By Mandelman
Regardless of what anyone else wants to say about getting a loan modified, it remains by far a homeowner’s best chance of keeping his or her home if at risk of foreclosure. That’s not an opinion… it’s an indisputable fact. According to the latest report from the Treasury Department…
“As of February (2014), more than 1.3 million homeowners received permanent modifications through HAMP. There have also been 4 million in-house modifications through last November.”
Is either of those numbers sufficient or even acceptable? No. Is the process fair and reasonable? No. Is it consistent? Not even close. Is it better than it’s been in the past? Sometimes yes, oftentimes no. But, none of that changes the facts… as bad as it might be to get your loan modified… nothing else comes close to having saved millions of homes from foreclosure.
And, just so we’re clear, it’s not like I care one way or the other what you decide to do if you’re facing foreclosure. As far as I’m concerned, you’re presumably a grown up and it’s presumably your house we’re talking about, so if you want to burn it to the ground, that’s entirely up to you.
But, before you do anything like that, Arson-Boy, I’d just like to make sure you know that if you burn your house down, you’ll probably end up in jail… and you very well may hurt innocent people. That being said, if you still decide to go ahead with it, let me know and I’ll go pay-per-view.
For those that decide to take the loan modification route, however, I can probably offer some insight and advice that will be helpful as I see loans get modified all the time, and I’ve had a front row seat to this crisis almost every day since it began.
The first things you need to know about getting your loan modified are that it’s not fun, almost never easy, always stressful, and far too often ridiculous to the point of being maddening. And those are the positives about the process.
The simple fact is that loans were never written with the idea that they would be written down when borrowers defaulted on them. That was never even remotely part of anyone’s plan. And the idea that millions of borrowers would all need their loans modified …read more
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