Countrywide Modification Advice from Loan Safe to SUCCESS!!

[LoriF]

My husband and I suffered a cut in income (i'm in real estate, he's in tv), and we haven't been able to make our payments the past 2 months.

Originally we bought our home at 7.125 first and our second is currently at 6.5. We spoke with an Indian woman who told us we could possibly lower our payment to 5.25 on the first, which would make all the difference in us being able to keep our house. Right after she told us that, we were assigned to a woman named Gabrielle Williams, who told us that "the company that has our loan doesn't negotiate". She said the best they will do is to add our past mortgage payments into our loan, amortized. She said it was "take it or leave it". Our interest wouldn't change at all. We are inclined to just accept it, because we don't want to lose our home, but something in me says that there is still some play there.

I'd love to know if anyone else has experienced this.

Thank you for your help,
Lori

[Moe Bedard]

Lori,

Send your hardship letter and note about what you have been going through with Countrywide to each of these emails.........make sure your loan number is included.......
this should help at least have them take another look at the modification....

[LoriF]

Thanks ***. I just emailed the negotiator and CC'd all of those people on the letter. I explained that the original person we spoke with offered 5.25% and that keeping us at our original interest rate doesn't help us, it only delays the problem.

I'll give it a couple of days and then I'll call. At first I was grateful for the offer to add the late payments on, but then it really hit me that 1) this doesn't cost them anything, and 2) they can do better.

I will report back when I have news.

[Moe Bedard]

Sounds good Lori.............

Good Luck.......

[LoriF]

I got a call today from the Office of the President at Countrywide, and she said she was assigning a "super case handler" to us, and we'd here from that person within 72 hours. I'll keep you updated.

[Moe Bedard]

Lori,
Thanks for the update
Wow a Super Case Handler...............that must mean your modification will be going at Warp Speed........

Keep us updated..........

[LoriF]

Well, since my last post, nothing has happened. We've left 3 messages for Kacie in the Office of the President, and have not received a return phone call. On Saturday I finally did the QWR and faxed it to 5 offices and mailed return receipt, certified to 4 offices. I will call again in the morning.

I have a question, though. We got a call last Friday morning from a Countrywide office that said we will be in foreclosure on May 17th. Does that mean we'll be going up for sale, or does the 4 month process START on May 17th? Any help is appreciated.

Thanks, Lori

[Moe Bedard]

Lori,

On that one it could mean that the file is being transferred to that dept. they usually do this anywhere from the 90-120 days past due.......that is the start of the process.......hopefully you will be able to have an approval by then...

[LoriF]

Today after our phone and email barrage we got a return phone call from Zach Harrod. My husband explained to him that the financials he had must be incorrect because we don't have a surplus of more than $10. He looked through the financials and told my husband that "we only accept $500 for credit card payments". We're in a credit consolidation that costs us $1450 per month. So my husband said "Well then remove the $10,000 gift that we reported for the income". He said "we can't do that", and my husband said "well we can't count on that gift, so remove it". Zach is now working on it again.

[Moe Bedard]

OK, this is the normal song and dance. Don't worry, but keep doing what you are doing. Yes, they don't like a lot of other debt. They don't care if your trying to do the right thing. If you have over $500, they figure that should go to your payment. I like your husbands negotiating skills, good poker player I see.

[LoriF]

Thanks for the encouragement, Moe. I decided last night we should have a good cop / bad cop routine going with this negotiator. The husband talked to him yesterday firmly but friendly, and I called this morning. I left a message this morning "Please call me back and explain the foreclosure process because if the lender isn't going to negotiate we'll definitely have to let the house go". We'll take turns calling.

[Moe Bedard]

No Problem. Good, keep at them and make them remember you. You'll get there soon.

[LoriF]

We did it!!!! We just received our paperwork today, Countrywide is modifying our loan from 7.125% interest to 5.25% interest, fixed for 5 years, and they are adding all of our missed payments and property taxes on to the account!!

Here is a summary of what we did, and let me preface it by saying that halfway through we were ready to just accept what they were offering us, but we kept pushing. The success stories on this forum serve to let you know that if OTHER people are making progress, so can you. Don't accept their first offer.

1) Called HOPE Project (number listed on Countrywide website) and went through our expenses with them. We needed to make sure our expenses / income showed a surplus of $5 - $100 month. You can't be showing negative, so make it balance out.

2) Called Countrywide a dozen times to follow-up. They made us re-fill out our expenses/income with them.

3) Our loan modifier told us we could only fix our current interest rate and add the missed payments on because "our lender doesn't negotiate". We turned them down.

4) Wrote a letter explaining our situation and how desperately we want to keep our home but no one will help us. Faxed it to every fax number I could find (see below) and emailed it to every person I could find (see below). This got us a call from the Office of the President.

5) Zach in the office of the president explained that we had a surplus that was too high, because they wouldn't include our monthly payment to our credit card consolidator in our expenses. We currently pay $1466. for past due credit cards, and Countrywide was only accepting a max of $500. We had to fight them on this, and send them all the proof of our accounts and balances and the term of the repayment, and show proof that we were paying the least that the credit card companies would accept.

6) Sent our Qualified Written Request to 4 different addresses via certified return-receipt mail, and faxed it to all the same numbers again. We told our story, and requested all our loan docs, etc. See the toolbox on the left.

7) We called and emailed Zach in the Office of the President EVERY DAY, sometimes twice a day. We would take turns, good cop / bad cop style.

8) They agreed to resubmit our modification request to Wells Fargo, who has the loan.

9) Three days later we called to check in and they said it was approved.

10) Two days later we received the paperwork in the mail.

Here is all the contact info I have:

Countrywide (800) 262-4218
https://customers.countrywide.com/se...t_login254.asp

[Moe Bedard]

Lori............that is great news.........congratulations!!!..........

I am so happy that you received what you were looking for thanks to the Contact Info provided on this Site for you...........

Off to Success you will go..........

[elrob1981]

***,

Do you also have e-mail addresses for people in Saxon Mortgage that I can send my hardship letter to.

Rob

[Moe Bedard]

Rob,

I am working on them..............unfortunately for us some lenders only operate with an interoffice email system like Chase.........so far I have some for Homeq, Citi, CW, and Ocwen, and thanks to schwefls Litton.. I am working on some others and I am posting them in the Loan Modification Section as I crack the code......