Foreclosure and Loan Modification Blog

Turn your television to a random basic cable channel and it probably won't be long before a reality show about house flipping comes on. There's Flip This House on A&E, Flip That House on Discovery, Flip or Flop on HGTV, Flip Men on Spike, Flipping Out on Bravo, and many, many others.

Even celebrities are in on the house flipping reality show craze. Snooki from Jersey Shore has a show on FYI called Nicole & Jionni's Shore Flip. And Vanilla Ice has The Vanilla Ice Project on DIY Network.

Disclaimer: These results should not be taken as a guarantee, as each case is unique. We have helped over 7,000 homeowners, here are some results that came in this week.

Every week we obtain loan modifications for our clients, we're working on a round up of results that came in which you can follow on Twitter or Facebook.

Keep reading to see: three (3) Ocwen modifications, two (2) Bayview loan modifications, three (3) Seterus modifications, one (1) Bank of America loan modification and one (1) Selene Finance mod.

Disclaimer: These results should not be taken as a guarantee, as each case is unique. We have helped over 7,000 homeowners, here is one of their stories.

In 2008 an Illinois couple, who we'll call the Petersons to protect their privacy, purchased a home in the Chicago suburbs with a $216,464 loan from Citi Financial. By March of 2015 they had stopped making the $1,077 monthly mortgage payment because they could no longer afford it. By September of 2015 they were justifiably concerned that they would lose their home to foreclosure and hired Amerihope Alliance Legal Services to help.

Step One: Submit Loan Modification Application

Since the Petersons wanted to keep their home, getting a loan modification was the only hope they had to accomplish their goal. When approved, a loan mod will reinstate a loan and return it to normal servicing. Modified mortgage loans usually have a lower monthly payment and sometimes reduced principal as well.

We submitted the Peterson's modification application to their lender but weeks later, and while the application was under review, they were served a complaint letting them know they were in foreclosure.

Step Two: Answer Foreclosure Complaint

We responded to the complaint for our client, letting CitiFinancial know we intended to fight for our client to avoid foreclosure and keep their home.

The amount of debt American householdsowe on their mortgages increased in the first quarter of 2016 to its highest level in four and a half years, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York's Quarterly report on Household Debt and Credit.

Delinquency rates, however, continued improving and remain at low levels, according to the report.

Not that many years ago, it seemed like you heard something about robosigning, foreclosure, and foreclosure fraud in the news all the time. These days, not so much. But it's not because foreclosure isn't a problem or banks aren't foreclosing on homeowners with fraudulent documents anymore.

According to a recent article on theintercept.com by journalist David Dayen “Every day in America, people continue to be kicked out of their homes based on false documents.”

Dayen is promoting his new book called Chain of Title: How Three Ordinary Americans Uncovered Wall Street's Great Foreclosure Fraud, which is about victims of foreclosure who “exposed the mass production of false mortgage documents in courthouses and county records offices across the country.”

It's the latest in a long line of articles from the author telling the stories of homeowners who are being kicked out of their homes with fraudulent documents.

Why Banks Need to Fabricate Documents to Foreclose

During the housing bubble mortgages were bundled together, carved up, and sold to investors (which is called securitization) so carelessly that it became hard to tell who the real owner of a mortgage was.

Almost 1.4 million homes in America were vacant as of May 2016, according to real estate information company RealtyTrac's recently released Residential Property Vacancy and Zombie Foreclosure Report for the second quarter 2016.

Those 1.4 million vacant homes represent 1.6 percent of all 85 million residential properties in the country. The most recent numbers are a 2.7 percent increase in vacant properties from the previous quarter.

Zombies Becoming Less Common

While the number of vacant properties ticked up slightly, the number of zombie properties, which are residences that are vacant and in foreclosure, declined. 4.7 percent of properties in foreclosure, which is 19,187 residential properties, are vacant. That's a 3 percent decline from the quarter before it and a 30 percent dip from the same quarter in 2015.

The United States is experiencing a housing crisis. Too many Americans have to spend an outsized portion of their income on their mortgage payments or are unable to pay it and are at risk of being foreclosed upon.

That might be news to people who thought the problems in housing had already been solved, but tens of millions of households are desperate to reduce the amount of money they're spending on their homes and avoid foreclosure.

There are things that can be done to reduce the amount of money people are spending on their mortgage payments. The best way is by reducing the principal balance on the loan.

Are you financially secure? What do you think the odds are that things will be worse in the near future? Is the country about to repeat 2008?

Those are the questions on the minds of many Americans who are afraid the economy is poised to enter a recession.

A recession is defined as "a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale retail sales."

According to a recent Business Insider article, economists and stock analysts have had to address worry about a recession a lot this year. People are feeling insecure, and parts of the economy have been slowing down.

So are we in a recession, or about to be in one?

If you're at the point in the loan modification process where your loan servicer is asking you to make trial modification payments, then you've almost reached your goal. But this is no time to take your foot off the gas. You still have a little ways to go before your loan is permanently modified.

Being asked to make trial modification payments is a good thing. It means that your request for modification assistance has been accepted. You're on your way to achieving your objective.

But banks don't just approve an application and return your loan to normal servicing like nothing ever happened. You have to prove that you're able to make the payments, and then you'll be offered a permanent modification.

Homeowners across the country are trying to get mortgage loan modifications that will allow them to avoid foreclosure. They're behind on their house payments, and a permanent change to the terms of their loan that reinstates it with a lower payment is their only hope of keeping their home.

But, for many people, working with their bank on their own simply isn't getting them the results they need. So they're wondering if they should continue to go it alone or get professional help. If you're trying to decide, here are some things to take into consideration.

First, it is possible to get a loan modification on your own. You don't have to pay anyone to assist you. And considering that it also doesn't cost anything to apply for or get approval for a loan mod, trying for yourself can seem like an attractive option.