Ugh!

The business of Christmas kept my mind off this obstacle for a short time, so thank you Christmas! But now I have to get back to it!

We got a letter in mid-December (dated the 17th from Bank of America along with our check returned. The letter simply stated:

"IMPORTANT MESSAGE ABOUT YOUR LOAN Thank you for sending the enclosed payment. Although we appreciate your effort to settle your account, it is necessary to return these funds to you for the following reason: The amount remitted does not represent the total due. WHAT THIS MEANS Please note that additional amounts may become past due until your account is brought fully current. If you have any questions, please contact us at (800)669-6654"

So here is a copy of the letter I originally sent them and have been sending weekly for several weeks (for our privacy, I x'ed out the dollar amounts):

November 25, 2009

Dear Bank of America Representative,

I, like many hard-working Americans, am struggling to keep my home. My husband and I do not want to be another statistic. We do not want to walk away from a property that we feel responsible for and want to keep. We have been trying to communicate with your institution unsuccessfully since May of 2009 and no one will give us the time and attention we require to work out a solution that benefits us all. We want to repay our loan to you, and in order to do that we need to establish new terms that will pay Bank of America what it is owed and keep us in our home.
Unlike the many homeowners who have washed their hands of their financial responsibilities, leaving their financed properties to fall into disrepair while banks struggle to get them on the market before the values drop even further, we want to pay you. We simply need to work out payment terms that work with our current financial predicament.

Our Situation:
Due to the educational systems drastic budget cuts my teaching aide position was cut and I have only sparse substitute offers, which I excitedly accept. My second, part-time job is as a real estate agent. As you know, this industry and my sales have all but dropped off. My husband continues to hold his position, but his income alone does not allow us to pay the mortgage as is stands. We have used all our resources, including exhausting our retirement and savings. We have been applying for extra work daily. We have qualified for the Oregon Health Plan for our children and are receiving food stamp benefits.
We realize we purchased at a market high, made mistakes in our mortgage choices, and are now facing foreclosure if we cannot come to reachable terms with Bank of America and Chase.

Bank of America's Situation:
You are dealing with many short sale and foreclosure proceedings, which we understand is not easy on Bank of America's bottom line. As a licensed Oregon Realtor in the Newberg/Dundee area, I know this market well. The current market value of our home is no more than $xxx,xxx at best. We currently owe $xxx,xxx between the $xxx,xxx on our first with B of A and our $xx,xxx on the second with Chase. Foreclosure and short sale properties are not selling quickly in our area, which means you stand to go without payments until the sale. You also run the risk of a much larger loss if the market's downward trend continues. Add to that the costly expense of the foreclosure process for your institution, and it seems beneficial for all parties involved to work with us- a borrower willing and able to make reduced payments-to collect the full amount owed to your bank.

A proposed solution:
We have family that is willing to assist us with the cost of utilities and transportation expenses until we procure additional work. That means we can use the bulk of our income towards the mortgage. With the money coming in right now, that would mean we could pay $xxxx per month. Since we have both a first and a second we are requesting the following:
Bank of America accepts payment of $xxx (the additional $xxx will be paid toward the second mortgage) as a complete monthly payment.
Remove all late fees and fines associated with the missing payments from May of 2009, since our calls and pleas went unanswered.
Re-issue new loan agreements with us that lock us in at a fixed interest rate for the next 5 years minimum.
See to it that our loan balance does not continue to grow due to negative amortization from the difference between the payments due as per our current agreement and the proposed new payment.

Your cooperation and assistance in this matter would save all involved further financial losses. We realize this is an extreme reduction in the monthly payments. We trust you see the benefit in working with us to collect the full balance of what you are owed through a new loan agreement instead collecting a severely reduced amount via foreclosure. To honor and respect your willingness to commit to an agreement that benefits us both we will agree to a pre-payment penalty so that you can be assured of making your money back with interest.

