http://realestatemarketingthisweek.com/real-estate/beware-of-phishing-schemes-and-bank-scams-gmacs-clients-hit-hard/ – Beware of phishing schemes and bank scams GMACs clients hit hard –
Part 3 – As promised just before the break, I told you to, listen in if you know anyone who has a GMAC Mortgage, this is one of those too good to be true things. Heres the thing, I have no issues what-so-ever with GMAC, thats not what Im saying, what Im saying is there is a scam of sorts that is going around. A client of ours received a letter, we did a second mortgage for this person a few years ago, they received a letter from GMAC, it looked like GMAC, it sounded like GMAC, and it said that we are willing to forgive your second mortgage of 200 and some thousand dollars in lieu of a one time payment, payable within the next 30 days, of say 20 thousand dollars.
I dont recall the exact amount or what it was. There is a phone number on there, it says loss mitigation department on it, a person assigned to this case. They called the phone number, they answered the phone as if you were calling into the loss mitigation department, and verified if you just send us this amount they will release the lien. Well it is completely false. It is absolutely not true.
These people are not going to seek you out on their own, now whether it be GMAC, today we have actually seen that one, there may be other ones out there. Folks, if you are getting stuff like this you need to verify it and you need to verify it by sources other than the information on the letter that you have received. If you get an email that says your bank account has been tapped into you need to check, chances are it is some kind of a phishing scam and this is no different.
We have gone back to identity theft through the mail and if you have been a party to this you need to verify and check into it, and you need to contact the authorities immediately for more information, if you need help with this sort of situation you are welcome to give us a call at 480 Velocity.
It is pretty amazing that that kind of thing still exists, and with the announcement by Paulson today that the fact is they are no longer willing to buy bad mortgages off the books of the banks. When you come across a phishing scam such as this one there is not a bank out there, I dont care what kind of trouble they are in, that is going to take $0.10 on the dollar to forgive a loan.
In a situation where things are going well, you are right in a situation where things are going well, and the status quo, they are going to be pursued by an attorney, that is entirely different, they are not just going to volunteer up and give you the money, its not going to happen.
Absolutely not and thats where we get back into what a loan modification is, who it benefits, and how it works and so forth, you are starting to see these wheels in motion amongst all of these banks. One of those wheels is certainly not well forgive $200,000 in debt if you write us a check for $20, 000.
And when we have talked about this Brett you and I have had many conversations in regard to what does it take? Can a person do this on their own, we will get to that a little later, but the answer is Yes. A consumer can actually do it on their own, up until very recently with the new announcements made from some of these major servicers and investors, up until then, a person trying to do it on their own would take days upon days and hours and hours on the phone not getting calls back trying to find time during the day while working to get this done and in many cases they are going to get a temporary fix.
The loss mitigation department for the bank that you have your mortgage with, their job is not to mitigate your loss its to mitigate their loss. They are out to protect the bank, thats why we use the national network of attorneys that we do, that are specialists, that have done thousands of these loan modifications, that go to bat for you. By the way folks, they are not going through the loss mitigation door that you would have to go through they are going right to the legal department, they are going to threaten suit if necessary, they are going to do discovery work, they are going to find out if there was anything that was misrepresented either by the bank or the broker and take that angle… http://realestatemarketingthisweek.com
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In this video SEC-registered investment manager Bill Parish examines 529 College Savings Plans, sharing his views on how to best choose and set up the right plan for these important savings. Also, a look at Oregon’s 529 vendor Oppenheimer’s failure to protect its plan’s most conservative funds from massive losses, while similar funds around the country remained stable.
Duration : 0:8:36
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The United States has had public debt since its inception. Debts incurred during the American Revolutionary War and under the Articles of Confederation led to the first yearly reported value of $75,463,476.52 on January 1, 1791. Over the following 45 years, the debt grew, briefly contracted to zero on January 8, 1835 under President Andrew Jackson but then quickly grew into the millions again.[6]
The first dramatic growth spurt of the debt occurred because of the Civil War. The debt was just $65 million in 1860, but passed $1 billion in 1863 and had reached $2.7 billion following the war. The debt slowly fluctuated for the rest of the century, finally growing steadily in the 1910s and early 1920s to roughly $22 billion as the country paid for involvement in World War I.[6]
MOST IMPORTANT:
The buildup and involvement in World War II plus social programs during the F.D. Roosevelt and Truman presidencies in the 1930s and 40’s caused a sixteen-fold increase in the gross debt from $16 billion in 1930 to $260 billion in 1950.
