First, I would like to thank everyone in this forum. I have to say that a big part of my success with the settlement was thanks to all the ideas provided by reading the different stories here and hopefully Im able to do same by posting mine.
To make it short, I had a 163K Heloc which with late fees (7 months of not paying) and everthing was close to 165k. I was able to settle for 15% ($24500) I dont want to discuss why i was behind on my payments, but i can say that I knew unless i got rid of the heloc I could not keep the house. My current income will only allow me to pay the first mortgage (with Coutrywide/Bank of America). I first stopped paying the heloc and then the following month stop paying the 1st mortgage. Although, I could pay the first I didnt since I read somewhere that unless I was in foreclosure, the 2nd will not probably settle (big risk, but it worked).
So, after I ran into the 90 days of being late;WAMU started calling me. First, they would offer to modify temporarly my payment. Since, I had read in this forum that I could offer to settle for as little as 10% i told them that was my offer. The inital guy told me that was not possible, that could only be done later (I think he mentioned the retention department). They kept calling and I would repeat the same thing. One day finally, someone told me to send the hardship letter, and last 2 paystubs. That was back in mid september. She told to wait two weeks and that someone would call me back. I actually waited 3 weeks and no one called. When i called them they said the documents were not received and that it was showing as a short sale. So, I sent again my hardship letter with my offer of 10%, 2 paystubs but his time she wanted to see where the money was coming from ( I told them it was from my 401k retirement funds). This idea even though it wasnt true I got it from another posting. After refaxing evertyhing again, they said someone would be assigned to the file (they called him the closer agent). I learned that you had to keep calling them, so after 1 week someone was assigned and I got his name. Then i waited 2 weeks (the time they told me was normal for him to review everything). He didnt call me, so when i called they gave me his extension. The extension was not the right one, so after three days of calling everyday finally someone got me the right extension. When I got to speak to him I could tell he had not looked at the file, so he briefly looked at the documents while over the phone. We talked about the 10% offer, he said it was far from what they would take (35-40% according to him). Then he said the minimum offer he could submit was a 20%, I said NO since I really didnt have that much. I told him the max I could do was a 15%. We hanged up and 5 mintues later he called me and asked a couple more questions and then said he would submit my 15% offer. After two days he callled me and said they were accepting my offer and that I had until the 29th to send $24500 and sign the agreement he faxed me.
Yesterday I went to the branch and made the payment. Now, Im done with CHASE and Im able to keep my house!!
As for Bank of America, I ordered a reinstantment amount and ironically I will need to withdraw part of the money from my retirement fund to get current with them. But at least Im able to stay in my home with my kids and husband.
The lesson here is to insist, call them everyday if you have to. It seems there are so overwhlemed that unless you call them they wont look at your file. Again, thanks to all for showing us how to write a hardship letter and other ideas.I read this forum for hours during all these months and im grateful that i found you all.
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