Obama's Loan Modifications Are a Joke

As many of you may know, I have been attempting to get a loan modification for over a year. We meet all of the qualifications for the federal loan modification. We have gone through the modification process twice. They send you tons of paper work to fill out to see if you qualify. You send them a hardship letter as well. The bank then comes up with a payment for you based on the information that you provide along with documentation to prove that you aren't just making something up. You are also required to meet with a credit counseling agency to make sure that you can afford to pay your bills.

After you have went through that circus, you have to jump through a bunch of hoops out of fear that you won't be modified if you don't follow the instructions to a t. The requirements that my bank told me to follow included purposely skipping one payment and then paying ONLY the modified amount to a special address with pre-printed coupons that they send me. I was supposed to keep sending my modified payments to that address until the modification process was completed. They require you to keep your information updated and I was just recently told that I should be faxing updated information in to the bank every month even though they don't even ask for an update. Sounds like an awfully expensive requirement if you ask me...

The first time it took at least six months for them to complete the process even though we were given a three month trial period. Somewhere along the way my information got changed from what we actually make monthly to what we make yearly divided by 12. Yeah, of course we wouldn't need a modification if we brought that home every month. Are they that big of block heads that they can't get it through their thick skulls that we don't get huge bonuses every month? I mean, don't they do the very same thing with their employees? Hello!!!!!!!

So we went through the whole process a second time and prequalified again. This time our payment was even lower than the first time. This time the bank was asking for about $6 less in the payment, but I kept paying the first amount anyway. After the "trial" payment period was completed it went in to negotiations. Again, my income was modified even though we sent in documentation of our income on June 25, 2010. I was then informed that we did not qualify for the federal loan modification, but the bank would review my information to modify my loan. The bank decided that based on information we provided we could not afford our home and we either needed to sell our home in a short sale or give them a deed in lieu of foreclosure. What??????

I am now so confused and frustrated that it's not even funny. Time is running out. My husband is getting a bonus this week which would allow us to pay the money to the bank, but we were hoping that amount would have been modified into my loan (since it's interest charges mostly anyway) and I would use the money to pay off the credit card bills we racked up when we fixed up the car my mother in law loaned my husband for his now much longer commute. These bills add to the hardship anyway, so wouldn't it make sense to be able to get rid of these?

The day before my birthday we got several letters from the bank informing us that if we didn't pay all of the "missed" payments within one month, they would begin foreclosure. Nice gift, huh?

I have called and talked to them twice since then. They said they would only accept full payments from now on and would accelerate my foreclosure if I did not jump to do what they want me to do.

Is this really the way the federal loan modification was meant to work? What a joke. Total waste of our hard earned income paid to a government that is supposed to help make our lives easier. I would have been better off if I would have ignored the modification process in the first place!

Hmm, and I wonder why I'm battling depression and hypothyroidism and can't loose a single ounce of weight no matter what I do.

What have your experiences with loan modification been like?

Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts! Cindy