After this period, the growth of the gross debt closely matched the rate of inflation where it tripled in size from $260 billion in 1950 to around $909 billion in 1980. Gross debt in nominal dollars quadrupled during the Reagan and Bush presidencies from 1980 to 1992. The Public debt quintupled in nominal terms.
In nominal dollars the public debt rose and then fell between 1992 and 2000 from $3T in 1992 to $3.4T in 2000. During the administration of President George W. Bush, the gross debt increased from $5.6 trillion in January 2001 to $10.7 trillion by December 2008,[7] rising from 58% of GDP to 70.2% of GDP. During March 2009, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that gross debt will rise from 70.2% of GDP in 2008 to 100.6% in 2012.[8]
Retrieved 5/28/10, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt
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http://realestatemarketingthisweek.com/loan-modification/fannie-mae-is-proposing-to-give-you-a-50-year-loan-modification-with-an-adjustable-rate/ – Fannie Mae is proposing to give you a 50 year loan modification with an adjustable rate –
Part 6 – The next one is that your loan to value on your house has to be at least 90% of the property value. So in other words everyone under 90% gets foreclosed on? Right, if you only owe 80% of what your home is worth, they can foreclose on you, take your house and they dont lose as much money.
Back when I was working with Fannie Mae selling repos almost 20 years ago now, they always gave us the figure that they lost 20% of the homes value every time they had to foreclose. So they have plenty of room to sell your house if you only owe 80% on it. So if you owe, lets just throw out some numbers here, lets say your house is worth $100,000 and you owe $80,000 on it, well they are going to lose a little bit but they are going to make it back when they sell your house for $100,000.
Yes, they would just as soon kick you out and keep their money. Yes, exactly I am not necessarily going to say that Fannie Mae is going to kick you out of your house, however the reason why they have this guideline is very simple, they are not going to lose money on you if they have to foreclose on you when you are under 90%. They certainly are not going to lose very much money.
If you have subordinate loans it may be left outstanding and will not be considered in the LTV, so lets just give an example here, your house is worth $300,000 and you have a $300,000 1st mortgage and you happen to have a $50,000 second mortgage. They will re-modify your 1st mortgage but leave the 2nd mortgage in place. So people get to stay underwater, or upside down.
Well certainly you would be in that case and it just does not sit right. The best thing I certainly would like to see them do if nothing else in a situation like that is combine it all into one loan at a much lower interest rate. Because you know that 2nd mortgage is probably going to have a high interest rate. So it would just be so much better.
We need verification of income that makes sense. Here is one I dont get, 38% as far as your debt to income ratio. That seems kind of high to me. What do you think Michael?
Well I think that people who have gotten themselves into trouble and they need to do something like a loan modification then 38% is probably on the high side. People need relief, but they need relief that is going to last a long time. Even though this is essentially a trial-period loan modification this particular guideline of 38% really does not set well with me, I personally think it needs to be lower. People need a break; people need to be able to stay in their house.
Well what I was looking at is your average family; I always think probably pays about 30% of their gross income towards taxes, payroll, and things like that, so right off the bat Uncle Sammy takes 30%. Well now that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are owned by the government Uncle Sammy is going to get another 38% out of your paycheck which is a total of 68%, that doesnt leave a whole lot of money does it? Especially if you have a car payment, or you have kids to feed, maybe who go to daycare while you go off to work, assuming you still have a job. The unemployment rate is pretty high.
Well in order to qualify for this you do have to have income so you do have to have a job. So moving on to the next one because we are getting a little short on time, what they are going to do is take all of your back interest, escrow advances, costs, fees, everything they are going to add it to the loan amount and have you pay it back over as much as 50 years, if they need to stretch it out that long. Theyre going to give you a 50 year mortgage? I looked at that and thought, why dont you make it interest only because you are never going to pay the thing off anyway.
