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.