Let me start by saying, it doesn’t matter how many foreclosures you have on your street or how upside down on your mortgage you are when it comes to finding a solution. Many times people assume because there are other Foreclosures or Foreclosed properties on their street that they can’t do anything about their own situation.
I would gamble to say the opposite holds true, This should give you leverage if nothing else!
As you know, Banks/Lenders out there don’t WANT to foreclose on a home. Sometime it feels that way to people but mostly banks can’t seem to get out of their own way not having the right systems in place to handle the volume they are dealing with.
Knowing that, homeowners should leverage that scenario as well and only use professional loss mitigation negotiators who have bank contacts and experience because most call center people at banks/lenders can’t make decisions and often times just flat out don’t want to help! They've even been known to give wrong, misleading or unapproved information! The professional loss mitigation negotiator has the right contact who has decision making authority and that in and of itself is priceless in this type of situation.
When you hire us, as your Professional Loss Mitigation Negotiator you will be paying for knowledge, experience, contacts and results.
The services we provide consist of the following:
4. Pre-Foreclosure Negotiation
These services are worth every dime you pay for them because of the financial and credit impact caused by not having hired out this service.
Often times people try and handle this situation by themselves and see minor results IF ANY! Know one thing, a “Freeze” which is what some lenders are quick to give isn’t the best form of Loan Modification. This is typically the first thing offered by lenders but it isn’t the only thing that can be done in most cases. The current administration in the White House is pushing this type of Loan Modification where it reduces the interest rate for only 5 years but then you go back to where you were in the first place...Unable to afford payments!
Banks want you all alone when negotiating a loan modification. Remember this. Thats why they say you can get it done for free!
I have learned that quite often the homeowner is instructed to call the bank and try to work out some arrangement. The government and the banks are the main proponent of this and you will soon see why if you have not already. May I take a moment and explain to you why this may be a huge mistake? First of all people have the capability and right to call the bank themselves and try to work things out. Depending on the bank and the individual homeowner, the outcome can be positive – or awful.
If a homeowner is seeking to buy or sell a home (something they can technically do on their own), as Professionals in the industry we are the first to say there are way too many risks involved for the general public to do this on their own. They do not know the rules of the game, nor or they thinking of safety issues in regards to those stalking homes for their own deviant purposes.
Yes, they do need a Professional to help them in this venture. Most homeowners hired professionals in the first place regarding their home. example:–Your appraiser was a professional. Your mortgage broker was a professional. Your escrow officer was a professional. You have hired a real estate broker or sales person.
In much the same way, homeowners also need a Professional to represent them in negotiating with the bank.
There are rules to this game as well, and when not followed, the homeowner usually loses the home. In many cases, those who work in the bank do not even know the rules or the laws involved in this transaction. We have to constantly remind them of certain requirements in the law, in essence forcing them to comply. If the homeowner is dealing with a bank employee who unknowingly tells them false information BECAUSE they have not been made aware of the law, and the homeowner accepts it as truth, they may lose the home, exactly what they were hoping to avoid. We have heard many stories from clients and homeowners who were even told that their bank does not accept third parties to negotiate, when ALL the lenders have third party authorization forms that they require third parties to comply with.
The main reason for this is simple. When a homeowner contacts the bank they all too often cannot get past customer service or the collections department whose employees get paid commission and incentives to get a homeowner to pay rather than forward them to the right department. We have documented cases where the collections/customer service department has even flat out lied to the homeowner in order to get them to comply with them, so they can make commission.
Homeowners were even told they were being transferred to the “Loss mitigation” department or supervisor who can “help” them when in fact they were just transferred to another collector in the next cubicle! Believe it or not the taking advantage of the homeowner continues….
Let me reiterate...Yes you can do it yourself. Work it out with your lender if you can. We encourage this… to a point. But negotiating with the bank is not something I would suggest to You the homeowner, unless you are being coached or have some experience in dealing with banks.
Again I personally would not recommend an unprepared or inexperienced homeowner attempting loss mitigation, and I have heard enough horror stories to be confident in the value of our service. We want to add that it can be risky especially if you don’t have the tenacity and patience it takes to pursue lenders. You would have essentially been thrown into a pool full of sharks, and usually, you will not be able to make it to shore on time.
After speaking to several people who did their modification themselves, we find they were not happy with the results. At the end, homeowners received little change in their situation. Some of them told us that they were put on a repayment plan they felt defeated the purpose!