Lowest acceptable rate that they’ll have is 3%. The real kicker, if they get you a rate of 3% it will be an adjustable rate because it’s below today’s market rate. Your rate will actually increase starting five years from now at 1% per year until it gets up to the market rate. So not only are they getting a 50 year loan that you will never pay off, theyre giving you an adjustable-rate loan on top of it. If they give you 3% today it will begin to adjust up in the five years until it reaches today’s market rate. I think today’s market rate is about 6%, so you may get 3% for a couple years but eventually they go back up to 6%… http://realestatemarketingthisweek.com
Duration : 0:6:35
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http://realestatemarketingthisweek.com/first-time-home-buyer/30-year-fixed-fha-mortgage-is-the-best-financing-available-for-first-time-home-buyers-today/ – 30 year fixed FHA mortgage is the best financing available for first time home buyers today. –
Part 8 – So now the only question that I would have, Michael is you only lowered the guys interest rate by 1/8th of a percent, weren’t there a whole lot of closing costs associated with that? Good question, in this particular case no. There were no closing costs.
Well then it definitely makes sense to lower your interest rate if it’s not going to cost you anything and you can lower your monthly payment by 100 bucks a month you would be crazy not to do it.
His breakeven was one day, in that particular case.
It goes back to this Velocity of Money concept. If you’re not sure if it makes sense or not, it’s kind of a no-brainer, give the team at velocity financial a call. You will do the analysis for them to determine if it makes sense or not based, on their unique circumstance, and from there youll advise them on the appropriate type of loan.
You know it’s funny that people over the years they get so hyper-focused on the interest rate of the loan. Interestingly enough I had a recent client whos focus was not on the interest rate, it was on the closing costs. The problem is there is a correlation between the cost of the money and rate, you have to pay it isn’t free for anyone. No cost loans are not really no cost, youre paying a higher rate to get it, so where does it make the most sense for you and your family, how long are you going to use this mortgage? There are so many factors, there’s an incredible amount of discovery that needs to be done.
If you walk into your local financial institution it doesn’t necessarily have to be a bank and you ask what is the rate today? It’s vanilla, it’s not 31 flavors, its vanilla, this is what we have. Well we have a couple of other options, but that’s not how it works at the bank.
One thing I wanted to point out Michael was it was back in 2003, we saw interest rates that were close to what they are now and a lot of people got into the same kind of loan that I got into at that, I got into a three year adjustable loan. And I’m really kicking myself because I wish I’d gotten into a 30 year fixed, and I would say with anyone, especially with as low as interest rates are, they definitely have to get into this market. jump in and get themselves into a 30 year fixed and just be happy with it forever.
That’s a really good point, and it’s safe. If you have a 3 year ARM or two year adjustable, or a 5 year adjustable and youre 1, 2, 3, 4 years into it, the 30 year is the safe way to go, more than likely the interest rate is going to be lower than what you have. In the case of the adjustable ARMs, adjustable-rate mortgages just dont make sense today. If you have a 30 year fixed, its the safe bet.
Dan if you and I are wrong and real estate values continue to tumble, you know what, you have a nice safe loan and you dont have to worry about it for a long time. On the other hand if you want to live there for 20 years, you dont have to mess with it. I think its the right thing to do for most people
Well I think that anyone who is out shopping for a home over this weekend, and what they’re looking for is to not only ask the seller to pay as much of the closing costs as possible but first to get pre-qualified by calling you at velocity financial. They want to make sure that they get themselves a 30 year fixed, FHA is probably the best product out there right now because its such a low down payment, and if youre a first time home buyer and youre in the $60,000 a year range, you can go out there and buy up to that $250,000 house and have a place for your family to be in after the first of the year, and never have to you live in an apartment and have Christmas in an apartment again, you can have Christmas in your own home next year.
Absolutely, that is a really, really good point. We dont want to forget about the $7500 tax credit that goes along with having a home, if you havent owned real estate in the last three years.
