over 3000.00 they may worked some of it into the principle to minimize the impact in the monthly payments and down payment.

[Karen]

Dear Poppy,

Thank you for your quick response and also for all the valuable information I learned from this site. You have helped us save our home from foreclosure along with PHFA and Pennsylvania's program with the HEMAP loans which we may not need now and the help of HOPE NOW. I think we just bombarded Saxon and were the very load squeaky wheel. Before we got behind we had about 400 in escrow but with no payments in and one tax bill coming due and being paid we now have a negative amount of 300 and something. I figured it was about what you said but will wait until the package arrives. Does it matter where they put it? Are there any laws about where they put it?
Another question. Should we wait until the package arrives before we pay the down payment? The negptiator said she wasn't sure if we would get the papers before the date by which she said we had to have the down payment paid. Is this standard procedure?
Again , thank you!!!!
Karen

Well, if it is Saxon...they have a very bad habit of mailing the package after the damn return package is actually due....so a clue...they can fax the doggoned thing to you...call them and ask for a faxed package.

You will have to get that good faith payment into them prior to the date due and if you can get that package faxed to you that might "hit the spot".

As for what they put in them, they are case by case, you need to read it there is a lot of boiler plate language and frankly some of it may not hold water in the final analysis if push came to shove....the one about forgoing any claims, I have no way to tell if that one does hold water. But I am not an attorney, only a lender, and I would never dream of having a borrower forgo any legal claims that are set forth in a regulation like RESPA or other government regulation.

So call the toads on Monday and see if they can figure out how to work the little buttons on the fax machine and get you a copy of the agreement....you should sign it if it is agreeable and fax it back then have a copy of the original notarized and send the original signed copy back to them. Of course wire the good faith funds as well. I am so glad we and the State of PA could help, the AG there is very, very proactive with these problems...it is a good state to have problems in if you have to have problems.