They’re having a hard time paying the current mortgage. What makes the lenders think they the homeowners can pay more?? Other homeowners facing foreclosure told us that by seeking out their lender themselves put them in much greater risk. Their lender asked for a contribution payment they couldn’t afford due by a date that was JUST AROUND THE CORNER - 5 DAYS AWAY!!!!!! Click here to read about an actual homeowner experience. click here for another homeowner experience and another --click here, another - click here
Contacting your lender yourself as opposed to hiring a professional may get you this:
• a crappy interest rate
• worthless modification approval (ex: reduce payments from $1600.00 a month to only $1558.00) not much huh?
• unreasonable & unrealistic repayment plan leading in to the inevitable….Foreclosure.
***Now recently President Obama and the banks have apparently embarked upon a campaign to put all private sector loan modification firms out of business because some are apparently scams. It’s a curious approach when you consider that there have been and continue to be countless stock market related scams in this country, but I can’t remember a president telling people not to pay their financial advisor as a result. Hmm….
Speaking on the subject of his housing rescue plan, which offers to modify certain mortgages, the president has said on several occasions: “If you have to pay, walk away.” So, the fact that they charge a fee makes them a scam? And here I always thought that it was charging a fee and not delivering a service that was a problem. Just the fact that a firm charges a fee… well, not so much, right? High fees, exorbitant fees... I agree are not in your favor, especially when you are having are hard time just paying your mortgage.
If the president is right about the whole charging a fee issue, then why does the California Department of Real Estate tell homeowners that they should be sure to use a loan modification firm that uses its “Advance Fee Agreement”? Hmm….
President Obama has also said that people don’t need to pay a fee to have their loan modified because they can simply call their banks directly. Really? I was curious about this, so I went to IndyMac Federal’s Website that advertises their new streamlined loan modification service. Here’s what it says in the first three paragraphs:
“The goal of this streamlined loan modification program is to achieve improved value for IndyMac Federal. IndyMac Federal will only make modification offers to borrowers where doing so will achieve an improved value for IndyMac Federal.”
The bank is telling you right up front that they’re happy to negotiate a modification of your mortgage in their best interests, certainly not yours. But as a homeowner, don’t I want someone who knows mortgage modifications to be negotiating on my behalf?...
Telling me I don’t need to pay an expert to represent me with my bank seems like the police telling me that I don’t need an attorney after I’ve been arrested because I can just ask the District Attorney any legal questions I might have. Gee, thanks for the advice, but I think I’ll go ahead and call my own lawyer anyway, okay?
The banks are telling you to run away from loan modification companies who charge a fee. They are even paying the politicians to introduce laws making it difficult for you to hire an attorney when negotiating a loan workout. They want you to contact them (the banks) directly and without the assistance of an advocate. They are scaring you to think that anyone who charges a fee for helping you negotiate a loan modification must be a crook. They claim all mortgage professionals, lawyers and forensic loan examiners who charge a fee are scam artists. They say it should all be free because theoretically you can do all of it yourself.
As we said before, just like you can file your own taxes and represent yourself in court, you can also spend the time and effort to learn the ins and outs and nuances of negotiating a favorable loan modification with the same predatory bank that put you in the mess you are in. You can stay up all night and study law so you can go up against their high priced lawyers. You can take time off work and stay on the phone four hours a day trying to get through to their loss mitigation departments. You can re-send the same documents over and over again because mysteriously they keep losing your entire file more than once. That is right you can certainly do this all yourself.
And the reason why you should go to the negotiating table all alone and without any backup is because they want to “protect” you from the big bad lawyers, mortgage auditors and loan modification companies who have the nerve to charge a fee for helping you! Imagine that. People actually want to make a living while providing a valuable service. What a crime.
Is anyone with an IQ above 10 buying this nonsense? If you had a choice would you go to an IRS audit without a skilled CPA? Would you defend yourself in a criminal trial without the best lawyer money could buy? So why should negotiating with a bank be any different than negotiating with the IRS? Because bankers are more ethical than IRS agents? That must be it.
The same ethical banks who are so “concerned” about you getting ripped off are going to court every single day, fabricating documents and lying under oath so they can foreclose on mortgages they don’t legally own. They have been paid in full by third parties and are now foreclosing so they end up with the property, the money, and a deficiency judgment. They are backdating assignments and forging signatures because most borrowers are not challenging them in court.