The other thing that I want to mention before the show gets wrapped up today, there is interest rate risk here just like there is in the bond market. Interest rate risk is you the buyer looking at what you can use to increase the velocity of money, increase the efficiency in your existing mortgage, or move to a new mortgage because money is cheaper today than it’s ever been… http://realestatemarketingthisweek.com
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http://realestatemarketingthisweek.com/first-time-home-buyer/now-is-a-great-time-for-first-time-home-buyers-to-get-into-the-real-estate-market/ – Now is a great time for first time home buyers to get into the real estate market –
Part 3 – Back in studio of course Brett Fallon are favorite and one of America’s best financial advisors, and a very good friend of mine for a long time also Dan Havey. Dan, what is the name of the book?
The name of the book that I am in the middle of writing is called, Real Estates Future. What it is, is a model that I created with a friend of mine. I didnt believe this was possible when it was first brought to me, but after working on it for six months and doing a lot of research I found that we were actually able to predict, in advance, through a whole series of equations and data, we were actually able to predict in advance the top of the last real estate market here in Phoenix by six months.
So were doing a lot more research to see if we can take that to a broader national level and see if we can come close to actually giving people an idea in advance of the top and bottom of the real estate market.
And this is not the doom and gloom type stuff, this is reality, this is not media spin or anything, correct? No, this is just numbers. That’s all this comes down to, numbers, a lot of different equations. I am not going to bore people with all the complicated stuff. When I was in college I started out with a degree in computers and mathematics and eventually ended up getting a degree in finance, so Ive got a lot of numbers spinning around in my head.
The amount of content you have put together to talk about these first time home buyers, we just talked about what you should do when buying a home right now, you need to make sure that you get the seller to pay as much as they can, obviously you want to pay as little for the house as you possibly can. You want to get the seller to contribute as much as they can. But Dan why dont you talk about what it means to be a first time home buyer or for someone who could be in the market?
Well again with the numbers we were looking at, how this came about like I said last year we were working on this model and after the real estate market kind of took a crash we put it to the side for a little bit and the other day I said, its about time to resurrect it because we have to start looking at when is it going to be the bottom of this next market and people are going to want to know that.
So I started looking at some numbers here just in Phoenix and a couple things actually surprised me, it was very heartening for me when I saw that one of the metrics that we look at is whether or not the median income household can afford to buy the median priced home. And right now in Maricopa County the median income family makes $64,000 and the median priced home is $160,000 and $160,000 home is well within the means of the $64,000 income family. In fact just running numbers at 5 1/2 to 6% you could probably buy as much as a $250,000 house.
So then I took a look at where are houses selling right now, and I found that 78% of all of the houses that were sold in Maricopa County last month were under $250,000. So 78% were under $250,000, and I do believe that between $100,000 and $250,000 its like 53% of all the houses, and obviously there is some of the cheap stuff that is being sold at the repo sales and that kind of stuff right now too.
Like I told you before, my brother picked up a couple of REOs over the weekend and I think he paid $30,000 each for them. And there is one other thing I would like to say before we move on, where I think its a great time for first time home buyers to kind of jump back into the market is another metric we look at is year over year home sales, and for obviously the last two years the home sales were declining year over year, and what we have seen is in the last 6 months there were at least a thousand to two thousand more sales per month than there were in 2007. And percentage wise that is pretty high, its not just a thousand or two thousand the percentage is significant. Sometimes the numbers dont mean a lot, but when youre talking about an increase of 20 plus percent in a few of these months, thats huge… http://realestatemarketingthisweek.com
Duration : 0:5:47
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Tax on 1099C, Cancellation of Debt Income; Short Sale, Loan Modification & Foreclosure. Exception; Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act, Bankruptcy & Insolvency. Go To http://RealEstateMarketingThisWeek.com
Part 6 (Excerpts)
Arizona is not a recourse state, so chances are you will not owe 1099 C Income
In Arizona, typically its not a recourse state, so if they are telling you that theyre going to garnish your wages because you didnt pay back your entire mortgage, there is a local bank ,that was threatening a very good colleague of ours about a small second mortgage that person had taken out. Threatening to send it to collections and garnish her wages. It simply isn’t going to happen.
But nevertheless, there is still the tax implications that apply, if you need to navigate through this maze. There is a lot to it, you need to protect yourself. You talked about bankruptcy is one of those exclusions, right? One of the problems with bankruptcy is people dont understand the bankruptcy laws. They are so tight now and your feet are really held to the fire from the federal government right now. It’s not like you just didn’t make your mortgage payment, so you go file bankruptcy, it’s just not realistic. Assuming bankruptcy is the last resort option for everybody. And we certainly want to avoid that, it would not be sound financial advice from any credible source that I can think of.
