New and need some advice - Mortgage Forum

mom in cali · 02-09-2010, 05:45 PM

I am so happy I found this site. My husband and I have a huge decision to make and finding this site is giving me some great insight to our issues....

I would like to ask you all some advice here, because I am freaked out, and not sure what would be best. A little background.... my husband bought his house 10 years ago before the market went sky high. We are in cali, and he got a great deal on a new construction home, He bought his home for 250,000, he got a great rate, fixed for 30 years, and we have been lucky that we haven't tried to use the property as a bank, by pulling out equity in the home. The home's value went through the roof during the boom... at one point appraising for 850K... (yeah, we know) but the plan was and has always been that this was the home for the rest of our lives. He pulled some equity out, but not much, being mindful that he didnt want to max out the equity if the market fell....

And boy did it fall..... we are lucky in that we think we are even with our home right now vs. being upside down, but we are cash strapped. My husband has medical issues, that have caused his medications to quadruple than what they were 2 years ago, the cost of living in Cali is stupid insane, from our property taxes, to electricity, gas, auto gas and everything else, what was a comfortable living 2 years ago, has now become us living pay check to pay check. I have legal issues as well as my own bills and dont make a whole lot of money. We are both struggling just to keep food on the table and the roof over our heads. Our incomes haven't increased, but the bills have.

The final blow, well, we couldn't afford to pay our property taxes last year.... so my husband has been trying to work out a payment plan with the state to get them paid. WF (who the mortgage is with) contacted him in early December and said that if he doesn't pay the taxes, they would pay them for him and then raise the mortgage payment to get the money back. He contacted them in late December told them then that he was working out payment plan with the state, and as soon as the paperwork was sent to him, he would send it to them. The WF person said, that would be fine and he would make a note on the file.

Flash forward to last Sat. when my husband got a notice in the mail that said WF had paid the taxes and the mortgage payment was going up over 1300.00 per month so they could get their money back. We cant afford that...period..... we have had our power shut off for lack of payment, we are behind on our water and gas bills and now they want to us to come up with an additional 1300.00 a month in 2 months.....

We are beside ourselves and are thinking about not paying the mortgage for a few months to force WF into dealing with us...but we arent sure what we want in the way of payment structure. We know we want to stay in the home... but we cant afford what WF has done to the payments

We are discussing the following plan: Stop paying the mortgage and applying that money towards paying of the credit card debt that we have. Contacting WF and asking for a reduction in the monthly payment amount to something that can we can afford and taking the the missed payments and property tax payment and sticking them to the back of the loan. We both feel that WF forced us into a situation we cant afford. Granted, we didnt make some of the best choices, but this pushed us over the edge.

So, as you can imagine, this is all new to us, we are both nervous to do this. Not only is it embarrassing, but we have young children and want to stay in our home. The bottom line is though, come April, we will be out of luck and will go default anyway, so might as well start paying off some of our debts so that we can come to WF with an agreeable payment amount.

Any advice would be great.

Thanks

stillhoping · 02-09-2010, 06:04 PM

What is your interest rate? Can you refinance? FHA has some good refinance options but you can't be late or miss a payment in 12 months. Before you go down the road of missing payment, I'd check out other options. It's a slippy slope, believe me!

mom in cali · 02-09-2010, 06:17 PM

Cant refinance, because our credit is shot.. and we cant afford to pay the increase in the rate, at all, we are barely covering our bills as it is

1901sparky · 02-09-2010, 06:28 PM

have you applied for in house mod or hamp mod yet?

cnd5v1 · 02-09-2010, 06:31 PM

Well it sounds like your only other option is to stop paying the mortgage because Wells wont show any interest in helping til you are past due. I dont even know if I would pay the credit cards bills because as u stated your credit is already shot. I would pay the necessities etc, light, gas, water because u need those things in order to live in the home. i would be saving my mortgage money/puttg to the side just in case the modification didnt go thru, then u would at least have funds should you have to move, worse case scenario. Good luck in whatever u decide and keep us posted. Oh, by the way Im with Wells Fargo as well and it has been a rollercoaster ride.

mom in cali · 02-09-2010, 06:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 1901sparky

have you applied for in house mod or hamp mod yet?

No, dont know how to even start going about that. Husband has talked to WF and told them that we will not be able to make the payment at the new rate. From my understanding, he was told to get our financial stuff together and send it to them.

But we have been told several times that they wont even look at us until we miss payments.

