Asian Journal- The Filipino-American Community Newspaper

Lender – Countrywide now BOA – no money paid for modification.

2 PERCENT fixed rates for the remaining terms of this homeowners loan, they were already late and we are in the process of a short sale and the lender had just approved both the short sale and the loan modification. The homeowner went to a program called NACA ( Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America) and applied about 6-8 months ago, they were telling me that they think they got lucky because the service manager that was helping them was Pinoy. But they were behind of their payments and the modification came back with an offer of 2 percent fixed rates for the remaining term of their loan and they added the back payment, interest and penalties into the mortgage balance. For the homeowner, the loan balance was small enough to maintain instead of renting, so they decided to go for the loan modification instead of a short sale. I agreed with their decision to continue to loan modification and dropped the short sale. I believe that even if their balance is still about 100K larger that the current value, their payment of about 1700/mo (PITI) was worth it because their property had much potential and a 2 percent interest rate is outstandingly too good to pass up.

4 percent fixed rates for these homeowners, they had an original 40 year loan Interest Only, BOA offered them a 4 percent for 9 year Interest only that will amortized for 27 years after the first 9 years of interest payments. The only thing I don’t like about this modification is that BOA noted that any additional payments for the first 9 years towards the minimum will all go towards the interest not the principal. These homeowners were not late but were self employed and had some hardship that they proved to the lender, that is why they were approved. For now, their payments dropped by about 1K a month and that will help them thru these hard times.

The homeowners where offered a rate of 4 percent for the first 6 months, then it would increase every six months till the rates reached 6 percent and it would stay for the remainder of the loan. Homeowners were behind already and have also prepared to do a short sale if their request for modification did not include a loan balance reduction. In this case, obviously the lenders will not approve a balance reduction, so these homeowners decided the balance was too big and they cannot really afford the payments. so, they decided to go forward with the modification.

Homeowners were declined a modification even if they proved hardship, ASC ( Wells Fargo) stated that they have no repayment ability, meaning they cannot repay the loan, so they were declined a modification.