Let’s walk through a case scenario, somebody who is listening to this broadcast, their head is spinning right now, they’re thinking, oh my gosh. I should have known about the tax implications, a short sale versus loan modification. Let’s start at the top and work through a quick scenario. And then we’ll point out the specifics of what they should be considering right now.
For example, we talk about this all the time and to your credit Michael Barnes and to Velocity Financials credit, you were early in bringing out the loan modification for people who were in a distress situation regarding a mortgage, maintaining or keeping up with the mortgage payment. So you started going down the path where the refinance started to become a much more difficult option, with new constraints and all the other factors that led to part of this economic crisis, a loan modification has become a buzz topic today. Driving to the station today, driving down Camelback Road, I see a sign on the corner. You know, one of those stick in the ground, homemade jobs, that says don’t refi a Loan, modify, with some success rate and the phone number.
Hang on there I want you to say the success rate. The sign literally said, 99% success rate, and it goes back to the point that you made when they say that they can reduce your mortgage principal by tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars, thats the absolute last resort for any lending institution. Thats not what this is about, so let’s start with that, then we will work on the tax ramifications of how that might work in the overall financial strategy.
I am familiar with the loan modification industry here in Arizona. There is no regulation, unfortunately. We at Velocity Financial work with a national network of attorneys, so if you’re the guy in El Centro California, or youre in Phoenix, or youre in Alaska it doesn’t matter where you’re at. We have someone who is an expert in that field in that state because the laws are different. But without the regulations some person with the ugly yellow sign on the side of the road says he has a 99% success rate, I don’t believe him it’s probably not using an attorney, who knows, dont buy into that garbage. Were going to tell you the truth, if we cant do a loan modification, we will tell you that we cant do it. And if a loan modification is not the best thing for you, you can find the some of these other options.
Duration : 0:5:19
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Tax on 1099C, Cancellation of Debt Income; Short Sale, Loan Modification & Foreclosure. Exception; Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act, Bankruptcy & Insolvency. Go To http://RealEstateMarketingThisWeek.com
Part 5 (Excerpt)
Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act of 2007, one exception to paying cancellation of debt income
Welcome back to the Velocity of Money I am Michael J. Barnes Arizona’s and I’m with Velocity Financial and were here every week talking about all matters financial, regarding real estate as well as finances. Brett Fallon is back on the air with us again along with Mike Patenella who is a certified public accountant for the last 20 years and amazing brain, were glad he’s back on.
Mike we were talking before the break about loan modifications, my point before going off the air was that people think they’re going to get this huge amount of money waived on a loan that they have, realistically what most loan modifications are going to look like is extended term, significantly lower interest rate, generally a fixed interest rate for the entire time, and in some cases they will do some principal reduction, and there is some exclusions for people having to pay tax on that, is that correct?
Yes, there is, before I get into that keep in mind that with taxes normally not one rule applies to everybody, were going to talk general but everyone’s going to have their own specific situation, that they’re going to have to really check with somebody and make sure they’re doing the right thing. In 2007 in response to the economic situation, they passed a mortgage forgiveness debt relief act which essentially allows people to not pay tax on $2 million dollars debt forgiven on their principal residence. Thats in regard to be principal reduction, loan modification.
Right, so in your example if $50,000 of your loan is being reduced, if your situation fits, under this new law, we might be able get you to avoid the tax on that.
Once again a very good reason for you to go to a professional CPA like yourself for that help, not something the average person is going to be able to figure out on their own. You have to keep up on the tax law and that’s almost a full-time job.
Hey how many pages is that tax code now? On last count I heard you say it was something like 9000 pages.
I don’t know the exact number of pages I know it’s in the several thousand and as Mike knows quite well, and I am aware of also is the tax code has been morphing and changing more than I have ever seen in my entire career here recently. Going back to the tax act of 2003 to the present there have been literally hundreds of changes. So for the average person whos listening to this broadcast who is considering a loan modification, trying to take care of a portfolio, and take care of their taxes at the same time, WOW! Good luck to you
So exclusions to the income, can we talk about a few different ones?
