Am I doing what I'm supposed to do?

[stillhavehope]

Hi everyone, I'm in the same boat as a lot of folks but I'm probably more ignorant than most. My partner has always handled the finanicals and he was assuring me that we were fine, but I found out via our renters who came home to a notice of foreclosure on the door and called me instead of him.

Here's our story in brief. He had a house and he alone is on that mortgage, then we moved in together and bought a new place together. I'm on that mortgage and a second mortgage on the same property. So that's 3 loans, all with SunTrust. We were really struggling after the old house didn't sell and we ended up renting it out after a long string of months. Thanks to some financial assistance from a charity and the occupied second house, we caught up in July, which unfortunately coincided with the month that he lost his job. Not fired, medically put out of the Army. I'll skip to me finding out about how bad things were this time. He had been so in denial (and I guess me some of my own) and overwhelmed, he was hiding mail, the works, and was just letting everything crash around us and I afraid to tell me. He's now given me control of everything now that I wasn't already on via a power of attorney. I fear it's too late. I'm finanically a moron, I admit, but I'm ready to face whatever is going to happen and I just want to be prepared. And I don't want him to just get so depressed and overwhelmed that he loses his job or something so I'm trying to stay optimistic. He started an amazing job that I still can't believe he got and as of mid-December our income is higher than it was even when we got approved for the loan. I just don't have anywhere close to the money on hand to make it current. On Christmas Eve we got an unpromted fedex from Suntrust offering a modification of the second mortgage on the current house, but just that one. We signed it and returned but there are still the other two.

I had started with the foreclosure notices from SunTrust's lawyers back on Dec 22 when I found out and after a week of holidays and talking to the wrong people (the law firm) I finally called SunTrust and they immediately asked me to fax the authorization to speak on my partner's behalf and call them back the next day. In the meantime, I went ahead and did a spreadsheet with a no BS approach about what we spend, down to the spending on cigarettes (I don't expect to stop smoking now). It all shook out to where, if you count the rent from the other house as income, we have about a $1000 surplus at the end of the month....we didn't for a long time but now we do. I faxed that spreadsheet to Loss Mitigation later that night as a follow-up to the earlier fax, trying to be proactive.

The next day I got through to a loan counselor at SunTrust who went over our financials. I explained that there was another loan that I'm not on and that I wanted to discuss both. He pulled up just the main one on our current house and said that I could discuss the others with the negotiator. We started from scratch and I explained our hardship, went over the financials. He then passed me over to loss mitigation. I explained that that the counselor who was pre-qualifying me hadn't taken down the number of the other loan and she too said that the negotiator would talk to me about that so just wait until they call me.

I'm a nervous wreck. That was a week ago. What do I do now? We're over 110 days past due. Does the foreclosure ball keep rolling while the modification request is pending? Since my call was only associated with the one loan and not the other, and given a backlog of these requests, can they proceed with setting an auction date or something (thinking that we're not taking any action) and then too bad for us if SunTrust doesn't get to our case until that's already happened. I just don't know. My plan was to call for a status update but I thought I'd poke around the internet and/or contact Hope for guidance so that I'm armed with more information. Even if they raise our payments, I think we could handle it at this point with his new job, though that would make it tough to absorb any unforeseen expenses like car/home repairs, but there are still cuts we could make to free up more money to get by. We have the money to make January's payment right now but I don't want to throw money at them just to lose the house anyway, and I don't even think I can pay them anyway because we're so late. And did I screw up by being honest about our income and now our payments will skyrocket to repay the past due, bringing us back to this point a year from now since we'll have no breathing room?

I don't expect all of my question to be answered, I'm just getting them out of my head because I'm so anxious. But I was hoping that someone in this experienced group could give me some general advice about next steps I should be taking and things I have done wrong so that I don't keep doing them. Thanks for listening to my story and good luck to everyone else going through this.

[schwefls]

Hi stillhavehope welcome to our forum:

I wanted to stop in say hello and assure you, you are not alone. Someone will be stopping by with some sound advice/suggestions. In the interim please hang in there and know that we are here for you

[Moe Bedard]

Hi stillhavehope,


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

Try calling SunTrust for an update on the files............they may be handling each separately so try to find out if the files were assigned different negotiators so you have direct contact info for each.

Sun Trust Loss Mitigation
1 (800) 634-7928



The options given are up to the investors on these loan.........so you would need to see what options there are.



Please keep us posted on your progress................

[stillhavehope]

Just wanted to update progress and say thanks for the words of support. The loans were assigned to different negotiators. SunTrust sold off the service on the other property to a company, and there is no decision on that as yet. However, the loan on our primary residence is a full success story. After not hearing from the negotiator for several weeks and then finding a door tag stuck in our building elevator (so embarrassing) telling us to call the mortgage collections dept, I instead called Hope for guidance since I had never done that. I was a little confused about the door tag, seeing as how I was waiting so eagerly to hear from them and then that sort of public collection notice, I thought that did not bode well.

The call to Hope was a very positive experience, solid guidance, and the counselor ended up calling SunTrust with me on the line and they did most of the talking. As it turned out, SunTrust had been trying to reach me for the past few days to verify some financial info but had been using an outdated contact number (though I had given them the new one, but whatever, didn't matter in the end). The Hope counselor went over our financials again and the loss mit person said thanks and sit tight, we'd hear from the negotiator soon. On Monday they called and offered us our best case scenario...the past due (we were more than four months past due) was rolled back into the loan, and the interest rate was fixed at 5.5 for 30 years and we were not asked to make an up front contribution. We simply pick up payments again. We had been part of a mass modification on our second mortgage on the this property (that is, SunTrust offered modification on our second mortgage on this property at the end of December without us even asking...they called it a holiday program) and once they worked with us to verify our financial situation, they were able to modify the primary loan according to those same terms. It was amazing. Again, we may not be so lucky on the other property, but because this one worked out so well, we can probably stomach whatever comes of the offer on that one. I truly have nothing bad to say about dealing with SunTrust. Every interaction was reassuring and courteous, and I have nothing but great things to say about the Hope program. Even though I had already started the ball rolling before calling them, my counselor was a reassuring presence, accessible, and put some wind back in my sails when I was starting to get down. I'd say that the most important factor for us was that the financial downturn that got us to the point of foreclosure had been resolved and our income was was again sufficient to afford the house. It wasn't for a long time, but once we were back on our feet the bank was willing to work with us. I'll update on the other property when we know, but I wanted to share that story and say what a wonderful source of reassurance and guidance this site is. Best of luck to all those out there going through this...I'm proof that the story can have a happy ending.

[Dan Bailey]

Stillhavehope,
Thats great that you have had a positive experience with HOPE! Also that you are good with your primary residence...thats the most important thing!