Foreclosure and Loan Modification Blog

If you were eligible to receive money under the Independent Foreclosure Review Payment Agreement but didn't cash your check, it's too late. All the money that went unclaimed is now being redistributed to those who did cash their checks.

The Federal Reserve Board has announced that money leftover from the $3.9 billion Independent Foreclosure Review Agreement will be paid to the nearly 650,000 borrowers who already got their money. The borrowers who didn't cash their checks before the deadline are out of luck.

The Fed has given borrowers every chance to claim the money they were entitled to under the Independent Foreclosure Review Payment Agreement. Those who had not cashed their checks were given until December 31, 2015 to ask for a replacement check, and had to cash those checks by March 31, 2016.

As a result of the ongoing housing crisis, mortgage loan modifications have become popular with distressed homeowners who need to reinstate their loan and get a more affordable payment. But not everyone who could benefit from modifying their mortgage understands what's actually involved and how to go about getting one. And some assume or have been told incorrect information.

What is a Loan Modification

A mortgage loan modification is a permanent change to one or more of the terms of your existing loan, such as the interest rate, term length, and principal balance. The purpose is to lower the monthly payment to an affordable portion of your income and allow you to avoid foreclosure. It is different from a refinance, which replaces your old loan with a completely new one.

Loan modifications are the only hope many people have for avoiding foreclosure and staying in their home. However, there are some common misconceptions, such as:

Money is a very personal issue. So much so that it's often considered in bad taste to talk about it in polite society. Especially when you're talking about problems with money. And foreclosure is the mother lode of money problems since most people's largest asset is their home.

But unfortunate events beyond the control of any homeowner have caused millions of people to have to reckon with foreclosure. The credit crisis, recession, and housing crisis have caused foreclosures on a scale that the country hasn't seen since the Great Depression.

If you're in danger of losing your home to foreclosure, you're likely experiencing some seriously negative emotions. Fear, uncertainty, shame, guilt, and anger are common. These emotions are completely understandable and just as useless. You have to get a handle on them to keep from going crazy and find the best resolution.

Here are some ways to do that:

Even under the best circumstances, everyone needs a vacation to get away from the grind of regular life, recharge their batteries, and spend some quality time with their loved ones. If you're behind on your mortgage or in foreclosure, you could probably use a stress-relieving vacation even more.

But is it appropriate to go on a vacation when you aren't paying your mortgage?

It depends on your particular circumstances, and what kind of money you're going to spend on your trip.

People generally don't stop paying their mortgage unless something went seriously wrong with their finances and/or life. We hear their stories all the time, and they're often tragic. Loss of income, cancer, divorce, and enormous debt burdens are all common for people who default on their mortgage. Nothing good causes a person to stop paying their mortgage.

Many homeowners find that something strange happens when they stop paying their mortgage: nothing much. After missing payments they get letters from their bank telling them that they have to pay up or else lose their home. They don't pay because they can't, but still nothing happens for a long time.

Some homeowners go many years without making a payment, falling behind by tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, and yet their house isn't sold at a foreclosure auction, the sheriff doesn't tell them to vacate the premises, and they're not thrown to the curb. Sometimes the collections calls even stop!

However, just because nothing seems to happen doesn't mean that the gears of foreclosure aren't turning or that the bank forgot that your loan isn't performing for them. Rest assured that they haven't forgotten about you and the money you owe them.

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.

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?

On Tuesday, May 2, 2016 a Manhattan federal court convicted Dionysius Fiumano of “orchestrating a massive mortgage modification scheme through which he and his conspirators defrauded more than 30,000 American homeowners out of a total of approximately $31 million,” according to Christy Goldsmith Romero, the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP).

Dionysius Fiumano, aka “D”, and his co-conspirators oversaw a sales staff of 65 telemarketers and managers from 2011 to 2014. Fiumano was the general manager of sales at Vortex Financial Management, Inc, which was also known as Professional Marketing Group (PMG), and Professional Legal Network. The company was based in Irvine, California and claimed to offer mortgage modification services.

PMG operated somewhat like a legitimate company, buying leads that gave them the contact information of homeowners who were behind on their mortgage payments and in danger of foreclosure and trying to get them to buy their "services."

Yes, it is too late to save your home when you've received a writ of possession. To learn why, let's look at what it is.

A writ of possession is a court order that the sheriff will place on your door notifying you that you have to get yourself, your family, and all of your belongings out of your home after it is sold at a foreclosure auction or repossessed by the bank. The sheriff will come back 24/48/72 hours after posting the writ of possession to execute the writ, which is code for kicking you out.

It doesn't matter if you have nowhere else to go. At this point it's too late to do much.