So of course they don’t want you to hire an advocate. Of course they don’t want an expert to audit your loan documents. They want you to take whatever they offer you and quietly go away. They want you to sign new loan documents and waive your rights because the old ones will not stand up in court under scrutiny. Don’t believe us? Then read on…
Ten months after the Obama administration began pressing lenders to do more to prevent foreclosures, (Making Home Affordable - HAMP Program) many struggling homeowners are holding up their end of the bargain but still find themselves rejected, and some are even having their homes sold out from under them without notice. These borrowers, rich and poor, even completed trial modifications of their distressed mortgage, and made all the payments, only to learn, often indirectly, that they won't get help after all. You see in these trial modifications you "waive important notification rights" allowing the lenders to pull the rug right out from under you and to sell the property without even bothering to notify YOU, the homeowner....even though You, the homeowner had been diligently paying the agreed upon, temporary loan modification rate. More and more homeowners who thought their enrollment in the trial modification period would lead to a more long lasting roof over their heads, have ended up FORECLOSED on by the same lender who said DO NOT PAY for a modification by 3rd parties and end up sending funds to the lenders who promptly foreclosed on them after the trial period. In other words it is the LENDERS who are now Promising Modifications for "free", then Collect Your Money, string you along and DO NOT PERFORM. So It seems banks/lenders/servicers are giving some people false hopes by sending them a plan, and they are using the program as a collection method, getting people to pay them with no intention of modifying the loan, they are using this as a tool to suck people dry."
These plans or programs by servicers/banks/lenders, were even called “extend and pretend” by the banks/lenders/servicers who were simply setting up repayment plans with late fees and other charges rolled into them, without ever actually reducing a borrower’s debt. Re-default rates on those type of loan modifications have been high as a result. In addition, some borrowers simply can’t qualify for the government’s program (HAMP- Making Home Affordable) because they are too far underwater on their mortgages.
THATS WHY THEY WANT YOU BY YOUR SELF WITH NO 3rd PARTY (FRS) REPRESENTATION AND THEY KEEP TELLING YOU THAT YOU WON"T HAVE TO PAY FOR MODIFICATION...BECAUSE YOU MAY NOT GET ONE! (from them)
Now you know WHY they want you by yourself! Because 3rd parties such as Financial Relief Solutions (FRS) knows these pitfalls and traps and will help you avoid them as we negotiate a FAIR and Equitable loan modification for you!
But more and more people are waking up and fighting for their rights. One of the most important victories for homeowners came on June 19, when Ohio Bankruptcy Judge Morgenstern-Clarren agreed with debtors Kenneth and Michelle Wells and ruled that U.S Bank had failed to prove ownership of their mortgage thus not allowing the bank to file a claim. U.S Bank was not the original lender and it had not secured a proper assignment after purchasing the loan. It is worth noting that the majority of loans originated in the past few years were securitized and sold without proper assignments, so you can only imagine the impact this ruling will have on the millions of pending and future bankruptcy and foreclosure cases.
This is a war you can win as long as you surround yourself with aggressive and skilled advocates and not allow corrupt bankers and politicians manipulate you any more than they already have. It is your right to hire and pay for a forensic examiner and an attorney if you so choose. Don’t let them take this right away from you when you need it the most.
Banks want you all alone when negotiating a loan modification. Or they would rather have you sign up with “government approved” counseling agencies. Who pays their “non profit” pockets? The banks and the government. Did you know that “non profit” counseling agencies get paid to do your loan modification? Who ever pays you then that is who you cater to. So why would you think that the “non profit ” government approved agencies would work in your best interest when you don’t pay them for the modification. The government and banks pay and lobby them to lean towards their best interest not you the home owner. They get paid to approve modifications on the banks terms not yours!
Some are led to believe that HOPE NOW and 995-HOPE are here to protect your best interests. Yes and No. We say yes and no because they may be here to help but they only go so far, only one layer deep in assisting struggling home owners, while knowing fully well what is in the second layer. So why won't they go the extra mile and look into theses toxic loans? For instance why won't they review every single borrowers loan documents for legal violations? The NUMBER ONE reason is that these two entities are funded by the LENDERS who do not want you to go into that second layer and get into all that legal stuff that will bury them in lawsuits. Do they really have your best interests at heart? H....L NO! How can they have your best interest when they (HOPE NOW and 999-HOPE) are taking money from the very same people (banks/lenders) who put you in the position you are in now? Do not buy into their hype and propaganda. So lets get one thing clear here, HOPE NOW / 995-HOPE are funded and supported by mainly banks and lenders. Click here to see HOPE NOW members, to view all the banks and lenders that fund the hotline. You don't really think that an organization that obtains its funding and donations from banks and lenders are truly looking out for the consumers best interest?