1901sparky · 02-09-2010, 06:42 PM

thats what indymac told me too over a year ago...i was trying to get my loan modified BEFORE my ballon payment was due...i didnt want to screw up my credit..but nothing was done on the banks end and sure enough i couldnt afford my new payment and had to default. i only went one month of not paying before the bank sent my a trial loan mod. i applied for the hamp program (i was told by a hope counselor i qualified)..turns out indymac didnt agree and 5 months later denied my the loan mod. BUT they denied me, as i later learned, on an incorrect income/expense sheet (mistakes THEY made)..anyway i had to draft some letters...most important one was the qualified letter of request...

its a long and tiring battle trying to save your home...we are all going through it. i can only pray that the fight will be worth it in the end.

there are example letters of hardship and so forth for you....also, maybe you should try calling the hope line....

mom in cali · 02-09-2010, 06:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cnd5v1

Well it sounds like your only other option is to stop paying the mortgage because Wells wont show any interest in helping til you are past due. I dont even know if I would pay the credit cards bills because as u stated your credit is already shot. I would pay the necessities etc, light, gas, water because u need those things in order to live in the home. i would be saving my mortgage money/puttg to the side just in case the modification didnt go thru, then u would at least have funds should you have to move, worse case scenario. Good luck in whatever u decide and keep us posted. Oh, by the way Im with Wells Fargo as well and it has been a rollercoaster ride.

And that just stinks that I they wont even look at us until we miss payments. Husband has paid every month for over 10 years. He has had a couple of late pays, but nothing like 30 days late. He has been a great customer since he bought the house. We have had more people tell us that they wont even work with us, because since we are current, they just think we are whining.... but if we miss payments, then they know we are serious. Just frustrating.

We love our home and dont want to loose it, and we are lucky that we are even or if upside down, maybe by 10K. If we could just get ahead with our other debt, then we could get some breathing room to pay a little bit more on the mortgage, but not the 1300.00 they want. For doing something that wasnt even authorized by my husband....

Maddening

1901sparky · 02-09-2010, 06:56 PM

"mom in cali"....i wish i was more computer savy and knew how to post articles, but I'm not

you can email me if you want at babyjack24@gmail.com....

i know you dont HAVE to miss payment to be considered for loan mod....i love this site but i just cant figure out how to post things and then find my way back to my original quest of indymac threads....

msm859 · 02-09-2010, 07:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 1901sparky

"

i know you dont HAVE to miss payment to be considered for loan mod....

I would disagree. If you want to be seriously considered for a mod you have to be 60 days late. In fact some servicing agreements between the banks and the investors require that.
Without being late they may go through the motions, but your chances are greatly diminished.

stillhoping · 02-09-2010, 08:02 PM

mom in cali - Be very careful what you say to Wells Fargo. If they think there's equity, they certainly won't help you. View your home underwater and by more than 10k. Start gathering comps that will support your lack of equity.

Even under HAMP, they don't have to help you if there's equity. It wouldn't make "good business sense".

Best of luck!!!

mom in cali · 02-09-2010, 08:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stillhoping

mom in cali - Be very careful what you say to Wells Fargo. If they think there's equity, they certainly won't help you. View your home underwater and by more than 10k. Start gathering comps that will support your lack of equity.

Even under HAMP, they don't have to help you if there's equity. It wouldn't make "good business sense".

Best of luck!!!

It's so confusing. I am reviewing what WF have done, and they have enrolled husband into an escrow account to pay the property taxes and paid the past property taxes and are now asking either to pay the full amount (if we could have paid the full amount before, we wouldnt be here) or make payments of the past due taxes they paid and pay the new impound amount. This raises the mortgage up over 1,300.00..... That will just kill us.

Husband says he can pay the mortgage if it stays the same or is lower, but this new rate, we can not do. It's almost like they are forcing us down the road to default. At least that is the way I feel.

Husband wants to stop paying so at least we can get our other debts paid down so that we can apply those funds to the mortgage and the property tax impound amount. Give us some breathing room for a few months to get back on or feet, and then tack the missed payments and property taxes on the back end of the loan. My thinking is to see if we can have them just tack the property taxes at the back end of the loan, extend the loan and find the extra few hundred to take care of the property taxes per month.

Husband talked to a lawyer and he also said that they wont even talk to us until we are in default.... so damn frustrating.....

My course of thinking right now is to not miss a payment and start the process, but will they take us seriously? Probably not....

Thanks for letting me vent

1901sparky · 02-10-2010, 12:29 AM

i found a site that may help..answers questions about income/expense and prop tax stuff...based in san diego...i

trailpayment · 03-04-2010, 01:41 PM

mom in cali thats what they are doing they want you to defualt. banks are no good iam fighting

mom in cali · 03-04-2010, 09:18 PM

So, I guess we are going to start down this horrible road. We talked to a guy through our church, who actually works for a Non-Profit organization, that helps people save their homes. He works with people who are in worse shape than we are, and says that we should be able to work this out.

I am still freaked out to go down this road, reading all the horror stories about dealing with Wells Fargo.... and this guy DID say that Wells is a NIGHTMARE to deal with.... great.......

So, I will keep you all posted about the fight that will start in the next few weeks.... and to top it off..... we got a letter from our HOA saying that we have a notice of default on our property and that it's going to foreclosure because of past due HOA dues.... which is funny... because we HAVE been paying them, but they keep returning the payments to us. HUGE issue because HOA switched and we didnt find out, so the old HOA kept cashing our checks, and the new HOA thinks we havent been paying... this is just a freaking mess......

I keep trying to tell myself that the HOA cant foreclose on our house... but getting a letter in the mail that states that is rattling my nerves....UGh