An excellent piece appeared in The Huffington Post by
business editor Peter Goodman on Wednesday, discussing the lack of progress
being made in lender loss mitigation departments across the county, since the
Obama administration and state attorneys general agreed to the $25 billion
foreclosure settlement with the nation's five largest mortgage companies this
past February.
The article is centered on Katie Diaz and her dealings with
Bank of America, over the past four years.
A victim of the “great recession” and the housing crisis,
Katie’s story is one that is all too familiar. She’s not a cause of the housing crisis, but a casualty of
it. She wants nothing more to
continue making her payments, but after losing work hours as the economy
worsened – and eventually, her job – she did everything she was told to do in
order to receive assistance from BofA , only to see the process drag on without
results.
Not a new story, but this particular case is an encouraging
one – when so many others seem hopeless.
Instead of communicating directly with her lenders loss
mitigation department (at least, at this point in the process), the State of
New York requires a settlement conference, with a court-appointed “referee”
presiding over it.
Too often, the bank can get away with virtually whatever
they want and it’s your word against theirs. You can have all the fax confirmations, saved emails, etc.,
but if the bank says they didn’t get what you sent them, that’s the way it
goes.
Until now.
With a neutral party involved, the playing field becomes a
little bit more level. I think
what NY is doing is fantastic and I hope to see more states follow suit.
Sure, the article might end with Diaz being rejected for
assistance, but I hardly think that’s the end of the story.
Anyway, read for yourself – it’s frustrating, but not nearly
as frustrating if she didn’t have a neutral party overseeing the insanity…
No comments:
Post a Comment