More Mortgage Servicer Tricks for the New Decade
Jul 06 2020 09:25 Filed in: foreclosure | mortgage modification
Well, the mortgage loan servicers are at it again: "We never received your documentation."
With many loans now going into default like in 2009-2010, the loan servicers are playing the same games they did back then: pretending to hold out a lifeline only to yank it back at the last minute, leaving you to drown. No matter how many times you send in documents, the servicers will claim they never received them or that they are incomplete or illegible or otherwise improper for reasons you could never have guessed at. Sometimes, the loan servicers even claim that if the return address on a piece of mail is not the borrower's return address (for example, if your lawyer sends something for you), they are not "allowed" to open it! It's idiotic and patently false. This is done to get you to miss some payments while waiting for relief, while the mortgage company will in the meantime keep adding interest and penalties. Some months later, they will demand that you pay up everything, that you get no relief, and that if you don't pay in 30 days, you will be foreclosed on. The courts have blessed this game, so the lenders will keep playing it.
Whenever you correspond with a mortgage loan servicer in the U.S., you must do everything in written correspondence, NOT ON THE PHONE, and you must send everything CERTIFIED MAIL, RETURN RECEIPT REQUESTED. In addition, you must send it to every conceivable address the servicer might be using, since they now use multiple departmental addresses or P.O. boxes to create confusion. DO NOT NEGOTIATE ON THE PHONE. Do it all in writing. You will probably never get approval for anything on the phone, and you will probably never speak to the same person twice. This is done on purpose to drive you crazy while you are desperate to keep your home.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the American mortgage system is broken. Wealthy and powerful corporations and investors have designed it to break you and take your home by creating chaotic servicing systems that always seem to make mistakes that lenders, not borrowers. Why? Because large pools of capital are being devoted to buying up the housing stock so that it can be used as rental property for people who have gotten the shaft from the mortgage system. Then, when those people get rental homes, the same companies and investors, with different hats, give you the shaft on bogus, often completely fabricated lease penalties and late charges. YOU CANNOT ESCAPE THE POWERFUL BUSINESS INTERESTS WHO CONTROL THE U.S. HOUSING MARKET unless you own property free and clear of debt. (Then, of course, you have to fight the HOA-Industrial-Complex, which will foreclose on you too).
Ordinary people cannot hope to combat these corporations, but at least you can make it difficult for them to repeatedly lie to you so that, when you stand before the judge and demonstrate all the tricks the loan servicer pulled, you have some shred of a chance of getting some kind of relief.
Unless, of course, you're in federal court, in which case, forget it: you've already lost. Judges-for-life answer to no one.
With many loans now going into default like in 2009-2010, the loan servicers are playing the same games they did back then: pretending to hold out a lifeline only to yank it back at the last minute, leaving you to drown. No matter how many times you send in documents, the servicers will claim they never received them or that they are incomplete or illegible or otherwise improper for reasons you could never have guessed at. Sometimes, the loan servicers even claim that if the return address on a piece of mail is not the borrower's return address (for example, if your lawyer sends something for you), they are not "allowed" to open it! It's idiotic and patently false. This is done to get you to miss some payments while waiting for relief, while the mortgage company will in the meantime keep adding interest and penalties. Some months later, they will demand that you pay up everything, that you get no relief, and that if you don't pay in 30 days, you will be foreclosed on. The courts have blessed this game, so the lenders will keep playing it.
Whenever you correspond with a mortgage loan servicer in the U.S., you must do everything in written correspondence, NOT ON THE PHONE, and you must send everything CERTIFIED MAIL, RETURN RECEIPT REQUESTED. In addition, you must send it to every conceivable address the servicer might be using, since they now use multiple departmental addresses or P.O. boxes to create confusion. DO NOT NEGOTIATE ON THE PHONE. Do it all in writing. You will probably never get approval for anything on the phone, and you will probably never speak to the same person twice. This is done on purpose to drive you crazy while you are desperate to keep your home.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the American mortgage system is broken. Wealthy and powerful corporations and investors have designed it to break you and take your home by creating chaotic servicing systems that always seem to make mistakes that lenders, not borrowers. Why? Because large pools of capital are being devoted to buying up the housing stock so that it can be used as rental property for people who have gotten the shaft from the mortgage system. Then, when those people get rental homes, the same companies and investors, with different hats, give you the shaft on bogus, often completely fabricated lease penalties and late charges. YOU CANNOT ESCAPE THE POWERFUL BUSINESS INTERESTS WHO CONTROL THE U.S. HOUSING MARKET unless you own property free and clear of debt. (Then, of course, you have to fight the HOA-Industrial-Complex, which will foreclose on you too).
Ordinary people cannot hope to combat these corporations, but at least you can make it difficult for them to repeatedly lie to you so that, when you stand before the judge and demonstrate all the tricks the loan servicer pulled, you have some shred of a chance of getting some kind of relief.
Unless, of course, you're in federal court, in which case, forget it: you've already lost. Judges-for-life answer to no one.