I'm circulating my HAMP experience of lender mendacity because I've seen no account of it told by another HAMP applicant even though millions of homeowners are affected by it.
To demonstrate systemic lender mendacity, one must show how lenders have systemically replaced HAMP guidelines with their own denial-driven guidelines. This I do in my July 4 letter to the President, which describes GMAC's HAMP machinations and concludes as follows:
With these deceptions in place, GMAC agents can freely cite HAMP guidelines in order to justify its HAMP denials on grounds that either plainly violate HAMP guidelines or are nowhere to be found in them.
No response to my letter from the White House as yet, but I'm sending this letter on to appropriate public officials and housing reporters.
Here's a link to a PETITION TO THE U.S. GOVERNMENT FROM AMERICAN HOMEOWNERS that gas 1,700 signatures so far. Makes sense to me. My belly-in-the beast experience of HAMP is summed up below. Thanks for taking a look.
Another excerpt - the belly in the beast part:
Here in a nutshell is how GMAC’s HAMP process has worked for me. It has four Tiers of agents: the Tier I Customer Service Agents who supply initial guidelines intended to engage applicants in HAMP, the Tier II Supervisors who support Tier I guidelines, and the Tier III Loan Resolution Specialists who speak for the (unreachable) Tier IV Case Officers who review applications and issue denials. All four Tiers maintain a log of contacts with me. This log, however, is silent on the specifics of the GMAC guidelines I’ve received, often in great detail, from multiple GMAC agents. It has no record of them. This log thereby allows GMAC agents to deny any knowledge of prior guidelines. GMAC Agents constantly apologize for the "misinformation" I’ve received from other GMAC agents. Then they give me new, entirely contradictory guidelines, always to my disadvantage. And they insist (incredibly) that the guidelines they are giving me now have ALWAYS been in place and so far as they know THERE NEVER WERE any others. The process works like magic. Bottom line: virtually nothing that GMAC has said in the past applies today - yet always GMAC is working within HAMP guidelines
What's amazing is that government agencies charged to oversee HAMP have been all but complicit in GMAC's deception:
GMAC is running a shell game. For this it is accountable to no one, not even to the various agencies charged to maintain HAMP’s integrity. For months I have been in contact with six such agencies (state, federal and non-profit) and public officials. Although several of them freely acknowledge GMAC’s systemic dissembling, none can hold GMAC to account. The HAMP Solution Center, as I understand it, has authority to address individual HAMP applications but none to address structural defects in a lender’s HAMP application process. Hence this letter to you. (11 weeks ago, two of the agencies I’m in contact with "escalated" my case to the Center, from which I have yet to hear a word.)
Two links:
- Dan Harris, the "NY Mortgage Examiner" at Examiner.com
- A PETITION TO THE U.S. GOVERNMENT FROM AMERICAN HOMEOWNERS calling for a halt to foreclosures until new and transparent MFA/HAMP guidelines are put into place