Ever wonder why it is that you vote Democrat, when you see the selfish hijinks of people like Ben Nelson and Mary Landrieu? Yep, me too, lately.
I've been out of work for a year. Obviously, I do not blame the President or the Democrats for this state of affairs. I know about the root causes of our unemployment and fiscal problems in our country. I'm not here to talk about those or about the recklessness of our banking industry that led us to this pass.
What I am here to say is that for the mistakes Barack may or may have not made, I've had a very real and personal experience as to why I remain a committed Democrat. Yes, God Help we should EVER spend federal dollars actually HELPING Americans.
It has to do with President Obama's slow-ripening HAMP program (Home Affordable Modification Program). It seems that at least SOME of the big banks are finally starting to get with the program. (For more info on HAMP, go here.
First of all, thank GOD my mortgage is not (a) with Bank of America; (b) with one of those many anonymous third-party loan servicers to whom the big banks sold millions of mortgages to get them off their books. My loan is with Wells Fargo, which is one of the top five mortgage banks in the country but has also been one of those that the administration has been focusing on to request compliance and cooperation with the HAMP program.
For the last six months, as I've fallen further and further behind, I've gone back and forth with the bank's Loss Mitigation program regarding the process of starting a load mod. The best I could hope for was a partial claim which would attach the arrears on my mortgage onto the back end of the loan, but would do nothing to lower my payments. I've been turned down twice, because we could never seem to patch together enough sources of verifiable income to show we could support the payments.
The fact is, my house is underwater. Hopelessly so, even though I busted my tail to remodel and repair endless amounts of problems and poorly designed features on the house. Despite what we considered to be a reasonable price for the home when we closed, it's very likely according to local realtors that if I could get 60% of my loan value out of it I'd be fortunate.
The bank had also refused a short sale, because they see the home as still being of substantially more value than I do (the county is also a problem, of course. Even after a successful request for a reassessment and reduction on my tax assessment, the county still sees the house as being worth over $100,000 beyond what it would actually command in the local market. Game, set and match.)
In the meantime, I'd been desperately finishing the remodel and putting the upstairs up for rent. The upstairs is a 1200+ square foot unit with 2 BD and 1 bath with office and dining room. Here's the kitchen:
We also had to give up our living space and move to a 400sf space downstairs (which I had also remodeled) to cut our expenses to the point where we might be able to cope with our mortgage payments. This is a big adjustment, as you can imagine.
Despite all this, we were within two weeks of hitting the foreclosure window. I'd spent weeks pulling the paperwork together and getting the rental done before making one last big effort with Loss Mitigation to save our home, continuing to make our overpriced payments on our overpriced loan. But we knew that that our days were likely numbered, and that we might be rendered homeless and have to drive to the east coast with our remaining worldly possessions that we could stuff into two cars to hole up with relatives.
But I tried Well Fargo Mortgage Services one last time, to tell them that I was finally able to start making payments again, and that I was going to fax in a large packet to Loss Mitigation. The rep asked me a few questions about our current income and told me to wait a moment while he checked my eligibility for certain loan modification programs. In another moment, he came back and told me he had some good news. I was now, finally, eligible for a trial modification under the HAMP program, (and to make a long story short) at roughly a 40% payment drop from what I have been paying for the last five years. The new terms, which we will be able to manage pretty much no matter what, amount to a miracle. From a $2100 monthly payment to $1300, for the entire term of the loan. Due to a program proposed by President Obama and revisited by his administration after the first six months since Congress authorized it, when the banks weren't cooperating.
This is from the same part of the bank that I had been dealing with for the last nine months ever since I started having problems making the payments. So clearly something has changed drastically of late. From getting no substantial help to having this happen is not far short of a miracle. Now my little girl can stay in her school (which gets 800+ on its current STAR scores) and we can scrape by in the current crappy job market while I pursue my Computer Science degree.
And it looks like we can afford to stay in our home.
Thank you, President Obama. One big serious THANK YOU.
-***EDIT*** Made the rec list! First time in a long time. Absolutely makes my day.
Let's try to keep in our hearts what we felt one year ago...
And now let's try to back Obama and force Congress to pass financial reform with big sharp nasty teeth so that the banks' recklessness in the last few years never happens again. The banks will have massive lobbying efforts to kill any reform. Especially now that the Supreme Court has invalidated all existing campaign finance law. We must fight hard and back the President, and push him to do more in this area.