Now this is interesting.
Many months ago my mother and father embarked on a journey to get a home mortgage modification a la the Obama plan, in order to stay in their home.
For a more detailed timeline of their adventure, you can read "And this is why home loan mod programs are fracked."
But I'll save you some time and summarize. They needed to get a home loan modification and the bank dropped them into a bureaucratic maze doing everything they could to put the stomp on their efforts to attain a loan modification, including but not limited to: Claiming not to have received mail, sending out mail On Friday demanding a stack of information 1 week from when the request was mailed out (basically giving the client 24 hours to gather and send out the info so it gets there on time), and lying to the home modification counselor so that she doesn't show up to the meetings between the bank and my parents. The bank even tried to dangle a dummy-offer, or alternate offer they themselves concocted, telling my parents that it was SIMILAR to the Obama plan...which it wasn't. It was a token few bucks off the payments.
But after months, they finally persevered and got a home loan modification.
Well. Almost.
They got a letter from the bank months ago acquiescing to a home loan modification.
Yay!
And my parents were put on a 3 month trial period.
They had to make the payments on time for three months in order for the trial period for the modification to go into effect long term.
Right.
Three months. You may or may not remember some time in the past reading articles about how so many individuals modifying their mortgages just can't seem to make it through the trial period.
Well.
Month 1: My parents paid Chase bank on time.
Month 2: My parents paid Chase bank on time.
Month 3: My parents paid Chase bank on time....
....but on the third month, Chase bank sent my parents' a letter notifying them that the PAYMENT PROCESSING for their loan, not the loan itself, had been contracted to a third party company called "IBM Lending Business Processing Services."
And because their loan had been contracted to this new company PRIOR to completion of trial period....his mortgage modification agreement with Chase is now null and void.
As in...they now have to go back to square one, since their contract was sold to a third party as the very last second before the mortgage modification became long term.
BRILLIANT!
And evil.
So essentially...a bank can put a home modification seeker through a rat maze of paper and legal work for months, only to send you back to square one at the very end by simply contracting the payment processing rights to another third party company, which they can do over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.
And still reports come out about the failure of the home loan modification program.
Golly...I wonder why they're failing.
Good grief. Do our representatives even KNOW about this stuff? Are they completely blind and oblivious, or are they fully aware and powerless?