Sure bankruptcy is one exclusion, if you’re filing bankruptcy; the other one is if the taxpayer is insolvent which essentially means that their liabilities exceed their assets. When you factor in assets you factor in retirement accounts and all that, its not that easy to fall under that one.
Oh so the value of my 401(k) goes into that on the other side of the balance sheet. So for the most part if you dont fall into one of these two youre going to try to rely on this new tax law to exclude some of the debt forgiven.
How long ago was that past? I am sorry I don’t remember, was that August of 2007? It’s called the mortgage forgiveness debt relief act of 2007 and it only applies to qualified principal residences. Is that ongoing? Is there a cap on the time?
Well originally it was set to expire at the end of 09. Then in 2008, since the economy kept getting worse they extended that another three years or so through 2012
Well we hope were all well through of this mess sooner and we won’t have to need this any longer after 2009. Actually I want it gone now.
Duration : 0:6:20
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Amidst the Real Estate & Mortgage Meltdown; Foreclosure Fraud & Scams; Real Estates Future is Great. First Time Home Buyers, FHA Loans & Seller Paid Closing Costs. Go To http://RealEstateMarketingThisWeek.com
Part 4 (Excerpt)
Mortgage Backed Securities, Collateralized Debt Obligations and Tranches Oh My!
Now, I put the colorful title on How to Screw the Bank that Screwed You for no other reason than to get people to click on it to get the information, because frankly, a lot of people were given really bad loans, were given really bad advice, and sometimes you have to fight back.
Here is one of the things and again Ill try to make this as uncomplicated as possible. Let’s say you bought the house and you got the loan through a mortgage broker. Well that mortgage broker didnt really give you the loan. They bought that loan from a wholesaler of mortgages. That wholesaler of mortgages, in turn bought that loan from one of those big huge Wall Street banks, most of which are out of business right now.
Important thing to point out if I may, Velocity Financial is a mortgage broker, we do get our money from several wholesale banks, I just wanted to point that out because we’re glad were a broker.
Just to continue the analogy. So the broker buys it from a wholesaler, who buys it from the Wall Street bank, and like I said, most of them are out of business now. And what the Wall Street bank did with thousands of these loans worth billions of dollars, they put them all together into what is known as mortgage backed securities. That is the stuff you hear like Fannie Mae is selling and there is an interest rate put on them, and what happened to these mortgage backed securities is they in-turn were bought up by other Wall Street banks, combined with other mortgage backed securities and they were called collateralized debt obligations.
Well then these brainiacs on Wall Street decided to chop these collateralized debt obligations up into what is referred to as tranches. So let’s say you had your best quality AAA borrowers in the top tranch . And obviously your ZZZ borrowers were in the bottom tranch. Each one of them was given a specific interest rate, each one of them was rated by a bond rating firm, and each one of them was given insurance.
Well, what happens is as these got split up and sold over time the notes on the mortgages go with the debt itself. So CDO over in Bangladesh owns your mortgage now, but here is the problem, they dont have the paperwork.
So the reason I went through this whole story is in case your bank comes to you and says were going to foreclose what you want to do is go and get yourself an attorney and you want this attorney to go to this bank and say we want you to prove to us that you have standing, that they have the legal right to come after you and foreclose on you. And here is the thing, if they dont have the paperwork, if they dont have the note on the property, they cant prove that they have standing. So whether its the wholesaler, who is foreclosing on you, whether its the servicer, whoever it is, chances are very good that they dont have this note.
So again, he got a little complicated. You want to go to the website http://mortgageanswerman.com and there are several articles there, and a lovely little chart that I drew up, except that it will be much nicer than this piece of paper, and I will have all the information there. I had a friend just recently who was in foreclosure and she made the phone call, and she said, you cannot foreclose on me without the original note. Now eventually it got foreclosed on, but it delayed it several months until they were able to find that note. Chances are they may never be able to find that note.
And in many states, including Florida and Ohio they are very successful at using this tactic to stop or completely do-away-with the foreclosure sale. We dont necessarily want to encourage people to go down this path, right? Were looking for a stall essentially?
