Mortgage Assistance Hurdle #1

Well, employment has not happened yet.  Neither has foreclosure, but we've only just this month stopped making payments, so that's down the road quite a ways.

We are applying with Keep Your Home California for mortgage assistance, because neither BofA or Nationstar appeared to be interested in any form of loan modification or other assistance, ostensibly because of the confusion of the mortgage transfer.  I'll admit to not wanting to work with BofA anyway, for personal historical reasons as well as political and philosophical ones.  Frankly, I don't imagine Nationstar would be any better.  I'm just suspicious of banks in general these days.

I've done a couple of loooong eligibility phone calls with this agency, and just this afternoon, we cleared the first hurdle.  The next one involves waiting for a list of financial documents, and then collecting and returning those documents to them.  Guess what I'm doing next week?

The deal is this; we have to sign a deed of trust and a promissory note saying we'll pay *back* any aid they give us if we sell the house within three years of the end of their help, out of any cash proceeds.  After three years, the note is forgiven.  Now that I'm off the phone with them, the questions I could not think of are starting to pop up in my head.  That's okay, nothing is set in stone yet, so I'll just start a list of questions for our next loooong phone call.

Oh yeah, and the music they played while I was on hold was highly repetitive.  I think my brain has melted.  I just wish places would say something like, "we hate hold music, too, so, every 60 seconds, you'll hear this announcement again, in between times, it will be silent".  Ah well, when I'm Queen of the Universe, there will be some changes made.

Loan Modification

Today I learned more things.

First and most important, when looking for loan modification help, you cannot apply for more than one program at a time.  If you do so, any other previous applications you have made will be automatically made null and void.  So, if you're doing this, *be careful*.  Do your research, ask your questions, but don't formally apply until you have chosen which program you want and you are ready to do so.

We have an FHA loan, which is not serviced by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac.  This sends us down one particular path.  All the FHA programs will want the same data on the same forms, which you can print out off the internet.  I got mine from a BofA website that their representative on the phone told me to check out.

I was also advised to google "FHA mortgage assistance" and "FHA waterfall" for more information on how all this works.  I have quite a bit of reading to do.

I have a particular case manager now, one person who I need to talk to to ask questions and such.  That's a nice thing, in theory, I don't have to explain things over and over again.  She said we'd talk again in 7 to 10 days.  Which seems like a long time to me, but, oh well.  It also brings us right up against the date the loan transfers from BofA to Nationstar.  I did ask her about the loan being sold and how the timing of it will impact this process.  And, the bottom line is that she didn't know what that was going to do.  So we will proceed, doing the necessary, and wait and see.  The loan will remain FHA and everything, so in theory most of this work will not need to be done over again.

I really don't want to read up on all this, I'd rather zone out and watch escapist TV.  Ah well.

Mortgage Sold, Water Muddied

I waited all day today for the BofA loan modification team to call.  They didn't.  I'll call them on Friday.

I did, however, get a letter in the mail from them today, informing me that they have sold our mortgage to another bank.  So I'm guessing I'll be calling *two* mortgage providers on Friday.  I'm also guessing that they'll each defer to the other, only muddying the waters more.

I also wonder why, when I talked to the first guy at BofA on Monday, he didn't mention this fabulous fact.  Todays letter is dated 11/14/2012, a week ago.

Now, I've never been thrilled to have to send money to BofA with this mortgage.  But this house was bank owned when we bought it, so we had no choice.  We dumped them years and years ago as our personal bank, because their customer service stank.  We have been credit union members ever since.  So, this change is, on one level, a good thing, I guess.  However, I've never heard of Nationstar Mortgage, LLC before.  So, call me suspicious and paranoid, and possibly radically liberal, but I can't imagine that they are any better or different than BofA.  For all I know they *are* BofA, just with a new coat of paint.

Actually, we got two letters from BofA today.  The other one offered a "pre-approved" credit card.  I just tear those up.

Emotional Fallout, Some Background

Isn't this fun?