We have been completely transparent with you by showing pay stubs and account balances to verify our financial situation. I have also included information on a recently sold property that is similar to our home. If there is something we have failed to clarify, or something more we can do to initiate an open dialogue to solidify a new agreement with Bank of America, please notify us and we will promptly respond. If you agree to accept these terms, please accept this check as our first payment and we will await new documentation from you verifying the new loan terms. We will take the cashing of this check as approval of the solution we propose. We anxiously await communication from you and thank you in advance for working with us to keep this loan and our family form being another sad statistic. We appreciate the opportunity to keep our dignity and our home by making realistic arrangements with Bank of America.

In gratitude,


Teresa Kolb
Brian Kolb

Hopefully I can get someone to talk to us on the phone this week. I'll try again to negotiate a deal and then continue to send my weekly letters. Ugh!

Twitter-Will it help me?

12/07: Upon the advice of a friend, I sent a tweet directly to my mortgage lender and they responded fairly quickly! Wow! They asked for my contact info...hopefully I can get a real person to communicate with! If that doesn't work, I'll have to start tweeting about my bad experience to the world!

12/08: Got a call from a BofA Twitter Help person...not associated with BofA however. Probably a marketing person trying to save face for BofA. She took my info/history with the lender's customer service to forward to a BofA rep....

12/09: Got a call from another Twitter BofA Help person...she said she had my info and gave me another BofA phone number to call...back to square one I guess. This number is for the Home Retention Division, which I'm sure I've already called. But she insisted I call again, "because that's who can help me".

I'm sitting on hold right now, after listening to a 5 minute spiel about the Making Home Affordable Program....another 5 minute hold with wonderfully loud music before I got to talk to another BofA rep! Not bad at all compared to the other times I've sat on hold with BofA! Trying to stay positive!

I asked him what he can tell me about my file..."can you hold on a sec"..."just trying to find some documentation"..."I don't see that you are in review at this time"..."can you tell me what you've sent?"...Seriously? You can't find anything I've sent to you. You have full access to my file right? "Right".

After telling him what I've sent he miraculously found my info in my file...ugh!

I asked for an address I can send a letter to...and it was like pulling teeth out of a snake!!! I gave him the address I had and he wanted to know where I got the address, but would not confirm that it was a correct address! "What letter are you sending?, who are you sending it to?, what else are you sending?, who told you to send a partial payment?"

...this is so frustrating...on hold again...40 minutes on this call...and I still feel like I'm on square one!!! He calculated some ridiculous amount for us to pay...a three month trial period and then maybe they will modify our loan, and maybe not! Ugh!

I just want to curl up in my bed and cry myself to sleep. I don't feel like they are really helping us. They asked for our budget info and our income (again). Then they gave us an adjusted payment amount for our loan. The problem is, the math doesn't add up. Income minus budget doesn't equal new loan payment...deep breaths!

He wanted me to make a commitment to this adjusted/temporary (3 month) payment amount and said he couldn't guarantee it would be offered after today. I called him on his pressuring me to make a decision and he said he wasn't pressuring me. I asked him what he called it, "just an offer that I cannot guarantee will be here later".

I told him I couldn't make this decision without my husband. I also asked how he could take a commitment like this from only one party on the loan docs and not each and every person on the loan? His answer..."you don't have to commit today, but I cannot guarantee this offer will be here tomorrow." I asked him what the terms are and what would happened to the missed payments and late fees. Again he was vague and said "they would remain until we got approved, if we got approved, and then that would be decided at that time."

I was on the phone for over an hour...crying most of that time...although the man I spoke with was calm, I still felt beat up by the time I hung up the phone. I felt like I was being roped into accepting a deal that I would eventually regret. Ugh!

Time to Tweet!

I'm Exhausted

I don't know when the last time I got a decent nights sleep. The last several nights I have been in and out of sleep and having bizarre dreams. Last night I counted backward from 100...didn't work...then backward from 1000...which finally worked, but it took me over an hour to doze off only to wake up an hour later and do it again. This morning I woke about 6ish and tried to count backward from 1000 again...when I got to 400, I just gave in and got up. (And mid-day naps don't work for me either!)

I'm starting a new "job" tomorrow morning. I'll be working in a special needs preschool speech class for 2 hours/1 day a week...but hey, it's a job! ...And then back to work at FM from 5-11 pm.

So why am I not in bed now? Good question...cause I know I'll be counting sheep for an hour :) Obviously stressed!

Good night!