Let’s reiterate. If the bank funds your advocate and the bank is the other side, do you think you really get a fair deal? The bank is looking out for their interest and your advocate is funded by your adversary. Click HERE to see the agreement that Lenders have with the “non profit housing counseling agencies” who GET PAID to do your modification. You see they run that crap about you should not have to pay any 3rd party for a modification…because they already hired the “non profits” and will pay them to do your modification…IN THEIR INTEREST. That’s why lenders/banks do not want you to hire any outside 3rd party because they are paid by YOU and work IN YOUR INTEREST. (Or at least they should but we’ll get into that later) How clever. They duped you once by selling you a toxic loan and now are going to dupe you again by having you call the hot line for help. You either seek a “non profit counseling agency” OR you come by your self. That’s what they want. They LIE and tell you that it’s free. Somebody pays for it! And who ever pays for it generally gets the better deal. How clever. They duped you once by selling you a toxic loan and now are going to dupe you again by having you call the hot line for help.
Hiring professional negotiators such as Financial Relief Solutions to work on your behalf will get you better results!
It has been quite a process educating people about how loss mitigation works. However the scams are plentiful, and some loss mitigation/loan modification companies are so desperate that they will do and say anything to make a buck.
Homeowners need to be careful about whom they do business with these days. In tough times, the public tends to be more vulnerable and gets caught up in scams more easily. If you add in the emotional attachment to a home you own and live in… desperation can take over, and desperate people more often than not make poor decisions. It is important to do some research on the company that is representing you. Sometimes this is tough because loss mitigation has only recently appeared in the marketplace – no company has a sign out front that says “Loss Mitigation – For the last 25 years” they don’t even have a sign (or at least a truthful one) that says, “Loss Mitigation – For the Last three years”. The business is just too new (for them).
It is worth the time to do your research; your home is the biggest investment you will ever make. We have seen our share of modification companies that claim to help and seem to be good at cashing checks, but not so good when it comes to the actual work of modifying loans. Many companies are charging homeowners $3500 up to $5000 for a Loan Modification! That’s just plain Robbery!
We charge a reasonable fee for a Loan Modification and Forensic Loan Audit. Or combine both. No Hidden Fee's! If you’re a homeowner, or even a bank, you don’t want to get involved with a company that is incompetent, overwhelmed, or just plain crooked. Due diligence is a must. So you must also watch out for "Predatory Loan Modification" Companies...click here to find out more!
So, why choose us, Financial Relief Solutions for Loan Modification?
Because the banks are acting in what they perceive to be their own best interest. And it’s not that people are not intelligent or lack the discipline, the bottom line is these are tricky procedures, tricky processes, comprehensive transactions and there is no way the average person is going to know all the ins and outs like a professional. If you think you’re going to go in there without any knowledge or sophistication and negotiate a good deal, you’re not. You definitely want to get a professional that knows what you should be getting because otherwise you’re just not going to do well.
Since this is something you are going to be paying on for probably the next five to seven years or even longer, if you get a better deal by hiring a professional to negotiate for you, you are going to save many times the money that you’ve spent. I know it is tempting for people who want to go and negotiate themselves, but it really is not a wise choice. Remember, this is financial war. We need to go in with all of the weapons. You are going with a cardboard sword when you go in by yourself.
My long-winded answer sums up nicely as, Hire the Professional Loss Mitigation Negotiator/Company - Financial Relief Solutions (FRS)
P.S. Don’t forget, even if you have been turned down for a loan modification or you were told that you don’t “qualify”, either because of not enough income, too much income, investment or rental property or whatever the reason, we can successfully submit and increase your Loan Modification request for approval by performing an Audit of your loan. Also known as a Forensic Loan Modification - click here for more info.
“Don’t Let things happen to you…Make them happen For you!”
Financial Relief Solutions - 877-717-6759
d. Suite 5Phoenix, Arizo 8501
602-774-4802
602-413-5174
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