When I was about 11, my father's business partner screwed him over and the business went bust.  My father then sat on our living room sofa for about 3 or 4 years, watching the 700 Club.  He got religion.  He also refused to go bankrupt, and eventually prided himself on having paid off all the creditors.  My family was very broke for a very long time.  We ate, and I think my grandmother paid the mortgage, but it was shoes-were-an-issue kind of broke.

One ripple effect result of that, was that when I was looking at college and they talked about loans and debt, I balked.  I didn't go to college, I went to work.  Secretarial type stuff.  I never made much, but I paid my bills.

30 years of history, blah, blah, blah.  Married, stay at home mom, autistic kids, house, credit cards, etc.

So, here I am, 50+ years old, with all the American Dream stuff piled up in my head.  And I'm absolutely mortified that I can't pay my bills.  It feels a moral, personal failure, as well as a financial one.  I feel like a *bad person*, like I'm *guilty* of some heinous deed.

Intellectually, I know, that is just not right.  I'm realizing that my take on reality is somewhat skewed.  I don't know what reality actually is, all I've discovered is that, as one of the blind men examining the elephant, it's bigger than I thought.

It's very easy to slip into anger right now.  There's guilt or anger.  Anger is certainly more entertaining and invigorating than guilt.  I can blame politicians or the 1%, easy enough.  But that doesn't solve my problems, any more than guilt does.

Oh hey, and I notice I'm not mentioning Fear.  Funny, that, because it's a major player these days.  Avoidance, much?

Financials

Okay, here's the deal.

My family and I have been pushed to the pointy end of fiscal disaster.  During the Dot.Com bust, we lost all our savings and racked up a pile of unsecured debt.  We managed to keep the house, though.  After that, we spent several years paying off the debt.  In the spring of 2009, we were down to only a couple of thousand dollars of debt.  Then, more shit happened, which resulted in us moving from Oregon to California to find work.  We sold the house in Oregon, bought a house in California and kept slugging on.  That was the major mistake, I think.  The cost of living in California is remarkably *more* than it was in Oregon.

However.  Here we are.  In all the various job issues over the last 2 years, we have had to slowly whittle away at what little savings we had.  Medical insurance went away, and we've had to buy privately, at the cost of over $2K a month.

We've spent the last year, every time something goes wrong, trimming expenses and recalculating that we should be okay, "if nothing else goes wrong".  Well, things keep going wrong and I don't imagine that process is going to change much.

Today, we are unemployed, with less than one months expenses in financial cushion.  If a job doesn't come, and right soon, we're facing foreclosure, probably some time in the spring.  We can't sell the house, because we have no where to go, we don't have enough money to put down first/last/deposit on a rental somewhere.  We might be underwater anyway.  Oh, yeah, and it needs a new roof, to the tune of maybe $18K.  Gah.

Yesterday, I called the mortgage company (BofA) to discuss this mess.  They will have a "modification" team contact me soon.  We have spoken to some programs that should offer help; Green Path Debt Solutions and KeepYourHomeCalifornia.Org are the two biggies, among others.  The first one advised my husband to look for a job.  Du-oh.  The second one can't help us until *after* the unemployment checks start arriving.  We won't qualify until we have *more* income than we do today.  Eh?  So those things are out there.  We're doing all the right and responsible things.

So, the focus of this blog is changing.  I intend to publicly record the process of foreclosure, if and when it comes down to that.  People don't talk about these things.  I am inspired in this by my friend, Jay Lake, who blogs very thoroughly about his experience with cancer and chemo.

Still Alive

Overall, 2011 had some really sucky bits.  But, I need to change my self description.  I'm not depressed about California anymore.  I don't think I'm depressed at all anymore.  Now I just have to figure out how to taper off the anti-depressant that psychiatrist has me on.  I googled how to get off of it, and found many many scary stories.  Damn.  I should have googled it before I took it.

Anyway, like it says, still alive.

Thinking a lot about getting some real training/education about witchy stuff.  I'm really tired of feeling powerless and would like to change that.