I guess it's better to know the cold reality than to walk around with the illusion that you can get help. One can act accordingly instead of being naive.
The Home Affordable Modification Program, commonly known as HAMP, has been basically a failure thus far. Banks such as Wells Fargo, Citi, and others who took bank bailout money were obligated to pay lip service to helping homeowners/mortgagees who ran into trouble due to the terrible economy.
But the banks hate this program. In the real world, they do not want to cooperate with homeowners who want to take advantage of this program.
If you're in trouble, don't get your hopes up that Obama's program can help you. Or that Obama has the slightest interest in helping or the power to help you.
The problem with HAMP is twofold: first, that a broke homeowner really needs a real estate attorney in order to get the modification they need; and second, that the mortgage servicer is expected to do the actual work.
Yeah, right.
If you are not late with your mortgage, the banks will not talk to you. Period. They're getting money out of you, and that's all that matters.
Start missing your payments (due to layoff, drastic cut in pay, catastrophic illness and so on) and you will receive a notice of default along with a warning that your loan account faces an "acceleration" of the process of foreclosure. Then, if you are lucky and you ask for it and are very persistent, the bank will open a Loss Mitigation account with you, asking you for financial information, with a "Hardship Letter" detailing your financial situation and the reason why you've fallen behind in your mortgage payments, and documentation of what income you do have.
In most cases the bank will tell you that unless you can come up with a full month's mortgage payment as a "down payment" for your Loss Mitigation Department processing, it can take 45 days or more to get an agent assigned to your account. All this time, the hourglass is running down on your pre-foreclosure window. If you can somehow do this and hand in the paperwork along with the check, the bank will (supposedly) freeze the foreclosure clock and put your account into the official loan modification process. I spoke to a real estate attorney today about this very subject and she said, in these words;
They're just doing that to shine you on. All they want is your money. Their only job is to get money out of you.
At no time will your bank mention the HAMP program. Ever.
None of the big banks will tell you a thing about this program; the fact that it's supposed to mandate a drop in interest rates to 2% in some cases; that it mandates principal reduction as optional (read: ain't gonna happen, 'cause it's the bank's decision to make) and that the program enables or forces the bank to reduce your monthly payment to a more sustainable 38% of your current monthly earnings (HAMP then kicks in and covers the costs dollar for dollar to reduce the monthly percentage to 31%).
The real killer is this (from Freddie Mac's HAMP page):
If you believe you qualify for this program, please contact the company to whom you make your mortgage payments. Delinquent borrowers eligible for assistance will be contacted by their mortgage Servicer.
Yeah, sure they will.
It's all up to the loan servicer.
For more information about the HAMP program, try this page.
Nice try, Obama. Since you have several top Wall Streeters in your cabinet, I guess I know who's bought and paid for in the White House. My piddly $900 I spent contributing to your "Campaign for Change" should have gone into the bank instead. It was a waste of money.
The HAMP program is window-dressing. It's not intended to help the people who really need help. The problem is, OBAMA TRUSTS THE BANKS TO DO THE RIGHT THING BY THEIR CUSTOMERS.
All of these farking banks pumped up a massive bubble so they could make their numbers and their top kicks could rake in their fat bonuses. Millions of us overpaid for homes that now are not worth the amount of the loans we are paying upon, thanks to the securitization racket that I talk about here and also here. This is Bush's fault and the fault of those who enabled him, Democrat and Republican, and the Wall Street scumbags who have systematically looted this country.
And guess who's doing absolutely nothing significant about it.
Not another dime, for any politician, ever is coming out of my wallet. I run a severe risk of losing my house thanks to Bush's shitty economy, and our shiny new President is surrounded in his cabinet by the bastards who created and abetted this mess in the first place. Lawrence Summers. Tim Geithner. Robert Rubin. A former exec of Goldman Sach runs the TARP program, for crying out loud! Here - look at the list for yourself!
This shows bad judgment and a lack of awareness of the problems of the average American. Not as meretricious as Bush or Reagan, but in a certain way even worse - because he ran as the candidate of hope and change. The insiders are still running Washington, folks. Nothing significant has changed.
Sorry, what he's selling I'm not buying anymore. Not when I see all the scumbags who committed securities fraud walking round free as a bird counting their money (or still running companies like Bank of America) and their successors demanding fat bonuses on my increasingly dwindling dime. And when I see the MBA bigwigs shadowing Obama's every move and making sure he does what's right for the United States of Goldman Sachs.
I knew the fix was in the moment we heard who were going to be Obama's economic advisers. At first I tried to pretend everything was gonna be OK. I just couldn't believe it. Now, I know from direct personal experience that things are NOT gonna be OK.
Thanks a lot, Mr. President.
This country is not ours anymore, and I don't think it ever will be again.