Well, hopefully no one will ever have to get to that point. But if you believe that your servicer, your mortgage company is not being nice to you. Especially if you call them up and want to do a loan modification, and they are dragging their feet, filing foreclosure and coming after you, you have to protect yourself. And this is one of the ways you can protect yourself by hiring an attorney and suing them for lack of standing
That is one of the things that I want to talk about that Velocity Financial is involved with a national network of attorneys who do this sort of work. Velocity Financial does not charge an upfront fee for these types of loan modifications, we do hire an attorney and they work with the national network of attorneys to work on your behalf. They do charge a retainer, of course, if they are going to fight for you they need to be paid, however, there are no upfront fees…
Duration : 0:6:36
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Home Loan Modifications Negotiated by Licensed Attorneys. Real Estate & Mortgage Laws and Guidelines are Complex. Beware of the Banks Loss Mitigation Department. Go To http://RealEstateMarketingThisWeek.com
Part 7 (Excerpt)
Attorney negotiated loan modification process Going thru the Legal Door
We have Dan Havey with us talking about loan modifications. This segment we want to talk about the specifics of the actual mechanics of, how does it actually work for the homeowner? Let me just start it off and if you would then explain the back end of how it works. Our job is to determine where you’re at now, be very specific about where you’re at with your mortgage now, what the rate is, what it’s done, those specifics. How much you make? We have to help the lender with one thing which is to establish a hardship which is crucial to this. You can’t be making half $1 million a year paying $5000 a month in a mortgage, they are not just going to lower your interest rate because you want it. There actually has to be some sort of change, financial change, hardship.
We determined that and then there is a significant amount of paperwork involved, Velocity Financial takes care of that for you. We fill out the paperwork along with your help, review all of the documentation, we then recommend be right loan modification, whether it be an interest rate reduction, or extending the term of your loan, waiving some of the balance that you owe which is very very rare. To make sure that once we’re done with this whole process you can sustain and live in that house and be happy forever.
So the process itself really is not that much different than what people went through when they got their loan in the first place. That is correct and it’s kind of funny, this has to be exactly the reverse. There is paperwork that we need to collect on your mortgages, we check the value of the property to see where you’re at and in most cases youre underwater with the value. We dont do an appraisal though, there is no credit analysis, we do review your finances, and these sorts of things but essentially it’s just like doing a loan. What we’re trying to determine is exactly what is sustainable for you.
So what we do at the modification hotline at Velocity Financial is to put together the entire package, just like we do for a loan package because we basically send this to a underwriter, theyre not known as an underwriter they’re known as a loan modification coordinator but at modification hotline we are the first set of eyes. We work with you directly, getting all the paperwork in, getting it put together because we know exactly what has to be in that file, how it has to be stacked, how it has to be presented, before it goes to the loan modification coordinator who works for the attorney.
Then once it is at the attorneys office with their modification coordinator, they take a look at it, they make sure that everything is in there, they make sure that it is a doable modification. This all happens before it is ever presented to an attorney.
There are a whole lot of steps and there is a lot of paperwork. The process like you said is very similar to a loan with the exception that there are no costs of the title company and all that other stuff. Those dont exist, we dont charge an upfront fee, and we do collect a retainer for the attorney. At some point during our process we make our recommendations and we turn it in. Then the attorney does their due diligence and thats where I really want you to explain what happens, what are these attorneys looking for?
Well this is where it completely goes off track, versus what a homeowner would do if they were doing their own modification, because they would do everything we just talked about, they would fill out the paperwork, get together tax returns, pay stubs, whatever the lender wanted and they would present all of it to the lender. Now they probably wouldn’t know exactly how to stack some of the paperwork, and how to calculate some of the things that we know how to calculate, but they would put all that they work together.
Where the difference comes in is once it gets to the attorney because the attorney ultimately wants to get you a loan modification but they can’t just call up the bank and say hey I want loan modification, because he is going to get the same result you did. So what he has to do is he has to go through the file, and he has to look for things like, I am going to use a bunch of acronyms here, he’s looking for things like TILA, RESPA, HOEPA, HUD violations, all these different guidelines that the lender was required to meet while giving you the loan.
Duration : 0:6:47
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